On Our "Virtual Route 66" While Out & About in Our World (Final Quarter-End Edition)

 

Our team pulled together a final 'Snapshot"  courtesy of the team at Politico,  The Washington Examiner, the Coop Scoop, and Route Fifty  while out and about in our World as we plan on going dark until after the November 2024 Elections here in the United States--although periodic updates will be available on our X_Platform:  CLICKER — “The nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics,” edited by Matt Wuerker — 17 funnies   DRIVING THE DAY

DEADLINE DAY — “Kamala Harris posts huge cash advantage over Donald Trump,” by WaPo’s Maeve Reston and Clara Ence Morse: “KAMALA HARRIS’s campaign raised more than four times as much as DONALD TRUMP’s effort in August, capitalizing on the surge of Democratic enthusiasm during the first full month of her presidential campaign. But the super PACs aligned with Trump are continuing to raise large sums from high-dollar donors as the two candidates enter the final sprint before November.” AUGUST BY THE NUMBERS …  Battle for the White House … Harris: $189,615,034 raised; $173,848,978 spent; $235,483,260 on hand. … Trump: $44,500,313 raised; $61,264,937 spent; $134,575,691 on hand … DNC: $68,667,878 raised; $84,456,935 spent; $50,037,480 on hand … RNC: $40,424,628 raised; $60,195,815 spent; $79,340,684 on hand … Future Forward: $36,868,983 raised; $77,013,392 spent; $84,205,547 on hand … MAGA Inc.: $25,020,800 raised; $90,064,932 spent; $59,438,285 on hand. Battle for the House … DCCC: $22,283,764 raised; $26,992,059 spent; $87,280,909 on hand … NRCC: $9,716,024 raised; $12,313,138 spent; $70,571,397 on hand. Battle for the Senate … DSCC: $19,189,774 raised; $31,569,715 spent; $46,953,200 on hand … NRSC: $19,140,179 raised; $26,542,620 spent; $43,609,167 on hand. Look who’s giving … “Elon Musk steps up political giving with six-figure donation to House Republicans,” by Jessica Piper and Alex Isenstadt

Donald Trump has convinced himself that a shutdown over voting laws would usher in a GOP wave. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

TAMING TRUMP — When Trump took to social media recently and demanded his party refuse to fund the government until Democrats swallow their nationwide proof-of-citizenship voting bill, Republicans across Capitol Hill privately blanched. A government shutdown just five weeks before Election Day would be disastrous, the conventional thinking goes, reminding voters of the chaos that has marked GOP governance in the Trump era. But that, of course, wasn’t Trump’s thinking, according to three Republicans with insight. The former president had convinced himself that a shutdown over voting laws would usher in a GOP wave, enabling him to not only reclaim the White House but land substantial majorities in Congress. Trump, after all, had been burned by the 35-day-shutdown over his demands for a border wall at the end of 2018, with voters overwhelmingly blaming him as president for the chaos that ensued. Therefore, he reasoned, JOE BIDEN, Harris and the Democrats would take the heat this time around, since they’re the ones in power. So if you’re wondering why Speaker MIKE JOHNSON has dragged his feet unveiling his next moves on funding the government — even when everyone and their mother knows what the end result will be — look no further. Johnson has been in a delicate dance with Trump, trying to untangle the ex-president’s beliefs about shutdowns before he bites the bullet and puts up a clean, three-month CR. The speaker met Thursday with Trump when he was in Washington; Johnson previously huddled last weekend with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, just hours after the attempt on Trump’s life at his nearby golf club. And Johnson isn’t the only one working angles with Trump. One person close to the campaign told Playbook that no one on Trump’s team thinks a shutdown would be a good idea, and as our colleagues Sarah Ferris, Jordain Carney and Olivia Beavers wrote yesterday, rank-and-file members have been reaching out to the president trying to “defuse Trump” as they prepare to “defy [his] shutdown demands.” “There have been a number of people, who’ve talked with the president and said, ‘That’s a really bad idea.’ It’s a bad idea for him, frankly,” Rep. MIKE SIMPSON (R-Idaho), a House Appropriations cardinal, told our colleagues. “If you shut down the government a month before the election, that’s problematic.” Meanwhile, bipartisan talks about kicking the can into December are well underway, with many expecting bill text this weekend and a vote in the House early to mid-week — though, again, Johnson has yet to publicly commit due to complications with Trump. The situation is shaping up to be a new test for Johnson’s leadership abilities, skills that require the top House Republican to not only navigate his conference but the desires and political sway of the former president. In the past, Johnson has been able to neutralize Trump at key moments, such as when he pushed a new tranche of aid for Ukraine through the House. But when it comes to an issue that Trump feels will impact his own election, that’s a different matter. Johnson has been emphasizing the risk a shutdown would pose to two dozen House Republicans in difficult races — and to Trump himself. He’s telegraphed cautious optimism Trump will come along. “Look, President Trump understands our dilemma,” he told reporters yesterday when asked if Trump wants a shutdown over noncitizen voting. The former president, he added, is frustrated the House couldn’t pass a CR that addressed the issue but “he understands our margin.” Success won’t involve a Trump endorsement for a clean CR plan — that’s not gonna happen. In the best-case scenario for Johnson, Trump says nothing at all. At the very least, Hill Republicans are hoping he holds off on weighing in until after the bill passes, keeping GOP defections — which could reach 100 or so — to a minimum. JUST POSTED — “Harris campaign lays out its Mark Robinson strategy in North Carolina,” by Natalie Allison: “The plan, Harris advisers outlined in a memo provided exclusively to POLITICO, involves seizing on the current barrage of negative attention on [Lt. Gov. MARK] ROBINSON and putting resources behind targeting suburban voters in the Charlotte and Raleigh areas, moderate Republicans and Black voters in the critical battleground state. Their messaging … will emphasize the controversial candidate’s ties to Trump and his ‘extreme’ policy positions.” Read the memo

LATEST IN LINCOLN — “Trump ramps up push for Nebraska to change electoral vote allocation,” by WaPo’s Patrick Marley, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer: “State Sen. MERV RIEPE (R) said he spoke briefly by phone with Trump on Wednesday in the presence of Nebraska Gov. JIM PILLEN (R) during a visit by Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), who encouraged Republicans in the state’s unicameral legislature to change to a statewide winner-take-all electoral vote system. … “Trump stressed the importance of making the change and ‘wasn’t threatening in any way at all,’ Riepe said Friday in an interview. ‘Primarily I think he was saying:”‘Look, this is important to me. I’m interested, and I want you to know that I’m not just taking anybody for granted,”’ Riepe said. … “Three people involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said they think there are multiple holdouts to the change, which would probably face a political backlash in Omaha, where voters have embraced their outsize role in the presidential election and the financial benefits of presidential advertising and campaign visits that come with it. TOP-ED — “ I co-chaired Nikki Haley's Iowa campaign. I am endorsing Kamala Harris,” by Dawn Roberts for The Des Moines Register: “I think both parties let us down by selecting two candidates for president in or near their 80s. I was at a loss. Then, when President Joe Biden stepped down and endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement, I decided to see who she really was.”

PLAYBOOK READS

9 THINGS THAT STUCK WITH US

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions on the Second Amendment have unleashed constitutional challenges to long-standing gun laws. | Jon Elswick/AP

1. ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT FALLOUT: “The Supreme Court expanded gun rights. That could complicate the Trump assassination attempt case,” by Samantha Latson: “RYAN ROUTH was arrested and charged with violating the federal ban on people with prior felony convictions possessing firearms. … But many of those charged under the statute — along with some gun-rights advocates — argue that the law is unconstitutional. The issue has sown confusion in lower courts, and legal experts say it may soon need to be resolved by the Supreme Court.” 2. AMARILLO BY MORNING: “Senate Democrats push leaders to expand map to Florida, maybe Texas,” by WaPo’s Paul Kane: “They fear Democrats are leaving potential pickups on the table, particularly in Florida and Texas, where unpopular incumbents, Sens. RICK SCOTT (Fla.) and TED CRUZ (Texas), have not seen anything resembling the financial onslaught faced by GOP candidates in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Arizona. … Democrats pushing a stay-the-course strategy argue that, despite close polling margins between the candidates, Florida and Texas are massively expensive states with a likely turnout of nearly 11 million voters each.” 3. SALT OF THE EARTH: Vulnerable GOP members are hoping Trump’s reversal on a key tax break among middle and upper-class Americans could help boost their support among uncommitted voters, Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris report:“Those voters don’t live in states that would help Trump win the Electoral College. Instead, the SALT cap affects a narrow but influential segment of voters in the well-heeled suburbs in blue states like New York, New Jersey and California — precisely the places that will determine the House majority this fall. … When Trump posted this week about restoring the tax break — and then doubled down on the vow at his rally on Long Island — those members cheered.” 4. SURVEY SAYS: A new Spotlight PA poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania shows that Harris is narrowly leading Trump by four points in the critical swing state, while incumbent senator BOB CASEY is leading his GOP opponent by 7%, Spotlight PA’s Sarah Anne Hughes reports: “Harris’ edge is within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus 4%. But the fact that many post-debate polls show Harris with a modest lead makes it more likely she is ahead.” More on the numbers: “The vice president won 50% support among those surveyed, while the former president secured 46%. … Among unaffiliated and third-party voters — a growing bloc in Pennsylvania — Harris secured 47% compared to Trump’s 42%.” 5. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: As tensions between Israel and Hezbollah militants heighten this week, the White House is taking a step back from its diplomatic efforts, fearing it will make the situation even worse, AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer and Matthew Lee report: “[The escalation] heightens the impression that Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’s hard-right government is paying ever less attention to the mediation efforts of its key ally, despite depending on the U.S. for weapons and military support. … U.S. officials rejected assertions that they have given up on either a Gaza cease-fire or preventing the conflict from spreading to all-out war in Lebanon.”

6. WAR IN UKRAINE: Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY is planning to appeal pitch a new “victory plan” for the ongoing war in Ukraine ahead of his U.S. trip next week, telling reporters he plans to appeal to Joe Biden’s “sense of legacy” while pushing for less weapons restrictions, WaPo’s Siobhán O'Grady reports: “The plan will include requests to strengthen Ukraine’s arsenal as well as permission to strike targets deeper inside Russia … Biden’s decision ‘depends on many things and depends, of course on a certain number of people. And whether he will hear our arguments,’ Zelensky said.” Related read: “Taiwan Looks for Ways to Defend Itself as U.S. Weapons Supply Hit by Gaza, Ukraine,” by WSJ’s Joyu Wang 7. EYEBROW RAISE: “The curious case of Trump’s disappearing $15 million South Korean debt,” by Robert Maguire for CREW: “[T]here are significant challenges in tracking and quantifying just how much Trump was paid by foreign governments, even in instances where the available evidence strongly suggests Trump benefited financially from foreign emoluments. … There is, perhaps, no better example of this than a nearly $20 million loan balance Trump owed for years to a South Korean company that was controlled by the state-owned Korea Development Bank.” 8. DEMOCRACY DIGEST: “Election fears ignite 'preppers' already planning for the catastrophic unknown,” by NBC News’ Erik Ortiz: “Provocative rhetoric from political candidates is tapping into fears and anxiety over the future, and in Michigan, a battleground state, the prepper belief in self-reliance is meshing with the region’s history of self-styled militia groups that support individual liberties and are suspicious of government power.” 9. SMOKE BREAK: “Trump vows to ‘save’ vaping after private meeting with vaping lobbyist,” by WaPo’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Dan Diamond: “The comments represent a revisionist account of his administration’s approach to vaping … Former U.S. officials and industry lobbyists argue that Big Tobacco is betting on Trump’s chaotic approach to public health and pliable views on policy as it confronts the possibility of additional regulation of e-cigarettes as well as a ban on menthol cigarettes.”

GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Ryan Lizza: — “The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio,” by Kevin Williamson for The Dispatch: “A pretty long story about a thing that didn’t happen.” — “Is Trump’s Whole Political Career Just a Cockeyed Revenge Plot Against the NFL?” by Rolling Stone’s Noah Shachtman: “For more than 30 years, he was desperate to own a team. After his bid to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014 was rejected, he vowed payback on an epic scale.” — “The civil war inside the Republican Party deep in the heart of Texas,” by LA Times’ Jeffrey Fleishman: “The far-right movement in Hood County exemplifies the rancor and divisions that have reordered American politics and provoked a battle for the identity of the Republican Party.” — “The Insurrectionists Next Door,” by The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin: “Ashli Babbitt’s mother and the wife of a notorious January 6 rioter are at the center of a new mythology on the right. They are also my neighbors.” — “The Deserter,” by Sarah Topol for NYT Mag: “He didn’t want to fight in Putin’s war — he just wanted to survive. But to make it back to his family and live in peace, he would have to run.” — “The Searchers,” by Dave Eggers for WaPo: “For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether life is possible elsewhere in the universe, and now we’re within striking distance of being able to say not only yes, but here.” — “Understanding Kamala Harris,” By Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove, Karen Breslau and Akayla Gardner: “Who she is, and what she might do if she wins.” — “Trump fan targets MAGA foes with menace – and gets away with it,” by Reuters’ Ned Parker and Peter Eisler: “Geoffrey Giglio’s onslaught coincides with the greatest spike in political violence in decades.” — “In the U.S., opioid-maker Purdue is bankrupt. Its global counterparts make millions,” by WaPo’s Madlen Davies, Hristio Boytchev and David Ovalle: “Tactics used to persuade U.S. doctors that potent painkillers could be safely prescribed have been used abroad, an investigation shows.” — “The centrist pitch Kamala Harris won’t make,” by Deseret News’ Samuel Benson: “A Harris-aligned super PAC is preparing an ad blitz with a tough mission: convincing conservative voters that Harris is a centrist.” The problem with Trumponomics 2.0 One of the strongest arguments behind former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is the economic record from his first term in office. Inflation and unemployment were low, economic growth was solid, and many people remember his presidency, at least before COVID-19, fondly as a result. However, Trump’s recent policy evolutions are radically undercutting this case […] The Kids Online Safety Act is passable — it just requires work The version of the Kids Online Safety Act that passed through a House committee this week is promising for progress on social media regulation despite the bill’s imperfections. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced KOSA in 2022, and it has gone through a few revisions since. Some lawmakers are disappointed with the […] Don’t write Mark Robinson’s political obituary just yet The North Carolina gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC) has all of the hallmarks of a train wreck that is only getting worse. On Thursday, CNN reported damning information about Robinson’s activity on pornographic websites where he made numerous disparaging and offensive comments, including that he was a “black Nazi,” and enjoyed watching […] How Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah complicates Biden administration criticism All nations, even very close allies, have strategic disagreements. Israel’s strategic interest in Lebanon is the ability to return more than 100,000 of its citizens to their homes in northern Israel. Those civilians have been dislocated since last October, when the Lebanese Hezbollah joined Hamas’s war by firing rockets into Israeli settlements. The U.S. strategic […] No, the Left didn’t try to kill Trump Everybody in American politics should dial down the vitriolic rhetoric, very much including the rhetoric blaming the other side’s rhetoric for causing specific acts of violence. Oh — and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, in particular, needs an infusion of decency because his blows below the belt are both legion and inexcusable. Finally, let’s […] Republicans keep making elections more difficult for themselves Elections are unfair for the GOP because both Democrats and Republicans do their best to make sure Republicans lose important races. North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for governor, is currently embroiled in a controversy involving things he allegedly said on the message board of a pornographic website, including allegedly calling himself […] Coop Scoop: Third Parties Are No Longer Just a Protest Vote They threaten to elect Trump by running in 4 key swing states The Coop Scoop Sept 17-18 By Marc Cooper I was about to write a post on what the real deal is with third parties 7 weeks out from the election, and then I saw what good pal Micah Sifry wrote about an hour earlier. Frankly, he did a much better job than I would have as he took a detailed look into the data and possible consequences — all very negative. Micah’s substack, like mine, gladly accepts paid subs but like mine, all of his posts are completely free. Here is the link to Micah’s latest brilliant substack on third parties. PLEASE OPEN THIS LINK AND READ WHAT HE PUT BEFORE YOU. And then subscribe even its at the free level. Paid is better. Here’s just a brief tease from a much more in-depth piece. ● Green Party candidate Jill Stein will be on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; in Georgia, a challenge to her ballot appearance is ongoing. ● Independent Cornel West will be on in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Tentatively, too, he is on in Georgia but a challenge is ongoing. ● Even though he has dropped out, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin, though he is still trying to be removed in Michigan. Current polls suggest that these third-party options could tip the results to Trump in at least four key states: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin, though RFK muddies the waters for Trump in the latter two. And Stein, who is making Gaza her signature issue, could also affect the results in Arizona. Please read the entire post from Micah. It’s crucial. If you have friends who feel they are morally prohibited from voting for Harris for whatever reason, here is the hard evidence that their party vote could be catastrophic rather than virtuous. +++ IF DONALD TRUMP IS RETURNED TO THE PRESIDENCY, he won’t be coming to the White House alone: He’ll be bringing a pack of the fiends, frauds, and felons who populated his first administration and later entered his orbit. In his tumultuous first term, Trump already burned through most of the respectable figures in GOP political and policy circles, those might be considered smart, talented, and responsible. Now it’s mostly just loyalists, toadies, and hangers-on who are left. Individuals with ambitions dangerous to the future of our democracy are likely to be in positions of power and influence. READ THE REST. September 20, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson On September 16, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten wrote that while it’s “[p]retty clear that [Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala] Harris is ahead nationally right now… [h]er advantage in the battlegrounds is basically nil. Average it all, Harris’[s] chance of winning the popular vote is 70%. Her chance of winning the electoral college is 50%.” Two days later, on September 18, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) skipped votes in the Senate to travel to Nebraska, where he tried to convince state legislators to switch the state’s system of allotting electoral votes by district to a winner-take-all system. That effort so far appears unsuccessful.  In a country of 50 states and Washington, D.C.—a country of more than 330 million people—presidential elections are decided in just a handful of states, and it is possible for someone who loses the popular vote to become president. We got to this place thanks to the Electoral College, and to two major changes made to it since the ratification of the Constitution.  The men who debated how to elect a president in 1787 worried terribly about making sure there were hedges around the strong executive they were creating so that he could not become a king.  Some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted Congress to choose the president, but this horrified others who believed that a leader and Congress would collude to take over the government permanently. Others liked the idea of direct election of the president, but this worried delegates from smaller states, who thought that big states would simply be able to name their own favorite sons. It also worried those who pointed out that most voters would have no idea which were the leading men in other states, leaving a national institution, like the organization of Revolutionary War officers called the Society of the Cincinnati, the power to get its members to support their own leader, thus finding a different way to create a dictator.  Ultimately, the framers came up with the election of a president by a group of men well known in their states but not currently office-holders, who would meet somewhere other than the seat of government and would disband as soon as the election was over. Each elector in this so-called Electoral College would cast two votes for president. The man with the most votes would be president, and the man with the second number of votes would be vice president (a system that the Twelfth Amendment ended in 1804). The number of electors would be equal to the number of senators and representatives allotted to each state in Congress. If no candidate earned a majority, the House of Representatives would choose the president, with each state delegation casting a single vote. In the first two presidential elections—in 1788–1789 and 1792—none of this mattered very much, since the electors cast their ballots unanimously for George Washington. But when Washington stepped down, leaders of the newly formed political parties contended for the presidency. In the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams won, but Thomas Jefferson, who led the Democratic-Republicans (which were not the same as today’s Democrats or Republicans) was keenly aware that had Virginia given him all its electoral votes, rather than splitting them between him and Adams, he would have been president.  On January 12, 1800, Jefferson wrote to the governor of Virginia, James Monroe, urging him to back a winner-take-all system that awarded all Virginia’s electoral votes to the person who won the majority of the vote in the state. He admitted that dividing electoral votes by district “would be more likely to be an exact representation of [voters’] diversified sentiments” but, defending his belief that he was the true popular choice in the country in 1796, said voting by districts “would give a result very different from what would be the sentiment of the whole people of the US. were they assembled together.”  Virginia made the switch. Alarmed, the Federalists in Massachusetts followed suit to make sure Adams got all their votes, and by 1836, every state but South Carolina, where the legislature continued to choose electors until 1860, had switched to winner-take-all.  This change horrified the so-called Father of the Constitution, James Madison, who worried that the new system would divide the nation geographically and encourage sectional tensions. He wrote in 1823 that voting by district, rather than winner-take-all, “was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted.” He proposed a constitutional amendment to end winner-take-all. But almost immediately, the Electoral College caused a different crisis. In 1824, electors split their votes among four candidates—Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford—and none won a majority in the Electoral College. Although Jackson won the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, when the election went to the House, the state delegations chose Adams, the son of former president John Adams. Furious Jackson supporters thought a developing elite had stolen the election, and after they elected Jackson outright in 1828, the new president on December 8, 1829, implored Congress to amend the Constitution to elect presidents by popular vote. “To the people belongs the right of electing their Chief Magistrate,” he wrote; “it was never designed that their choice should in any case be defeated, either by the intervention of electoral colleges or…the House of Representatives.”  Jackson warned that an election in the House could be corrupted by money or power or ignorance. He also warned that “under the present mode of election a minority may…elect a President,” and such a president could not claim legitimacy. He urged Congress “to amend our system that the office of Chief Magistrate may not be conferred upon any citizen but in pursuance of a fair expression of the will of the majority.” But by the 1830s, the population of the North was exploding while the South’s was falling behind. The Constitution counted enslaved Americans as three fifths of a person for the purposes of representation, and direct election of the president would erase that advantage slave states had in the Electoral College. Their leaders were not about to throw that advantage away. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery (except as punishment for a crime) and scratched out the three-fifths clause, meaning that after the 1870 census the southern states would have more power in the Electoral College than they did before the war. In 1876, Republicans lost the popular vote by about 250,000 votes out of 8.3 million cast, but kept control of the White House through the Electoral College. As Jackson had warned, furious Democrats threatened rebellion. They never considered Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, whom they called “Rutherfraud,” a legitimate president.  In 1888 it happened again. Incumbent Democratic president Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes out of 11 million cast, but Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison took the White House thanks to the 36 electoral votes from New York, a state Harrison won by fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast. Once in office, he and his team set out to skew the Electoral College permanently in their favor. Over twelve months in 1889–1890, they added six new, sparsely populated states to the Union, splitting the territory of Dakota in two and adding North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming while cutting out New Mexico and Arizona, whose inhabitants they expected would vote for Democrats. The twentieth century brought another wrench to the Electoral College. The growth of cities, made possible thanks to modern industry—including the steel that supported skyscrapers—and transportation and sanitation, created increasing population differences among the different states. The Constitution’s framers worried that individual states might try to grab too much power in the House by creating dozens and dozens of congressional districts, so they specified that a district could not be smaller than 30,000 people. But they put no upper limit on district sizes. After the 1920 census revealed that urban Americans outnumbered rural Americans, the House in 1929 capped its numbers at 435 to keep power away from those urban dwellers, including immigrants, that lawmakers considered dangerous, thus skewing the Electoral College in favor of rural America. Today the average congressional district includes 761,169 individuals—more than the entire population of Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska—which weakens the power of larger states.   In the twenty-first century the earlier problems with the Electoral College have grown until they threaten to establish permanent minority rule. A Republican president hasn’t won the popular vote since voters reelected George W. Bush in 2004, when his popularity was high in the midst of a war. The last Republican who won the popular vote in a normal election cycle was Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in 1988, 36 years and nine cycles ago. And yet, Republicans who lost the popular vote won in the Electoral College in 2000—George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, who won the popular vote by about a half a million votes—and in 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes but lost in the Electoral College to Donald Trump.  In our history, four presidents—all Republicans—have lost the popular vote and won the White House through the Electoral College. Trump’s 2024 campaign strategy appears to be to do it again (or to create such chaos that the election goes to the House of Representatives, where there will likely be more Republican-dominated delegations than Democratic ones). In the 2024 election, Trump has shown little interest in courting voters. Instead, the campaign has thrown its efforts into legal challenges to voting and, apparently, into eking out a win in the Electoral College. The number of electoral votes equals the number of senators and representatives to which each state is entitled (100 + 435) plus three electoral votes for Washington, D.C., for a total of 538. A winning candidate must get a majority of those votes: 270. Winner-take-all means that presidential elections are won in so-called swing or battleground states. Those are states with election margins of less than 3 points, so close they could be won by either party. The patterns of 2020 suggest that the states most likely to be in contention in 2024 are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, although the Harris-Walz campaign has opened up the map, suggesting its internal numbers show that states like Florida might also be in contention. Candidates and their political action committees focus on those few swing states—touring, giving speeches and rallies, and pouring money into advertising and ground operations.  But in 2024 there is a new wrinkle. The Constitution’s framers agreed on a census every ten years so that representation in Congress could be reapportioned according to demographic changes. As usual, the 2020 census shifted representation, and so the pathway to 270 electoral votes shifted slightly. Those shifts mean that it is possible the election will come down to one electoral vote. Awarding Trump the one electoral vote Nebraska is expected to deliver to Harris could be enough to keep her from becoming president. Rather than trying to win a majority of voters, just 49 days before the presidential election, Trump supporters—including Senator Graham—are making a desperate effort to use the Electoral College to keep Harris from reaching the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. It is unusual for a senator from one state to interfere in the election processes in another state, but Graham similarly pressured officials in Georgia to swing the vote there toward Trump in 2020. — Notes: https://usafacts.org/articles/what-are-the-current-swing-states-and-how-have-they-changed-over-time/ https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-31-02-0256 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-03-02-0109 https://fairvote.org/how-the-electoral-college-became-winner-take-all/ https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-3 https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/resources-and-activities/CVC_HS_ActivitySheets_CongApportionment.pdf https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/01/02/what-state-has-lowest-population-us-states-ranked-population/10476960002/ https://www.axios.com/2024/09/19/lindsey-graham-electoral-vote-change-nebraska Republican governors on international pandemic plan: We will not comply By Kaitlyn Levinson | Republican leaders have expressed their disinterest in complying with an international push for a coordinated, global pandemic response.     USPS issues could undermine mail-in ballots, letter warns By Chris Teale | The bipartisan letter raised several “ongoing concerns” that it warned could disenfranchise voters. In response, embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy rejected many of the issues listed. ​​A national blueprint for taking money out of justice By David Gaspar | COMMENTARY | A year ago, Illinois became the first state to abolish cash bail. Critics argued this reform would result in an increase in crime—they were wrong.