Trump speaks to China’s Xi Jinping days before inauguration

(WASHINGTON) — As Election Day arrives, polling still shows razor-thin margins between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in battleground states.

If the actual vote margin remains that thin in some states, it is possible that automatic recounts could be triggered or that a campaign could request a recount, depending on that state’s rules.

A recent analysis of statewide recounts in general elections from 2000-2023 by the advocacy group FairVote found that statewide recounts in general elections are very rare and usually have not changed much of the vote count. Recounts have almost never changed the state’s winner of a presidential election, although in 1960, a recount in Hawaii changed the winner of the state’s Electoral College votes from Richard Nixon to John F. Kennedy.

More recent presidential recounts have not impacted the winner in the states they were held in, including the attempted 2000 recount in Florida meant to deal with a razor-thin margin between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which the Supreme Court halted. (If Florida’s results had flipped, Al Gore would have won that election.)

In 2020, Donald Trump’s campaign requested recounts in Georgia (after the secretary of state had already undertaken a recount) and some Wisconsin counties. In 2016, the campaign of Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a recount that was fully undertaken in Wisconsin, and requested one in Michigan (which was halted) and Pennsylvania (which was denied).

Here’s what to know about the rules that govern if and how presidential race recounts are conducted in each of the seven battleground states.

The “canvass of the vote” discussed below refers to the county and/or state procedures that compile, confirm, and validate every vote cast. Recount rules may vary for other races, such as congressional or mayoral races. An “automatic recount” means a recount that is mandated by state law because of the results; the term does not reflect how votes are recounted.

Arizona

A recount is automatically triggered in Arizona if the margin between the two candidates who received the most votes is equal or less than half a percent of the total votes cast, according to Arizona law. The recount must be completed five days after the canvass of the vote is completed, which is Nov. 30.

It is not possible for a candidate, party or voters to request a recount in Arizona. (A Republican-aligned review of election results in Arizona’s Maricopa County in 2021 was not a state-run recount and found no evidence that changed the results in the county.)

Georgia

According to Georgia law, a candidate can ask for a recount within two days of results being certified if the margin between the candidates is less than half a percentage point of the vote. Election officials can also request recounts if they think there is an issue with the results, while the secretary of state can ask for a recount if a candidate petitions them about a suspected issue. There is no explicit deadline for a recount to be completed.

There are no automatic recounts in Georgia.

Michigan

According to Michigan law, an automatic recount is triggered in statewide races if the margin between the top two candidates is 2,000 votes or less.

A candidate can petition for a recount if a few requirements are met, including “a good-faith belief that but for fraud or mistake, the candidate would have had a reasonable chance of winning the election,” according to Michigan law. The petition needs to be filed within 48 hours of the canvass of votes being completed.

Recounts must be completed within 30 days of the end of the period that candidates are allowed to file petitions challenging results, or within 30 days of when recounts are allowed to begin.

(New laws changing how recounts can be done in Michigan were signed into law this year, but will not be in effect for the 2024 election.)

Nevada

A candidate for presidential elector — specifically an Electoral College elector, not the candidate — can request a recount in Nevada up to the 13th day following the election, according to Nevada statutes. The requester needs to deposit the estimated cost of the recount with the secretary of state, but gets the deposit refunded if the recount results in a change in the winner.

The recount needs to be started within a day after being requested and finished within 5 days.

There is a more general statute in Nevada law that allows statewide candidates to request recounts, but this does not apply to presidential races, according to Nevada-based attorney and election law expert Bradley Schrager. Rather, the specific and more recent statute overrides the more general one, so the recount request would have to come from the presidential elector.

“In practice, that’s not really significant, however, because any elector candidate would follow the direction of his or her presidential candidate,” Schrager said.

There are no automatic recounts in Nevada.

North Carolina

A presidential candidate can request a recount in North Carolina if the margin between the candidates is less than half a percentage point or 10,000 votes, whichever is less, according to state law. (The North Carolina State Board of Elections told ABC News that the threshold this year will likely be 10,000 votes.)

The candidate needs to ask for a recount by noon on the second day after the county canvassing of the vote. (In 2024, that day is Tuesday, Nov. 19.)

There are cases where a requested recount would trigger an automatic recount as well, but the election results themselves do not trigger automatic recounts in North Carolina.

Pennsylvania

An automatic recount is triggered in Pennsylvania if the margin between the candidates is within half a percentage of the vote.

The recount must begin “no later than” the third Wednesday after Election Day and be done by noon on the next Tuesday, according to guidance published by the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Candidates themselves cannot request recounts in Pennsylvania.

Wisconsin

In a presidential race, any presidential candidate can request a recount if the margin between the candidates that got the most votes is one percent or less of the total votes cast, according to Wisconsin state statutes. The candidate must request it within the first day after the canvass of the vote is completed.

The state itself pays if the margin is 0.25% of the vote or less; if it is larger, then the candidate who requested the recount must pay. (They receive a refund if the election result changes due to the recount.)

The recount must be completed within 13 days of being ordered.

There are no automatic recounts in Wisconsin.

ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan and Mitch Alva contributed to this report.

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(RIO GRANDE CITY, TX) — Starr County, Texas, voted predominantly Republican this month — for the first time in 100 years.

Home to some 75,000 residents across about 1,200 square miles, it has a relatively small footprint, in a state where everything is glorified for its bigness.

But it’s been making an outsized impression in national politics. Even after its historic flip from blue to red, a century in the making, it’s continued to garner headlines.

Last week, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered up 1,402 acres of Starr County to facilitate President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans.

In a letter to Trump dated Nov. 19, Buckingham said she’s offering the land, located along the border of Mexico, “to be used to construct deportation facilities.”

She has also proposed alternative uses for it, including as a site for detention centers.

“Now it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention center on there — a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country,” Buckingham said in a recent interview with Fox News.

The land, which Buckingham declared property of the state in 2023, adds to another parcel previously owned by the Texas General Land Office, bringing the southern border acreage that it controls in Starr County up to 4,000.

ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal visited Starr County to ask residents what issues and values most influenced them to vote for Republican candidates this year, instead of upholding their century-long blue streak.

“The economy is just driving, I think, everybody crazy,” said Becky Garza, the owner of Texas Cafe in Rio Grande City, the largest city in Starr County.

She explained that she used to complain about buying a box of eggs for $10, and now they’re $20.

“If things don’t get better, I might have to either cut staff, cut hours, or I’m going to start with cutting hours and then from there work it, maybe cut down, maybe cut the menu, you know, to keep the place open, you know, because I don’t want to lose my my customers,” Garza said.

And she doesn’t think she’s the only one who’s making those kinds of hard decisions, she told ABC News.

Jaime Escobar, the mayor of neighboring Roma, another city of Starr County, agrees. He suggested that residents are more influenced by the local economy than what’s being said in Washington, D.C.

“We no longer want to be considered just a poor community because we’re rich culturally,” he told ABC News. “We’re proud of our Mexican-American heritage, but we don’t — no longer want to be dependent just on the government.”

But with D.C. being invited into their backyard, it’s bound to bring the topic of migration and deportation to the forefront — even for those who may not have prioritized the issue during the election cycle.

Asked about how people might respond to a detention facility in nearby Starr County, Escobar said, “People don’t want families to be torn apart. That’s the last thing we want.”

“But at the same time,” he added, “we hope that Trump and his administration do the right thing and focus on the criminal element first, and then see how in the meantime, we’ll see how the policies can be implemented in a better way.”

Buckingham, on the other hand, believes that “folks who live down on the border feel really abandoned by those open border policies.”

She told ABC News, “They feel like it’s directly harming their communities, both their safety and their prosperity.”

In the same interview this week with ABC News, Buckingham also said that she would “absolutely” offer up even more of Texas, the way that she did Starr County.

“I have 13 million acres. If any of them can be of help in this process, we’re happy to have that discussion,” Buckingham said.

Trump has said he would carry out his mass deportation plans — a top campaign promise — by declaring a national emergency and using “military assets” to deport migrants currently living in the U.S. without legal permission.

He backed up his commitment with the choice of several immigration hard-liners to join his administration, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for secretary of homeland security and former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan as “border czar.” Both picks require Senate confirmation.

But with an estimated 11 million people presumed to be living in the U.S. without legal immigration status, the promises have raised questions of both feasibility and cost.

Removing them could cost billions of dollars per year, according to estimates from the American Immigration Council.

And while Republican-friendly areas of Texas might feel compelled to support the effort, other southern border states, like Arizona and California, have already expressed their disinterest.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live last week that she would not use state police or the National Guard to help with mass deportation.

“We will not be participating in misguided efforts that harm our communities,” she said.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday was divided over whether the Food and Drug Administration had unlawfully rejected millions of flavored e-cigarettes for approved sale in U.S. over concerns about nicotine addiction among young people.

During oral arguments in a case that could have a significant impact on public health, the justices grappled with tobacco industry claims that the government had given unclear and shifting requirements for new product applications and failed to provide proper notice to the companies.

“FDA switched its position on what studies were required” to show that the products have benefits to existing smokers that offset risks to youth, argued Eric Heyer, the attorney representing vape manufacturers Triton Distribution and Vapetasia, which are seeking a green light to market e-liquids such as “Jimmy the Juice Man Peachy Strawberry” and “Iced Pineapple Express.”

Federal law requires sellers of new nicotine products to provide regulators with scientific evidence to show that the products would promote public health, but the statute does not spell out specifically what evidence is necessary and sufficient. The FDA’s guidance on how to meet that requirement is at the center of the case.

“Their argument is that the guidance were actually a moving target, that either they weren’t clear or you changed the guidance as time went on,” said Justice Clarence Thomas, who appeared sympathetic to vape manufacturers.

“That is their argument,” replied Biden administration lawyer Curtis Gannon, representing the FDA, adding, “But I think that the key point is that they knew from the statute that they needed to be making this comparison about what the benefits were with respect to existing smokers and weighing that against the potential costs with respect to nonsmokers and attracting youth.”

Justice Neil Gorusch suggested that the companies might not have been given “fair notice” of how they could comply with the law. “Wouldn’t due process require an opportunity for notice and a hearing?” he asked Gannon.

E-cigarettes and vapes, which deliver nicotine without some of the harmful effects of smoking, have been booming in popularity. Kid-friendly flavors, such as fruit, candy, mint, menthol and desserts, are not approved by the FDA and are on the market illegally.

While vaping among youth is declining, more than 1.6 million children use the products, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 90% of them consume illicit flavored brands.

Manufacturers have acknowledged that their products may appeal to youth but insist that a “growing body of scientific evidence” shows that “flavors are crucial to getting adult smokers to make the switch and stay away from combustible cigarettes.”

A federal appeals court sided with the companies last year, saying the agency had acted arbitrarily. If the Supreme Court upholds that ruling, it could clear the way for broader marketing and sale of flavored nicotine products.

The Court’s three liberal justices all seemed to share the government’s view that FDA did not illegally move the goal posts during the process and that the companies simply lacked the evidence to win approval.

Since 2009, when Congress passed legislation aimed at curbing tobacco use among young people, the government has almost universally denied tobacco company requests to sell flavored nicotine e-liquids, citing risks of addiction among minors.

The FDA said the two companies in this case provided insufficient evidence that the benefits of their flavored e-products in helping tobacco smokers quit exceed the dangers of hooking children.

“I’m so totally confused,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Heyer. “What [FDA] said is what you provided wasn’t sufficient.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “baffled” by Heyer’s argument because the FDA had explicitly articulated its standard.

“I guess I’m not really seeing what the surprise is here, or what the change is here,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “There’s just not a lot of mystery here about what FDA was doing. You might disagree with that, because you think that, in fact, the world of 40-year-olds really wants to do blueberry vaping, but you can’t say that FDA hasn’t told you all about what it’s thinking in this respect.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who could be a critical vote in the case, signaled sympathy to the industry’s complaint about discretionary government regulation but suggested he wasn’t convinced FDA had acted unreasonably.

“If the agency says [your claims of benefits to adult smokers] that doesn’t outweigh the harm to youth, we’ve reviewed everything, we’re aware of everything, of course they’re aware of everything that’s out there, that’s kind of the end of it, isn’t it?” Kavanaugh asked.

Even if they lose the case, several justices noted, the vape manufacturers could reapply for approval with the FDA in a new application.

While the first Trump administration had taken a hard line against the marketing and sale of sweet and candy-flavored vapes, president-elect Donald Trump said during the campaign that he wants to “save” flavored vapes.

“We don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like,” said Heyer. But, he added, that his clients “can’t afford to wait that out.”

Nearly a quarter of high school students who use e-cigarettes consume illicit menthol-flavored varieties, according to the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey.

Josie Shapiro, the 2024 national youth ambassador for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids who testified before Congress on the dangers of nicotine addiction, said illicit flavored vapes hooked her at age 14.

“I think that by marketing any sort of flavored product as bubble gum or any of the genres of candy, it’s going to catch the eyes of children,” Shapiro said. “I’m still addicted, and I’m still trying to fight my addiction. Honestly, the FDA needs to regulate all flavored tobaccos to flavor ‘tobacco’ products and get them off the market.”

Public health experts have credited the FDA’s restrictions on flavored nicotine products with helping to drive down the number of teenagers who vape gradually from an “epidemic” level just five years ago.

The case, Food and Drug Administration v. Wages and White Lion Investments, LLC, will be decided before the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June 2025.

ABC News’ Patty See contributed to this report.

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