Lindsey Graham’s Dangerous Ploy Could Upend Election in Trump’s Favor

Republicans’ plan to change how electoral votes are distributed in Nebraska could have far-reaching effects to hurt Kamala Harris’s chances at the presidency.

Nebraska splits its five Electoral College votes, granting two of them to the winner of the state’s popular vote, while the other three are given to the winner of the three congressional districts. In the past few months, Republicans in the state have pushed to return to a model where all the votes would be granted to the winner of the whole state.

Earlier this week, South Carolina senator and apparent errand boy for Donald Trump Lindsey Graham traveled to Nebraska to shore up support for this change among state lawmakers.

In ensuring that all of the state’s electoral votes go to one candidate, Republicans are essentially securing the presidential election in Nebraska for Trump, by siphoning away a spare point that Harris would earn from a district with a large metropolitan area.

If Nebraska changes its rules, it’s likely that Maine would seek to do so too, which has the potential to help Harris regain some ground lost in Nebraska.

Maine also splits its four electoral votes, with two appointed based on the winner of the popular vote within each congressional district and then two based on the winner of the state-wide popular vote.

Maine’s Democratic House Majority Leader Maureen Terry issued a statement in April indicating that if Nebraska were to change its Electoral College rules, she would “be compelled to act in order to restore fairness.”

In 2020, Maine delivered one electoral vote to Trump and the other three to Joe Biden. If Maine changed its Electoral College rules and votes similarly to how it did four years ago, all four Electoral College votes would be delivered to Harris, giving her back the one vote she may have lost in Nebraska.

However, there’s one major problem: It may be too late for Maine to change its rules, according to Politico.

In Maine, a bill becomes law 90 days after it’s passed. Only 46 days remain until polls open in November, and only 87 days until electoral votes will be cast.

A bill can be made into law immediately if it receives a two-thirds vote in each chamber. While the Democrats have majorities in both houses, they don’t have the kind of numbers to ensure supermajority support.

We’re 46 days away from November 5, and 87 days from December 16, when electoral votes are set to be cast.

If Nebraska is able to change but Maine is not, it’s possible that Harris will lose out on one electoral vote, which, according to one projection, means that she will need to do more than win the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to have a shot at 270—she’ll need to win at least one other swing state too.

While Harris is polling competitively in North Carolina and Georgia, Nebraska Republicans’ plot to change the state’s Electoral College rules makes these battleground states even more make-or-break for Harris’s campaign.

According to new court filings, Representative Matt Gaetz attended a sex party with a 17-year-old girl.

The court filings contain sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies that the party was held at the Florida home of lobbyist Chris Dorworth, who is also a friend of Gaetz, NOTUS reported Friday. The filings were part of a civil lawsuit brought by Dorworth in 2023. Dorworth ultimately dropped the lawsuit, but Dorworth’s attorneys filed the documents in federal court to try and recoup legal fees.

One of the witnesses said in a sworn affidavit that the teenager, who was a junior in high school at the time, was naked; people attending the party engaged in “sexual activities”; and partygoers consumed alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. Testimony from the witness and two other women, one of whom was Gaetz’s then girlfriend, all placed the congressman at the party. A digital forensic examiner also confirmed activity from Gaetz’s cell phone at Dorworth’s house.

This is the first time that “sworn testimony has been referenced in public court filings alleging that the congressman attended one of the long-rumored parties tied to an alleged underage sex scandal,” according to NOTUS. Previous details regarding Gaetz’s involvement, such as reported Venmo transactions of Gaetz allegedly paying his friend Joel Greenberg to arrange sex with young women, have not been made public. Greenberg was convicted of several charges, including fraud and sex trafficking, in 2021, and is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Gaetz is currently facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged activities, and a woman has already come forward alleging that he paid her for sex. A previous Justice Department investigation resulted in Gaetz escaping federal charges, although Greenberg was convicted after a plea deal.

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s latest campaign scandal may seriously scare Donald Trump, but not because of what Robinson allegedly did. It’s because the former president is already struggling to defend the Southern state from Kamala Harris.

In an exclusive interview with MeidasTouch, Democratic analyst Simon Rosenberg offered his read of the situation unfolding in the Tar Heel State.

“In 2022, the Republicans flooded the battleground states with polling that was three to four points more Republican than the independent polls, and they pushed the averages, you know, into making the election look much more Republican,” Rosenberg said, noting that these inflated numbers were at the “core of the false red wave.”

Rosenberg said that in the last week, the same pollsters had become focused on the Tar Heel State.

“In the last week, we’ve seen five polls drop in North Carolina,” Rosenberg said. “They’re clearly worried about North Carolina. Something’s happening there. Because the five independent polls that we’ve had in the last two weeks have Harris either tied or ahead in North Carolina, in every one of the polls. In the five Republican polls, Trump is ahead.”

TrendingPolitics and the Trafalgar Group, two Republican-funded polling groups, released polls this week that found Trump in the lead by two points in North Carolina. A survey by American Greatness, a conservative news organization, found that Trump had a three-point lead there.

Meanwhile, a Morning Consult poll found Harris up by two points in North Carolina, and an Emerson College poll found that Harris was polling even with Trump.

“If you read it backwards, it means they’re very worried about what’s happening there,” Rosenberg said, noting that North Carolina was one of the “bright spots” for Democrats.

All of this Republican scrambling is thrown into sharp relief by Thursday’s bombshell report revealing that Robinson, a Trump ally, had allegedly written on a pornography website’s message board about wanting to own slaves, peeping in women’s locker rooms, and enjoying transgender porn.

North Carolina is a particularly crucial battleground state in the upcoming election. If Harris is unable to win Pennsylvania, then she must secure both North Carolina and Georgia for a chance at 270 electoral college votes.

Last week, the Republican National Committee and North Carolina’s Republican Party sued the state’s Board of Elections to limit acceptable forms of voter identification. In North Carolina, in-person early voting begins October 17.

Donald Trump made antisemitic remarks at an event about combating antisemitism.

During an appearance Thursday at the Israeli American Council’s national conference, the theme of which is “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America,” Trump said that Jewish voters would be to blame if he didn’t win the presidential election.

“If I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40 percent that means 60 percent of the people are voting for the enemy,” Trump said, “Israel will cease to exist in two years.”

The former president repeated his threat and claimed that Jewish voters supporting Harris were responsible for putting their safety at risk.

“I will put it to you very simply, and gently. I really haven’t been treated right, but you haven’t been treated right, because you’ve been putting yourself in great danger,” said Trump.

The former president said that if he doesn’t win the election, “in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss. If I’m at 40 percent. Think of it. That means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

In addition to positioning Jewish voters as a scapegoat for a potential loss, the former president used some of his stage time to scold Jewish voters for not supporting him in the past.

“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “But I understood that. That was in 2016. And you know, one of those things, I thought I’d do much better. I happen to have a Jewish daughter, I have a Jewish son-in-law. I have three Jewish grandchildren. I thought I’d do much better.”

The Republican nominee also repeated his insanely offensive line that “any Jewish person who votes for [Harris] should have their head examined.”

Jewish voters’ skepticism of Trump is understandable, though, considering he associates with self-proclaimed “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson and known Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.

As an equal opportunity offender, Trump made some wildly Islamophobic and xenophobic remarks too. He repeated his well-worn racist quip calling Senator Chuck Schumer a Palestinian. “What the hell happened to him? I saw him the other day, he was dressed in one of their robes,” Trump joked. “No! That’ll be next.”

Trump also said that if elected, he planned to deport “foreign jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters,” and pledged not to take any refugees from “terror-infested” Gaza. The former president also promised to bring back his administration’s travel ban, which prevented people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

The presidential election is less than two months away, and just like in 2020, the postal system may play a pivotal role in determining the outcome.

An NBC News investigation published Thursday found that the slowest mail in the country is in battleground states, many of which have strict deadlines on when ballots can be counted. “It’s a disgrace,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told NBC, referencing recent mail delivery issues with the United States Postal Service. “They need to understand the importance [of election mail], and they need to make no more excuses.”

Georgia, a state that Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, has the worst mail delivery rate in the United States, with only 66 percent of local first-class letters since July being delivered within two days. Less than 40 percent of election mail was delivered on time last spring, according to NBC, with more than 3 percent of all mailed-in votes in the primary elections last year being rejected for arriving late. In 2020, only 0.23 percent of ballots were rejected for being late.

State and local officials from more than 20 states on Wednesday warned that mail delays could result in many votes failing to reach election offices in time to be counted, and urged swift action. In a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the officials said that mail sent to voters is being marked as undeliverable at above-normal rates. 

“State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS,” the letter states. “We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

In April, DeJoy promised senators to “fix” Georgia’s problems “within 60 days,” but Georgia’s mail performance is still poor five months later. On Monday, DeJoy claimed that the Postal Service was prepared for the coming election, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump Monday night from threatening to sue the USPS in an attempt to discredit mail-in voting. 

DeJoy has faced criticism and calls to step down since 2020, after he instituted so-called reforms that he claimed were meant to modernize the postal system but ended up slowing down mail delivery. Critics believe DeJoy is deliberately undermining the Postal Service to push a privatization agenda and have been urging Biden to fire him for years. (This would be difficult to do, but it is not, as some claim, impossible.) In any case, DeJoy’s  lack of action has led to mail remaining slower than ever and even getting worse.  

In August, Biden nominated former Representative Val Demings and business executive William Zollars to fill two vacant slots on the USPS Board of Governors, which would give the board a Democratic majority and the ability to fire DeJoy. But those appointments, along with the appointment of former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh in March, have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.  

The New Republic’s Alex Pareene argued in 2021 that Biden could break with norms and bypass the Board of Governors to fire DeJoy, but the president has not done so. Now the president’s lack of action could cause chaos in the coming presidential election.