Harris and Walz' Support Is All Smoke and Mirrors

posted by Dustin Grage at Townhall 

We keep hearing about this supposed broad coalition of support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but there’s one glaring problem: it’s all fake.

Since President Trump was dodging bullets in Butler, Pennsylvania, Democrats have been scrambling to sideline Joe Biden and artificially prop up the most astroturfed ticket in modern U.S. history in Harris-Walz. They’ve pulled out all the stops—from rigging debates to avoiding tough interviews—all to dodge accountability for the disasters of the Biden-Harris administration.

In the past week alone, Harris, Walz, and the legacy media have been flaunting endorsements from local Teamsters in nearly every major swing state. Yet, for the first time since Ronald Reagan, the national Teamsters organization has refused to endorse the Democratic ticket.

Why? Because internal Teamsters polling shows President Trump as the clear choice among working-class members by a 2:1 margin. Data reveals that Trump is leading by a staggering 32 points among Teamsters in Walz’s own state of Minnesota!

This is just one of many examples where the Harris-Walz ticket is propped up by a facade of faux support that doesn’t exist. But what else would you expect from a campaign featuring Stolen Valor Tim Walz? Everything they’ve done so far has either been exaggerated or outright fabricated.

Despite overwhelming grassroots support for Trump, it’s still difficult for partisan union bosses to break from over 30 years of political loyalty to the Democrats. So, it’s not surprising that they hesitate to publicly back Trump. But what happens when Democrats don’t even have a leg to stand on with key groups like law enforcement? They will just fabricate endorsements out of thin air and hope no one notices.

Well, we noticed.

Take, for instance, the latest “stunning endorsement” from a group “that normally backs Trump,” Police Leaders for Community Safety. The problem? This group was established only three months ago, in June 2024, and longtime partisan Democrats run it with zero connection to law enforcement. Yikes!

None of this should come as a surprise. Kamala Harris openly supported defunding the police after fundraising for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed out violent protesters during the Minneapolis riots—right here in Tim Walz’s backyard.

All the while, Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for four consecutive nights as radical BLM and Antifa protesters set the city ablaze. His wife, Gwen, even opened the windows to take in the aroma of burning tires and memorialize the moment. Dare I say it: WEIRD!

It should be no shock that Democrats have lost the support of law enforcement with a ticket like this. But their desperate attempts to fake support only highlight how far they’ll go to project an illusion of broad backing.

It’s no secret that Trump’s personality doesn’t sit well with traditional voters. There’s a perception that he’s unpopular with them. It’s why we’ve seen groups like The Lincoln Project or, more recently, Republicans for Harris.

The only problem? This “movement” is yet another overblown grift.

Recently, a whopping total of 27 “Republicans for Harris” showed up for an event hosted by former Congressman Joe Walsh. Meanwhile, this group is funded by far-left donors to create the illusion of a divided Republican Party when, in reality, the opposite is true.

In Walz’s home state of Minnesota, the Star Tribune, of all news outlets, released a poll showing that more Democrats are crossing over to support Trump and Vance than Republicans are backing Harris and Walz. This is the same paper whose CEO used to work on Walz’s congressional campaign and in his administration as governor.

Not even CNN can spin the fact that while some voters view Trump unfavorably, they still see his presidency as a success—while the Biden-Harris administration is widely regarded as a complete failure.

Rising inflation, unrest in the Middle East, and a border crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen are all proof of that.

I'm sorry, Gwen Walz, but Americans are ready to turn the page on this administration and return to stronger, safer, and more prosperous times under conservative leadership. However, Republicans must not underestimate the lengths to which Democrats will go to create false perceptions—because in politics, perception is reality.

While the elites spin their narratives and paint these false images, everyday Americans need to ask themselves a simple question:

Was your life better under President Trump, or is it better under the abject failures of the Biden-Harris administration?

It’s really that simple.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- Sept 26

 

The Harris Campaign Is Straight-Up Delusional

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

You have to wonder what world the puppet masters controlling Kamala Harris live in. It’s not our world. It’s not the universe of normal people. Maybe it’s because her handlers are robots stamped out of the commie college conformity factories. Maybe they are just stupid. Maybe they are insane. Regardless, you have to wonder just what the hell they are thinking when they try to appeal to regular voters.

Campaigns regularly trumpet their endorsements, with Democrats getting particularly excited about the ones from various unions. That went south for Kamala not long ago when a poll of Teamster members showed that she came in third in the preference race among the working-class guys who drive things for a living, right behind Trump and herpes.

The Hoffa union’s leadership, which had regularly endorsed Dems over the last few decades, decided not to make any national endorsement. That was pretty bad, but fear not. Through its internet minions, the Harris campaign proudly announced that it had obtained the coveted endorsement of the IRS workers’ union. Yeah, they bragged about it. How does someone convince him, her, or xirself that the American people will be eager to throw their support to the candidate that the IRS likes best? What’s next – a breathless press release about how she’s the pick of the Amalgamated International Brotherhood of Professional Registered Sex Offenders?

And speaking of Diddy and Co., are her celebrity endorsements really helping? I suppose there’s a certain demographic that loves the music of Taylor Swift for some reason, but are they really going to vote based on the gut instincts of a woman whose entire oeuvre is about her bad choices in men? If she doesn’t drool over Trump and JD, isn’t it kind of a validation? 

Then there was Oprah the other day, spoon-feeding Kamala the opportunity to offer her prepackaged, awkward non-answers in a pseudo-interview setting. Is Oprah still a thing? I don’t know. I do know that a man who isn’t pretending to identify as a man watching that festival of estrogen and condescension is going to run to vote for The Donald. Julia Roberts offered her insights, and so did Meryl Streep, and there’s nothing men like better than being instructed by Hollywood crones. And I’m not convinced women dig this stuff either. They come home from the Safeway bankrupt, turn on the tube, and then watch a bunch of rich ladies dressed in clothes worth more than their cars lecture them on joy, vibes, and how only Kamala Harris will protect their sacred ability to kill babies.

There’s also the serious policy stuff. Did you know several hundred Republicans, in the sense that they were allegedly once Republicans at about the time that the aforementioned Taylor Swift was a fetus, have endorsed Kamala? Yippee. The most famous ones are the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Doom of formerly important Republicans, Liz Cheney and her useless father. They never met a war they didn’t like your kids to go fight for them. Kamala is very excited to have them on her side now. Kind of makes you wonder what war they have in mind for her first term. The only thing we know for sure is that no Cheney will be fighting in them.

There were other less prominent endorsers, including some literal interns from the Reagan administration. Gee, I was a congressional intern in 1986 and I’m offended no one asked me to sign on to this auspicious list. I could have had my name there between Melvin Sadsack, the Deputy Assistant for Legume Initiatives in the Bush 1.0 Department of Agriculture, and Daryl Schnarf, Alternate Board Member of the President’s Council for Metric System Implementation under Jerry Ford. Those dudes are total legends of conservatism, according to people who read stuff by David French unironically.

Trumpeting this dismal crew of washed-up nobodies is obviously a play for the normie Republicans, but here’s the thing – all the normie Republicans who this nonsense might appeal to have been Democrats since they decided that a GOP that would nominate Mitt Romney was just too edgy for their fussy, feminine tastes.

The latest Harris campaign play was another slate of faceless endorsements, this time from “national security professionals” who consider Donald Trump a terrible danger to America’s standing in the world. These were, of course, the very half-wits who are responsible for the sorry state of America’s standing in the world. These are the guys who forgot to order enough oilers for the Navy; the captain these same dorks selected for command ran it aground, effectively neutering a carrier task force. In contrast, Israel, whose national security establishment is both serious and competent, just gave thousands of Hezbollah scumbags a faster, messier version of the gender reassignment surgery Kamala wants for illegal aliens.

These losers would not know Clausewitz from Santa Claus; for them, war is just domestic American politics by other means. Guess that explains why they don’t seem very interested in actually winning them. They are all unimpressive timeservers. Nine of them are such foreign policy geniuses that they signed the infamous “Hunter’s laptop is a Putin plot” letter, meaning they were fooled by Putin when he was not even trying to fool them.

Others are generals and admirals, as if this is going to sway the veteran vote. It’s that same certainty that they can trick the ex-military rubes by throwing Tim Walz out there because he was a commander general corporal or something in the Army. Of course, no one knows better than us vets just how transcendently incompetent and corrupt so many of the Washington generals are. The Venn Diagram of these Pentagon princes and the boards of Boeing and Raytheon are pretty much a circle. They have not unequivocally won a major war in 30 years, and now we are supposed to be awestruck that they have bestowed their blessing on Madame Brat? That the foreign policy establishment supports you is clear and convincing evidence that you suck. But if you think the last few decades with these bozos in charge have gone swimmingly for America overseas, yeah, definitely take their sage advice and back Kamala.

Talk about tone deaf. Inexplicably, they doubled down by bringing Zelensky over here – in an Air Force jet – to hang out in Pennsylvania and interfere in our election. He had some bad things to say about Trump and Vance in between touring an artillery shell factory and signing some bombs with Governor Josh Shapiro. It’s madness. What the hell was he thinking? This was enough to rile up even the most pro-Ukrainian Republicans. Who was the person who thought the Democrats would be helped by dragging in some Slavic potentate to lecture Americans on why Trump/Vance are bad for not wanting to give more money and stuff – and maybe our sons and daughters – to a bloody, endless stalemate? Look, I like Ukraine – I trained their troops, and I admire their pluck in fighting back – but when Trump wins and this president-for-life finds out that there’s a new sheriff in town, don’t look at me for help when no one returns Kyiv’s phone calls. Nobody forced you to interfere in our politics and go all in on our opponents, or maybe the Democrats did, but you ended up choosing a side and we won’t forget. And for what? How many Americans who are not already Kamalabots will this visit sway? A fraction of the ones offended and annoyed by Ukraine’s presumption at sticking its nose into our elections – again. As usual, Putin’s best friends are the people who whine loudest about him.

What do all these plays for the votes of normal people by the Democrats have in common? A couple of things. There is the utter condescension and contempt evident in thinking that we can be dazzled by celebrities and impressed by rosters of Beltway hacks who were barely relevant back when they were relevant at all. But there is also the total disconnect between the Harris team and reality – the Democrats really think this stuff is going to work. They believe these are what will motivate Americans in this election. Not the economy. Not making America strong again. Not dog-dining Third World peasant invasions. Not weird perverts in our daughters’ locker rooms. This junk. They really don’t know us at all, and that could bite them hard at the ballot box.

Washington’s Ukraine Obsession is Going to Get Us All Killed!

Washington’s Ukraine Obsession is Going to Get Us All Killed!

Ron Paul for mises.org

Last week the world narrowly escaped likely nuclear destruction, as the Biden Administration considered Ukraine’s request to allow US missiles to strike deeply into Russian territory. Russian president Vladimir Putin warned, as the request was being considered, that because these missiles could not be launched without the active participation of the US military and NATO, Russia would consider itself in a state of war with both NATO and the US should they be launched. It was a Cuban Missile Crisis on a massive scale.

Thankfully, permission was reportedly not granted by Washington to hit deep inside Russia, but as we have seen throughout this war, a weapons system is often first denied and then eventually granted to Washington’s proxies in Kiev. We should not rest easy even if nuclear war has been temporarily averted.

Would missile strikes deep inside Russia win the war for Ukraine? Not even the Pentagon thinks so. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin himself said earlier this month that granting Ukraine permission to launch missiles into Russia would not be a “game-changer” in the two and a half year war.

Risking nuclear destruction for no tangible purpose? Have these people gone insane?

Even the “game-changers” have changed little in this war. How many times has the pro-war mainstream media told us a weapons system would be a “game-changer” for Ukraine? Remember Javelin missiles? Leopard tanks? HIMARS? And as each one of them fails to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor, the neocons and their friends in the media only demand more.

The fact is that Russia is winning the war despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the best weapons systems from the US and NATO countries. Each new shipment of increasingly sophisticated weapons does not produce battlefield victories for Ukraine. It only produces more dead Ukrainian soldiers and more profits for the weapons manufacturers.

Even the mainstream media – which has solidly supported the Ukraine war – has begun to report on Ukraine’s huge losses and hopeless situation. Yet as more and more start to wake up about the disastrous proxy war, Washington only knows one direction when it comes to war: forward. Just over a week ago the Pentagon announced another $250 million arms package for Ukraine. Nobody believes that is going to reverse the steady gains made by Russia on the battlefield, but it will generate more profits for the US arms manufacturers who are the real force behind our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

The unlikely duo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump, Jr., said it best in a recent editorial in The Hill: “We cannot get any closer to the brink than this. And for what? To ‘weaken Russia’? To control Ukraine’s minerals? No vital American interest is at stake. To risk nuclear conflict for the sake of the neoconservative fantasy of global ‘full-spectrum dominance’ is madness.”

They are right, it is madness to risk the future of our country and our children and grandchildren for wars that have nothing to do with us and serve no national interest of the United States. This is certainly true for the Ukraine war, and it is also true for the wars the US is supporting in the Middle East. When will the madness end? When the people speak up and demand a change.

John A. Macdonald saved more Indigenous lives than ANY other Prime Minister

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

What Did Kamala Do With a $42 Billion Project? Well...

 During an interview with MSNBC Wednesday night, Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris promised to build three million homes should be elected president in November. She also made the claim during an economic speech Wednesday. 

But Harris' record shows she isn't capable of building anything and it's been costing Americans billions of dollars. 

First, Harris was the tie breaking vote for the "Inflation Reduction Act," which even President Joe Biden admits was a massive handout to the global warming lobby with expensive subsidies and tax breaks. She also advocated for Biden's infrastructure bill, which included $8 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charges across the country by 2030. 

So far, they've built 8, costing the American taxpayer $1 billion per charger completed.

Next, Harris was put in charge of the Biden-Harris administration's $42 billion promise to bring broadband internet to every American. After a year, not a single American has been connected.  

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr testified on Capitol Hill about the boondoggle earlier this week. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2024/09/26/we-should-be-talking-more-about-kamalas-internet-boondoggle-n2645143

October/September Surprises!

 Former October surprises—both the embarrassing disclosures and the use of incumbency to warp the election—are now becoming earlier and more frequent preemptive “September” shocks.

An October surprise is usually defined as the well-known (and more often left-wing) tactic of manufacturing or unloading a news story right before voting to surprise a rival without allowing them time sufficiently to respond or recover.

Think of the last-minute bombshell disclosure, five days before the 2000 election, that candidate George W. Bush had been cited for drunk driving over a quarter-century earlier. That surprise may have cost Bush the popular vote that year.

Sometimes, an incumbent can use his powers of office to warp the election. Joe Biden benefited before the 2022 midterm elections when leftist activists leaked the impending Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Closer to the actual voting, Biden sought to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt owed to the federal government. He also began draining the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices (as he is doing again this election year as well). No wonder the predicted Republican midterm red wave ended up a tiny ripple.

More often, October surprises are more ad hominem and unleashed on a rival candidate’s supposedly previously undisclosed failings.

At the end of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s team leaked news of her purchased bogus “Steele Dossier” as supposed proof of Trump-Russian “collusion.”

On the eve of the last 2020 presidential debate, Joe Biden delegated now Secretary of State Antony Blinken to work with former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell to round up “51 former intelligence authorities.” They were to lie that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was likely a product of a Russian intelligence “disinformation” operation.

The ruse worked—turning potential proof of Biden family corruption into a replay of the fake 2016 Trump-Russian collusion hoax.

This time around, apparently the Harris campaign could not wait until October or early November to spring their surprises.

Perhaps the Harris campaign’s impatience is due to Democratically-inspired radical changes to state voting laws.

Remember that in 2020, under the cover of COVID, Democrat legal teams got state laws altered to institutionalize early and mail-in voting in key states. Those changes reduced our once iconic Election Day into a mere construct when only 30 percent of voters cast their ballots.

So, former October surprises—both the embarrassing disclosures and the use of incumbency to warp the election—are now becoming earlier and more frequent preemptive “September” shocks.

Suddenly, the Federal Reserve Bank, just 50 days before the election, decided that interest rates that spiraled under Biden-Harris in reaction to their hyperinflation right now need to be slashed—as supposed proof that the Biden-Harris inflation is now over and the economy needs a sudden revving up.

Just as abruptly, on September 23, just 43 days before Election Day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was flown by the Biden-Harris administration—at U.S. government expense—into the United States.

More amazingly, Zelensky landed first in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, where most observers believe the currently deadlocked election will be decided.

No surprise, Zelensky immediately toured a Pennsylvania munitions plant making artillery shells likely destined for his Ukraine—at a time when the state’s voters are concerned about job losses.

The Harris-Biden administration was sending the not-so-subtle message that providing billions of dollars in arms to Zelensky’s Ukraine translates into jobs for voting Pennsylvanians.

But that was not all to this crass September surprise.

In an interview with the left-wing pro-Biden-Harris New Yorker magazine, Zelensky plunged right into the current neck-and-neck presidential race. He trashed Harris’s rival Donald Trump as someone who “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”

Not satisfied with that putdown, the Ukrainian president hit even harder Trump’s running mate and vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, as “dangerous” and “too radical.”

The left still talks nonstop about nonexistent 2016 Trump-Russia “collusion” and equally bogus 2020 Trump-Russian “disinformation.”

Yet it would be hard to define any clearer “election interference” than the current Zelensky surprise.

After all, has any vice president incumbent running for president ever flown in a foreign leader on a U.S. military jet to the one key U.S. state that will likely decide the impending election?

And furthermore, has any paraded him around that state’s weapons export plant while he trashed current Vice President Harris’s two opponents with invectives like “dangerous” and “radical?”

And why else was Zelensky’s Pennsylvania trip arranged by the Biden-Harris administration but to coincide with the traditional dates that mail-in and early-voting balloting start?

Yet were the Zelensky sudden Pennsylvania drop-in and his crude domestic politicking and trashing of Trump and Vance all that wise?

After all, Harris’s opponent Donald Trump had just escaped an assassination attempt from a pro-Ukrainian gunman—furious over Trump’s purported preference for a negotiated settlement to the 30-month-long, one-million-casualties war?

Add it all up, and sometimes September surprises backfire—when they appear to voters as crude and insulting rather than just conniving.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/26/october-september-surprises/

Here’s How The Media Are Lying Right Now: CNN’s Reliable Propaganda Edition

CNN’s Brian Stelter self-identifies as a reporter, but all he does is lie on behalf of the media, Kamala Harris, and the Democrat Party.

Eddie Scarry reporting for The Federalist 

On any given day, CNN’s recently rehired propagandist Brian Stelter is gurgling lies to denigrate innocent people or otherwise deceive the public on behalf of Democrats in Washington. But one of his “Reliable Sources” daily newsletters this week was a dirty dump in its own league.

Here are three fat Stelter lies and deceptions from the Wednesday edition of his propaganda tip sheet.

MSNBC’s Squintiest Anchor to Interview Kamala Harris

Without a flicker or irony, Stelter noted in the top half of the letter that the vice president would be doing her first one-on-one national TV interview with a woman who literally just said there’s really no need for one. “This morning,” wrote Stelter, “MSNBC announced that 11pm host and NBC senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle is sitting down with Harris in Pittsburgh, where the VP is holding an economy-focused campaign event.” At no point did Stelter acknowledge that just five days ago, Ruhle publicly dismissed the idea that there is any urgent need for Kamala, who is running for president of the United States, to subject herself to voter scrutiny through interviews.

New York Times writer Bret Stephens proposed on HBO’s “Real Time” Friday that voters aren’t nearly informed enough on Kamala’s policy positions, to which Ruhle sniffed, “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she’s running against Trump … and the kind of threat he is to democracy.” She further said that voters expecting to see Kamala answer questions would only be appropriate “when you move to Nirvana.”

In short, to conduct her first national one-on-one interview, barely a month before Election Day, Kamala has chosen a woman who said there’s no real need for one. That is, by definition, a media controversy, and Brian Stelter deliberately made no mention of it. He’s untrustworthy, as always.

Scrutinizing Glaring Issues With Kamala’s Fake Biography

Midway through his propaganda tip sheet, Stelter recalled a CNN TV segment from the previous evening in which he and a colleague, angry notecard reader Kaitlan Collins, scoffed at the idea that anyone might have questions about a story Kamala has made a key part of her biography — the claim she worked at McDonald’s, which isn’t backed up by any documented evidence. “Why is Trump fixated on Harris’s old McDonald’s job,” wrote Stelter, “and insistent that she never really worked there at all?” In the televised segment, he said it was “bewildering” that there’s legitimate doubt about a Harris assertion that is unsupported by evidence. The pair then took turns calling it an “obsession” and “fixation” by Trump, who has mocked the unsubstantiated McDonald’s story at his campaign rallies.

To recap, Stelter sees nothing remarkable about Kamala doing an interview with someone who has said an interview is of no consequence to voters, and he finds it ridiculous to fact-check a story Kamala has repeatedly told to make her alien self seem relatable and humble. Stelter sat there on set with a McDonald’s Happy Meal and a giant soda to further belittle the notion of vetting Kamala’s origin story.

Scrutiny of Kamala’s McDonald’s tale in fact started at The Washington Free Beacon, which last month deeply investigated the subject and found no record or corroboration that Kamala ever worked at the restaurant. Recall that Stelter is a self-identified media reporter.

Stelter Repeats the Media’s “Crime in Decline” Lie

Linking to a report by one of his colleagues, Stelter wrote that it’s “almost entirely ignored by the right-wing media” that new U.S. government data “showed the steepest annual decline in murders in decades.” The CNN.com article was headlined “Did you know violent crime is down? Not if you’re watching right-wing media.” This is the same deceit the national news media have been propagating for months — specifying “violent crime” rather than crime crime.

Violent crime includes assault, rape, homicide, and armed robbery. What that doesn’t include is a lot of other troublesome crimes: carjackings, looting, and theft. The “right-wing media” never said that the problem under the Kamala-Biden administration is exclusive to “violent crime.”

Yes, violent crime sharply increased under Kamala’s leadership, and it has since declined. But all the other aforementioned crime rates remain higher than they were in 2019, the year before Democrats and the media hyped up lockdowns and fanned violent BLM riots across the nation. Some of it remains higher than when Donald Trump left office.

When voters said they were concerned with “crime,” they were talking just as much about the endless internet videos of looting permitted by Democrats as they were about random assaults, also permitted by Democrats. The media, including Stelter, distinguish between the two for the purpose of once again gaslighting voters.

Stelter is a liar.

This Case Could Make Elections Actually End On Election Day

 ‘If the Supreme Court then upheld the 5th Circuit, that decision would wipe out all state statutes that allow absentee ballots received after Election Day to be counted.’

During the 2020 pandemic, Mississippi extended the deadline for mail-in ballots, allowing ballots to be received and counted five business days after the election so long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day. This extension was later codified into law. But a challenge to the law has made its way to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that has the potential to ensure that elections end on Election Day.

In January, the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a suit challenging the law in conjunction with the Mississippi Republican Party, James Perry, and Matthew Lamb. The Libertarian Party filed a similar suit in February that was later consolidated with the GOP-led suit. The suit argues, in part, that the state law violates federal statute.

A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Tuesday.

Mississippi’s Extension Violates Federal Law, Suit Says

The RNC suit argues that Congress “established a uniform, national day to elect members of Congress and to appoint presidential electors” but that “Mississippi contravenes those federal laws by counting mail-in ballots that are received up to five business days after Election Day.”

“Mississippi effectively extends Mississippi’s federal election past the Election Day established by Congress,” the suit contends. The suit further alleges that the deadline extension for mail-in ballots harms the plaintiffs because the “ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats.”

The suit lists Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and several Harrison County Election officials as the defendants.

A federal district court judge upheld the law in July, ruling the extension deadline is compliant with federal law.

“According to Foster, Congress set a national Election Day to avoid the ‘evils’ of burdening citizens with multiple election days and of risking undue influence upon voters in one state from the announced tallies in states voting earlier,” Judge Louis Guirola Jr. wrote in his July ruling. “Neither of those concerns is raised by allowing a reasonable interval for ballots cast and postmarked by Election Day to arrive by mail.”

The plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court.

Fifth Circuit Hears Oral Arguments

Fifth Circuit Court Judges James Ho, Stuart Kyle Duncan, and Andrew Oldham heard oral arguments Tuesday, grilling both the plaintiffs and defendants

“The meaning of Election Day is not up to the subjective views of each state,” RNC lawyer Conor Woodfin said. “Instead, text and history tell us what those words mean, and historical practice is especially important when applying words like ‘election’ that are rich with historical meaning.”

“For decades after Congress established the uniform national Election Day, those words meant the day that ballots are received by election officials. That remains the public meaning today,” Woodfin argued.

Oldham interjected to ask Woodfin to explain what he would “do with early voting.” Woodfin defended the practice, arguing that early voting has a “long historical” precedent and that under Foster, the meaning of “election” is “the final selection of officers.”

“So voters relinquishing those ballots or casting those ballots before Election Day doesn’t present that same problem,” Woodfin argued.

T. Russell Nobile, counsel for Judicial Watch on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, argued that Election Day occurs when election officials receive the final ballot for the election.

Scott Stewart, representing the Mississippi Secretary of State, asserted that the plaintiffs failed to provide a “single definition that mentions ballot receipt” to support their argument that “ballot receipt is the definitive Election Day act.”

“[Plaintiffs] basic problem is this: the plaintiffs never point to anything to show that the federal Election Day statutes actually barred post-election day receipt.”

Christopher Dodge, on behalf of the intervenors, echoed Stewart’s argument, saying that during the Second World War, Congress said service members serving overseas must return their ballot by Election Day, but, according to Dodge, “in the very same statute, with full knowledge that at that time eight or nine states had these post-election day receipt deadlines, Congress said that service members could still vote ‘in accordance with the law of their state,’ meaning with the benefit of these enlarged time periods for receipt.”

Oldham interjected to express concern with Dodge’s argument: “I don’t understand how it really helps you. Why isn’t the negative implication — which is powerfully undermining of your point — I mean, the fact that Congress saw a need to go out and embrace this textually for service members voting under different statutes would seem to suggest that they did not do the same for just general absentee ballots.”

Dodge disagreed but was later pressed by another judge on the panel about the issue.

What Happens Next?

The plaintiffs are requesting that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reverse Guirola’s decision and remand the case back to the lower court for judgment.

Hans von Spakovsky, the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, explained to The Federalist what could happen next.

“If the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overrules the decision of the lower federal district court judge and holds that counting ballots received after Election Day violates the federal statute setting the national day for federal elections as the ‘Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,’ then the case would be sent back down to the lower court for that court to determine what the remedy should be,” von Spakovsky said. “However, it would not go back down to the lower court from the 5th Circuit if that decision by the appeals court is appealed by the state of Mississippi to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court accepts the appeal.”

“If the Supreme Court then upheld the 5th Circuit, that decision would wipe out all state statutes that allow absentee ballots received after Election Day to be counted,” von Spakovsky continued. “If the 5th Circuit’s decision is not appealed or the Supreme Court does not accept an appeal, then the 5th Circuit’s opinion would only affect states over which it has jurisdiction. The 5th Circuit covers Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.”

Notably, several states changed their rules in 2020 to permit late ballots (that in some cases lacked a postmark) to be counted as valid so long as they arrived within an allotted time frame. Those rules remain in effect in numerous states ahead of the 2024 election.

Nevada, for example, accepted mail-in ballots up to four days after Election Day in 2020 so long as they were postmarked by Election Day. The temporary statute was later codified into law. The RNC filed a suit arguing that accepting mail-in ballots four days after Election Day is unconstitutional. But a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the suit on standing, ruling the RNC did not prove the extended deadline created a disadvantage.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania recently ruled that state law “requiring election officials to reject improperly dated or undated mail-in ballots” is “unconstitutional.”