Republicans make new push for Nebraska to change voting rules to favor Trump – US politics live | US elections 2024

Joe Biden said that the US economy has a ways to go before the toll of inflation is eased, but acknowledged yesterday’s interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve was a milestone in the fight against the price increases that bedeviled his presidency.

“As you all know, inflation was 9.1% in the United States. Today, it’s much closer to 2%. That doesn’t mean our work is done. Far from it, far from it. No one should confuse why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say a job well done. I’m not here to say we don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do. We do have more work to do,” the president said.

He then argued that both consumers and businesses should feel optimistic about the future:

The Fed lowering interest rates isn’t a declaration of victory. It’s a declaration of progress. It’s a signal we’ve entered a new phase of our economy and our recovery. You know, I believe it’s important for the country to recognize this progress, because, if we don’t, the progress we made will remain locked in the fear of negative mindset and dominate our economic outlook since the pandemic began, instead of seeing the immense opportunities in front of us right now.

This is a moment, in my view, for business to feel greater confidence, to invest higher, to expand. It’s a moment for individuals to feel greater confidence, buying a home, a new car, starting a family, starting a new business.

Joe Biden has just taken the stage at the Economic Club of Washington, where he is expected to take credit for declining inflation that spurred the Federal Reserve to yesterday slash interest rates for the first time in four years.

Lowering rates is a sign the powerful central bank believes the pressures that drove up price growth to levels not seen since the 1980s during Biden’s presidency are easing.

We’ll let you know what Biden has to say.

The federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s criminal gun case has agreed to delay the sentencing until 4 December, Reuters is reporting.

A jury convicted Hunter, the son of president Joe Biden, earlier this summer on three felony gun charges he faced related to buying and possessing a handgun while being a drug user.

He was set to be sentenced on 13 November, according to CNN, but Hunter’s attorneys asked the judge to move the sentencing to a later date, in part due to his family members being currently involved with government work, traveling with the current administration and being busy with the 2024 presidential campaign.

The Uncommitted National Movement announced on Thursday that it would not be endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

In a press conference on Thursday, Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted leader and delegate from Michigan, said:

Vice-president Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.

The group said that they also opposed a Donald Trump presidency, and were not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election. They urged uncommitted voters “to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot.”

Rob Rue, the mayor of Springfield, Ohio, issued a proclamation on Thursday, allowing him “temporary emergency powers to mitigate public safety concerns”, in response to recent threats to public safety in the city, according to the Springfield News Sun and other local news outlets.

The proclamation will allow the city to acquire resources quicker, and allow departments to respond more efficiently to potential threats and emerging risks.

Officials said that the proclamation will remain in effect until the city determines risks to public safety have subsided.

“Ensuring the safety of Springfield’s residents is our top priority,” Rue said, according to multiple local news outlets.

He added: “We are addressing these threats with the seriousness they warrant and are taking immediate steps to ensure the security of both our community and our employees. Our commitment to preventing harm is unwavering.”

In the latest setback for the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive the federal student loans of many Americans, a federal judge has extended the block on the administration’s latest loan forgiveness plan, according to CNBC.

US District Judge Randal Hall, who was appointed by former Republican president George W Bush, said in a ruling on Wednesday, per CNBC, that he would maintain the order blocking the administration from cancelling any student debt, for another 14 days while litigation continued.

New polling shows that voters are almost evenly split between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in the three Great Lakes battlegrounds that could determine the outcome of the election. The Washington Post found that the vice-president is tied with Trump in Pennsylvania, though another poll released today by the New York Times and others said Harris had the advantage in that state, but was deadlocked with the former president nationwide. There are signs that Republicans are leaving nothing in this election to chance, with Nebraska’s congressional delegation and Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and Trump ally, pushing for the red state’s governor to put in motion a plan to switch its system for allocating electoral votes to a winner-take-all set-up that will surely benefit Trump. Such calls have been made before, and we’ll see if this latest push makes a difference.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Joe Biden will this afternoon tout his economic record after the Federal Reserve yesterday lowered interest rates for the first time in four years, a sign that inflation is ebbing.

• Is the Secret Service investigating Elon Musk for his post on assassinating Harris and Biden? Perhaps.

• White dudes are reportedly putting down big money to promote Harris in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Earlier today, Marist released polls of the so-called Blue Wall swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that show a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the traditional Democratic bulwarks.

The vice-president saw her best result in Michigan, where Marist found she has a five-percentage-point advantage over Trump, with 52% support to his 47%.

But it was nearly a dead heat between the candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the pollster says. Trump and Harris are tied with 49% support each in the former state, and in the latter, the vice-president is up by only one percentage point over Trump.

After a gunman was found in the woods near where Donald Trump was playing golf on Sunday in what the FBI would later say appears to be another assassination attempt, Elon Musk, the rightwing Tesla CEO, made an inflammatory post on X asking why no one had targeted Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.

Bloomberg News sought records from the Secret Service regarding Musk’s tweet, and if it was being investigated for it. What the outlet received in response isn’t quite definitive, but does indicate that the agency was aware of what he said:

The Secret Service investigates when they’re trying to determine whether a person poses an imminent threat to one of their protectees. Threatening the US president or vice president is a felony that can carry a hefty fine or up to five years in prison.

FOIA Files sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division, Office of Protective Operations and Office of Investigations for documents and emails referencing Musk’s post.

On Wednesday, the agency responded to the requests by saying records it has about Musk’s post were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and are being withheld because “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

We followed up with the Secret Service’s FOIA division and were told that the Protective Intelligence Division advised that it cannot release any records because of “enforcement proceedings.”

The agency “is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk,” said Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service. “As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”

Here’s more on Musk’s unfortunate comment, and the White House’s response:

White Dudes For Harris will spend somewhere around $10m on television ads promoting the vice-president’s candidacy in three battleground states, Politico reports.

Backed by a Pac called Beige Rainbow, the group argues in the ad airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Donald Trump has made white men look bad, and that Kamala Harris’s policies would offer the country a better future:

A previous fundraiser by “white dudes” brought in millions for Harris’s campaign shortly after Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term:

Last week, Nebraska’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, reiterated that he is in favor of switching to a winner-take-all system of allocating its electoral votes, but would only call a special session if he believed the legislature would approve the bill.

“As I have consistently made clear, I strongly support statewide unity and joining 48 other states by awarding all five of our electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of Nebraskans’ votes. As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election. However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all,” Pillen said.

“At this time, I have not yet received the concrete and public indication that 33 senators would vote for WTA. If that changes, I will enthusiastically call a special session.”

One thing Donald Trump’s campaign may want to bear in mind: Democratic lawmakers in Maine, the other state that allocates its electoral votes by congressional district, have raised changing to a winner-take-all system if Nebraska does so, Maine Public reports. Maine is generally a blue state but one of its congressional districts leans Republican, meaning the change would effectively negate Nebraska’s shift, by giving all of Maine’s electoral votes to the Democrats.

The Trump campaign dispatched Lindsey Graham, the US senator representing South Carolina who is a close ally of the former president, to Nebraska earlier this week to encourage Governor Jim Pillen and state lawmakers to change to a winner-take-all system for allocating its electoral votes, NBC News reports.

It’s unclear if Graham’s visit managed to shift the opposition to the switch by some Republican state lawmakers. Pillen has said he will only call the legislature into a special session to make the change if it has the votes to pass.

Here’s more on Graham’s visit, from NBC:

Graham, acting on behalf of the Trump campaign, was working to encourage Pillen to call a special legislative session at which lawmakers could consider changing the state’s apportionment of electoral votes, the source said.

Nebraska allocates its electoral votes by congressional district. The swing district around Omaha often goes to Democrats in an otherwise ruby red state.

Wednesday’s meeting, previously reported by KOLN-TV, took place in Lincoln. Graham’s office confirmed the local report but declined to comment further.

If Nebraska were to switch to a winner-take-all system, it would almost certainly give former President Donald Trump an extra electoral vote in what is expected to be a tight presidential race.

That one electoral vote could prove decisive.

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but loses every other swing state, she and Trump would be tied at 269 Electoral College votes under a winner-take-all setup in Nebraska with Trump winning the state. In that scenario, the race would be thrown to the US House, where each state delegation would get one vote for president. Republicans hold a majority of delegations and are favored to retain it, even though the House majority could change hands after the November election.

The GOP might dominate Nebraska politics, but there has not been enough support among the state’s Republican lawmakers for changing its system of allocating electoral votes in a way that would almost certainly benefit Donald Trump. The guy who is also writing this live blog traveled to Omaha earlier this year (when Joe Biden was still running for re-election) to find out why:

For Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the road to the White House runs through battleground states clustered along the Great Lakes, and in the fast-growing “sun belt” of the south. But if the election turns out to be extremely close, the two candidates’ fortunes may hinge on a few hundred thousand voters clustered in a single congressional district in the middle of the country.

This lesser-known front can be found in Nebraska, one of only two states in the country, along with Maine, that allocate a portion of their electoral votes by congressional district, rather than giving all of them to the winner of the state.

In 2020, Biden became the first Democrat in 12 years to win Nebraska’s second congressional district, which encompasses the largest city, Omaha, and its suburbs. The pressure to win a majority of its voters is expected to be even higher this year, as Biden looks to fend off a resurgent Trump while reassuring Democrats that he can still do the job after his troubling performance in their first debate.

While much of the candidates’ attention is focused on the seven swing states expected to decide the election (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia) the Biden campaign also counts winning the Nebraska district as among its priorities – so much so that some Trump allies are encouraging the state’s Republican lawmakers to change their rules to ensure the former president wins the entirety of its electoral votes.

“I think the district is probably going to get more attention this time than it did even in 2020,” said Ryan Horn, a Republican media strategist who splits his time between Omaha and Washington DC.

Nebraska’s all-Republican congressional delegation has sent a letter to the state’s governor asking him to call the legislature into a special session to change its system for apportioning electoral votes in a way that would almost certainly benefit Donald Trump.

The midwestern state is one of two in the nation, along with Maine, that allocates votes by congressional district. Nebraska is heavily Republican, but the district around its largest city, Omaha, leans Democratic and voted for Joe Biden in 2020. In certain scenarios, the state’s electoral vote could decide the election, and in a letter to the governor, Jim Pillen, and the speaker of the Nebraska legislature, John Arch, both Republicans, the state’s three representatives and two senators call on them to switch to a winner-take-all system for allocating the state’s votes:

Kamala Harris is heading to the battleground state of Michigan today, for an 8pm rally in Farmington Hills, near Detroit.

She’ll then head back to Washington DC, but has campaign events planned for tomorrow in Wisconsin and Georgia.

In addition to his speech marking a turning point in the US economy’s battle with inflation, Joe Biden is speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala at 8.45pm this evening, in Washington DC.