Trump campaign doubles down in final hours of election dash

(WASHINGTON) — A historic election that saw an incumbent president drop his campaign, a woman rise to the top of the Democratic ticket and multiple assassination attempts against the Republican candidate will come to an end on Nov. 5.

But the outcome may not be known on election night.

It took four days for the race to be called for President Joe Biden in 2020 as mail-in voting expansions, and other changes made to help Americans participate during a global pandemic, delayed counting in several key states.

“It can take a few days and sometimes more,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

An especially tight race, as expected this year, can make it even more difficult to call a winner in the hours after polls close, experts told ABC News. Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck-and-neck heading into Election Day.

Each state has its own rules to administer elections, including different ways to process mail ballots and deadlines for curing signatures or other issues, which means some may take longer than others to tabulate results.

538 has compiled a complete guide to poll closing times, vote counting and when to expect results in every state.

“There are a variety of things that have to be done because there are these safeguards in place to try and minimize the possibility of fraud,” said Mitchell Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University. “And so in states that have those rules, it takes a while in order to process all the ballots.”

Trump, in 2020, prematurely declared victory before all votes were counted. Misinformation spread online about the integrity of the election as the country awaited a final result and Trump or his allies later challenged the outcome by baselessly claiming widespread fraud, particularly with mail ballots.

“Not knowing the result on election night is not an indication of election malfeasance ever,” Brown emphasized.

All eyes will be on the seven swing states that will likely determine whether Harris or Trump win the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In two of those states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — mail or absentee ballots cannot even begin to be processed until the morning of Election Day. That includes opening envelopes, verifying voter information and preparing them to be scanned before they can be counted, which can lead to delays.

In 2020, Wisconsin wasn’t called for either candidate until the day after Election Day and Pennsylvania was called the Saturday after Election Day.

In other key battleground states, mail or absentee ballots may be processed but cannot be counted until Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That includes Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.

In Arizona, a state that votes heavily by mail, mail or absentee ballots received before Election Day can be processed and counted upon receipt. But a sizable portion of those ballots get placed in drop boxes on Election Day, and those results may not be collected or counted until polls close, which may hold up a clear result depending on how close the race is.

In Nevada, another state where the presidential race wasn’t called until the Saturday after Election Day in 2020, some changes were made to help speed up vote counting — including allowing mail or absentee ballots to start being counted 15 days before Election Day.

“It’s really a product of the laws and depending where the Electoral College spotlight is in any given year, it can mean a faster count or a slower one,” Burden said.

While news organizations often call a winner based on analysis of the vote count as its reported, results are not official until states certify them. States have their own certification deadlines, some of which extend into December, according to the Election Assistance Commission.

Recounts and legal challenges, especially litigation related to certification, could arise between a race being called by media networks and the results being certified.

On Dec. 17, electors will meet in the states to vote for president and vice president.

Election officials in some key states are already warning that results may not come in on election night, and that it is normal.

“We will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency,” Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson recently said on CBS, estimating her state will be able to have a result by end of day on Nov. 6. “Understanding how much people will want those results, we’re still going to make sure the process is secure and accurate before we put anything out to the public.”

“We want to make sure we have an accurate count, and like we did in 2020, have a free and fair, safe and secure election,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on ABC’s “This Week.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Millions of dollars from Republican groups and figures are being poured into anti-transgender ads criticizing policies that support the trans community, despite these issues being among the least important concerns motivating voters heading into the 2024 election, according to a recent Gallup poll.

LGBTQ advocates fear the intensified campaign will sow fear and hate against a group that makes up less than 1% of the U.S. adult population, per an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — and which already experiences high rates of discrimination and violence.

“After the election, trans Americans will have to deal with the dangerous fallout from the shameful lies and misinformation that far too many political candidates are intentionally spreading,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

In the ads, former President Donald Trump’s campaign has said he will end transgender care in prisons and jails, and restrict access to gender-affirming care and transgender participation in sports, and more.

In interviews, Vice President Kamala Harris — who has been touted by some LGBTQ groups as being part of the most “pro-LGBTQ” administration — has said she will follow the law when it comes to transgender care and has expressed support for the Equality Act, a bill that would protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination.

Here’s what we know about the issues and how each candidate expects to legislate transgender policies.

Claim about ‘transgender operations’ in prisons, jails

Trump’s campaign has seized on Harris’ past comments affirming her support for transgender inmates to receive care.

In 2019, she did support “providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

The Harris campaign, however, hit back against recent criticism from Trump, noting that the Bureau of Prisons under the Trump administration had a policy in place to allow incarcerated transgender people to receive gender-affirming medical care if it’s required based on an individual assessment of needs. BOP documents confirm the policy.

“Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Harris during an interview in October.

“I will follow the law, a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” Harris said. “You’re probably familiar with now, it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis to people in the federal prison system.”

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, of the hundreds of incarcerated transgender people in BOP custody each year, no one had received gender-affirming surgery until the first instance in 2023.

BOP officials told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that as of early October, only two federal inmates have ever obtained surgeries.

Claims of transgender ‘operations’ for children at schools

Trump has often depicted hypothetical or unfounded scenarios about children getting an “operation” at school without parental permission while on the campaign trail. The former president has repeatedly claimed, without any proof, that schools purportedly secretly send students for surgeries, saying: “There are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl. OK? Without parental consent.”

According to Planned Parenthood, parental consent is needed for any form of gender-affirming care given to minors, including puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

A study by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found little to no usage of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse minors in the U.S., instead finding that cisgender minors and adults had substantially higher utilization of such gender-affirming surgeries than their transgender counterparts.

In trans teens ages 15 to 17, the rate of gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000, the study found — a majority of which were chest surgeries. Physicians and researchers have told ABC News that surgeries on people under 18 happen rarely and are considered only on an individual basis.

Physicians say they work with patients and their parents to build a customized and individualized approach to gender-affirming care for trans patients, meaning not every patient will receive any or every type of care. They also said receiving this care is typically a lengthy process.

Numerous medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the CDC — have said access to gender-affirming care is essential to the health and wellness of gender-diverse people.

Harris, when asked in October during an NBC News interview about whether transgender Americans deserve to have access to gender-affirming care, said she would “follow the law,” later adding that such care “is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary.”

Additionally, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz signed an executive order as Minnesota governor protecting and supporting access to gender-affirming health care for LGBTQ people in the state in March 2023.

Claims about transgender athletes

In a podcast with former professional wrestler The Undertaker, or Mark William Calaway, Trump also pushed false claims about the controversial Olympic boxing match between Italian boxer Angela Carini and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Khelif was the target of controversy after reports falsely surfaced claiming Khelif is a transgender woman; she is not and was assigned female at birth, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Carini abandoned the Olympics bout after only 46 seconds, further sparking false accusations. The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee (COA) and the IOC spoke out about the misinformation on Khelif’s gender and sex.

“The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, has a female passport,” the IOC said during a press conference.

Trump then referenced a San Jose State women’s volleyball game against New Mexico, falsely claiming a trans athlete on San Jose State’s team — as he repeatedly misgendered her — injured other female players with the ball. San Jose State told the Los Angeles Times that the ball bounced off the shoulder of the student-athlete, and the athlete was uninjured and did not miss a play.

“They had the one guy on the one team, and he was so high in the air, and he smashed that ball, you know, you don’t see that, and this ball came at her at a speed that he’s, you know, she’s never seen — get really whacked her. But other volleyball players were hurt,” Trump said.

Trump has additionally vowed to “keep men out of women’s sports” in many of his stump speeches, making it a key issue in his campaign.

LGBTQ advocates say claims that trans women are “taking over” women’s sports are misleading — with sports advocacy group Athlete Ally estimating to CNN that trans women make up less than 40 athletes of the 500,000 in the NCAA.

For more insight into the candidates’ LGBTQ policy history, read here.

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(WASHINGTON) — The special counsel’s new indictment charging former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election made changes large and small to accommodate the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity.

An indictment that once offered vivid details of Trump’s effort to enlist federal officials in his scheme to overturn the election removed any mention of the Department of Justice. Detailed accounts of how advisers corrected Trump about his claims of election fraud are gone along with Trump’s statements to his inner circle as rioters stormed the Capitol.

Prosecutors also made minor changes, such as describing Trump as “a candidate for President of the United States” rather than “the forty-fifth President of the United States” in the indictment’s opening lines. Trump’s official statements from within the White House were subtly removed, while other examples were framed as unofficial or “in his capacity as a candidate for office.”

“The Defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election,” the new indictment said.

Special Counsel Jack Smith presented evidence to a new grand jury, which returned an indictment charging Trump with the same four criminal offenses he originally faced.

The indictment removes details about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, including refusing to call off rioters.

The superseding indictment removes once-damning allegations about Trump’s refusal to act as rioters stormed the Capitol and his overall behavior as described by advisers.

According to the original indictment, Trump refused to approve a message directing rioters to leave the Capitol despite the urging of senior officials, including the White House counsel and his chief of staff.

Later that day, Trump allegedly resisted former House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s plea to call off rioters.

“The Defendant told the Minority Leader that the crowd at the Capitol was more upset about the election than the Minority Leader was,” the indictment said.

According to the original indictment, Trump also remarked to advisers in the Oval Office that “this is what happens when they try to steal an election. These people are angry. These people are really angry about it. This is what happens.”

On the evening of Jan. 6, Trump also rejected the request of his White House Counsel to withdraw any objections to the certification of the election, the indictment said.

The superseding indictment appears to have streamlined its account of Trump’s behavior while omitting the statements once included in the original indictment.

“He spent much of the afternoon reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the television in the dining room showed live events at the Capitol,” the superseding indictment said.

The indictment removes allegations about Trump’s use of the Department of Justice.

Compared to the original indictment, Tuesday’s superseding indictment removed five pages of allegations detailing how Trump allegedly used the Department of Justice to further his claims of election fraud.

Prosecutors originally alleged that Trump attempted to use the Department of Justice to further false claims of election fraud in key states to give Trump’s “lies the backing of the federal government.”

When DOJ officials rebutted Trump’s claims that the Justice Department could alter the outcome of the election, Trump allegedly responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the original indictment said.

The indictment originally detailed how Trump allegedly worked with co-conspirator four — identified by ABC News as former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark — to have the Department of Justice send a letter to key states falsely claiming that the Justice Department “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” Trump allegedly planned to make Clark his acting attorney general in the final days of his presidency but was stopped when warned that such a move would result in mass resignations.

Once a core pillar of the case against Trump, all mentions of the Justice Department have been removed from the new indictment.

The indictment attempts to salvage key evidence.

The new indictment appears to make minor changes to salvage key evidence, including Trump’s call to Georgia officials about finding votes and Vice President Mike Pence’s notes.

The new indictment still describes Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump said he wanted “to find 11,780 votes” but added context to Meadows’ role in the call.

“On January 2, four days before Congress’s certification proceeding, the Defendant, his Chief of Staff – who sometimes handled private and Campaign-related logistics for the Defendant – and private attorneys involved in the lawsuit against Georgia’s Secretary of State called the Secretary of State,” the superseding indictment said.

The indictment still mentions Vice President Pence’s contemporaneous notes of a key meeting with Trump about the proposed plan to reject legitimate electors on Jan. 6.

“Did you hear that? Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority,” Pence told Trump.

The new indictment only makes slight changes to the section referencing the notes, cutting a line that the “White House Counsel previously had pushed back on the Defendant’s false claims of election fraud.”

The new indictment also removes mention of a Dec. 29 phone call between Pence and Trump — memorialized in Pence’s notes — when the former president claimed the “Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.”

The indictment overtly frames some of Trump’s statements as unofficial.

Prosecutors appear to have added phrases throughout the indictment to frame Trump’s statements as unofficial ones made as a candidate for office rather than official statements as president.

The indictment notably describes Trump’s statements at the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6 as a “campaign speech.”

Old Indictment: On January 6, the Defendant publicly repeated the knowingly false claim that 36,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.

New Indictment: In his Campaign speech on January 6, the Defendant publicly repeated the knowingly false claim that 36,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.

In two instances in the new indictment, prosecutors framed Trump’s actions as conduct made “in his capacity as a candidate for office.”

The indictment offers fewer details about officials correcting Trump on claims of voter fraud.

The original indictment previously went to lengths to detail how Trump’s closest advisers — including the vice president, members of the Department of Justice, the director of National Intelligence, and several White House attorneys — directly told the then-president that his claims of voter fraud were false.

The superseding indictment removes mention of federal officials notifying Trump that his claims were false, briefly mentioning Vice President Pence as Trump’s “own running mate.”

“The Defendant was on notice that his claims were untrue,” the new indictment said. “He was told so by those most invested in his re-election, including his own running mate and his campaign staff.”

The indictment originally detailed three instances in December 2020 when officials, including the acting attorney general and chief of staff, told Trump that his claims of fraud in Georgia — including at the Cobb County Civic Center and State Farm Arena — were false. The new indictment omits those details.

The indictment omits some of Trump’s statements from behind White House podiums or referencing the White House.

The superseding indictment surgically removes statements Trump made from within the White House behind official podiums.

In two instances from within the White House, Trump made remarks falsely alleging voter fraud in Michigan.

“In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until four in the morning and—even though the polls closed at eight o’clock,” Trump said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on November 5, 2020.

Unlike other instances in the indictment in which prosecutors clarified were made in Trump’s capacity as a candidate for office, Trump’s remarks made within the White House were struck from the indictment.

The indictment also removed mention of a January 5, 2021, Tweet when Trump told supporters heading to Washington, “We hear you (and love you) from the Oval Office.”

Reacting to the indictment, Trump issued a statement saying, “Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.”

He also called it “an attempt to INTERFERE WITH THE ELECTION.”

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, shared Trump’s sentiment, telling ABC News, “It looks like Jack Smith doing more of what he does, which is filing these absurd lawsuits in an effort to influence the election.”

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