Trump’s ground game relies on untraditional strategies to draw out battleground voters
CNN
Targeting irregular voters, teaching supporters to surveil polling places and bombarding states with voting-related lawsuits – this is the machine the Trump campaign has built for an election that many expect to hinge on just tens of thousands of ballots cast across seven battleground states.
When absentee ballots first landed on doorsteps in Michigan last month, so did Paul Hudson, a Grand Rapids lawyer and a Republican running to represent the area in Congress. Armed with an app that told him where likely voters lived and which houses might be swayed, he spent that morning walking a densely populated purple community where single-story ranches with Trump flags neighbor homes with “Harris Walz” signs on their lush, well-manicured lawns. It’s a conventional strategy to compete in close races, one battle-tested by campaigns big and small every election. And it’s a playbook that former President Donald Trump’s campaign has tossed aside. Targeting irregular voters, teaching supporters to surveil polling places and bombarding states with voting-related lawsuits – this is the machine the Trump campaign has built for an election that many expect to hinge on just tens of thousands of ballots cast across seven battleground states. It’s a gamble, Trump’s campaign internally acknowledges, but one that they insist is built on data they have collected over nearly a decade and tested for the past six months. That, and tens of millions of dollars injected lately by a super PAC aligned with tech billionaire Elon Musk, one of Trump’s most vocal and influential supporters. The campaign’s untraditional strategy was on display when conservative commentator Tucker Carlson came to Grand Rapids last month. He urged his audience to download an app – 10xVotes – that promises to help them find the non-voting conservatives among their family and friends. Days later, the Michigan state party chairman also plugged 10xVotes when he rolled into Traverse City, Michigan, alongside Trump running mate JD Vance. Elsewhere in the state, the Trump campaign is holding “election integrity” training, teaching conservatives to be poll watchers, including in areas where Republicans normally win by wide margins. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and Republican Party are suing the state of Michigan to keep local Veteran Affairs offices and other federal outposts from offering voter registration.
One month until voters head to the polls, the Justice Department is caught in a thorny intersection of election-year politics and continuing the work of the nation’s top law enforcement agency – trying to maintain its reputation for impartiality while also continuing to pursue the prosecution of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
Georgia prosecutors urge Supreme Court to keep Mark Meadows’ election subversion case in state court
State prosecutors in Georgia who are pursuing election subversion charges against former President Donald Trump urged the US Supreme Court on Thursday to allow their case against his former chief of staff Mark Meadows to continue in state court.
Former House GOP conference chair Liz Cheney and former Trump White House aides Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews will make the case against the reelection of former President Donald Trump in a fireside chat in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 9, CNN has exclusively learned.
Former first lady Melania Trump said in a new video posted Thursday that she believed there was “no room for compromise” when it comes to a woman’s “individual freedom,” after The Guardian reported excerpts from her forthcoming book in which she says she supports abortion rights “free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”