Bexar County officials moved forward Tuesday with a plan to mail county residents voter registration forms, defying Attorney General Ken Paxton’s threat to use “all available legal means” to quash the effort.

Paxton followed through Wednesday morning, filing a lawsuit in a state district court in Bexar County that seeks an emergency order to block the program. The lawsuit contends that counties lack the authority to send out unsolicited registration applications, while also arguing that Bexar County officials erred by awarding the contract without going through a competitive bidding process.

The legal clash escalates a brewing fight between Texas Republicans and some of the state’s largest counties over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders are weighing a similar plan, and Paxton warned the two counties against such efforts Monday evening, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls.

Rebuffing those claims, Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve a $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions following three hours of fervent discussion at Tuesday’s court meeting. Local GOP activists spent more than an hour blasting the deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money and insisting it would be used to disproportionately register Democrats, citing past comments from the firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

Bexar County officials moved forward Tuesday with a plan to mail county residents voter registration forms, defying Attorney General Ken Paxton’s threat to use “all available legal means” to quash the effort.

Paxton followed through Wednesday morning, filing a lawsuit in a state district court in Bexar County that seeks an emergency order to block the program. The lawsuit contends that counties lack the authority to send out unsolicited registration applications, while also arguing that Bexar County officials erred by awarding the contract without going through a competitive bidding process.

The legal clash escalates a brewing fight between Texas Republicans and some of the state’s largest counties over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders are weighing a similar plan, and Paxton warned the two counties against such efforts Monday evening, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls.

Rebuffing those claims, Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve a $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions following three hours of fervent discussion at Tuesday’s court meeting. Local GOP activists spent more than an hour blasting the deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money and insisting it would be used to disproportionately register Democrats, citing past comments from the firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

The Biden administration on Wednesday plans to accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the 2024 US elections by using Kremlin-run media and other online platforms to target US voters with disinformation, six sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

It’s expected the US will make a series of moves on Wednesday aimed at addressing the Kremlin’s efforts including the White House publicly condemning the actions and the Justice Department announcing law enforcement action targeting the covert Russian campaign, the sources said.

RT, the Russian state media network, is a major focus of the US announcement, the sources said. US officials see the Russian outlet as a key piece of Kremlin propaganda efforts.

The Russian disinformation operation is being laundered through both Americans and non-American voices, four of the sources said.

Taken together, the actions would be the Biden administration’s most significant public response yet to alleged Russian influence operations targeting American voters. After the US accused Iran of trying to hack both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns last month, Wednesday’s expected actions are a reminder that US officials continue to see Russia as a prominent foreign influence threat to November’s election, the sources said.

Every time I see a poll showing Harris with a modest lead, I have the same thought:


https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/2024-race-polls-kamala-harris-donald-trump-presidential-election-rcna169333

But a Politico report from the holiday weekend touched on a detail that’s worth keeping in mind as the data makes the rounds.

Because of Republicans’ advantage in the Electoral College, a race that Harris leads nationally by between 2 and 4 percentage points, on average, is the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth, and it’s set to be decided in a smaller-than-usual number of states.

I can appreciate why this might seem counterintuitive. After all, in a normal democratic election in a normal democratic system, candidates who win the most votes prevail. In American presidential elections, it’s vastly more complicated, and candidates who receive fewer votes can — and occasionally do — take office, while candidates who receive more support end up with nothing but disappointment.

It’s one of the reasons 2024 polling that shows Harris with a modest national lead comes with caveats, including one important detail: Trump’s Electoral College advantage is so significant that small polling leads for Harris are, for all intents and purposes, deficits.

Writing for The Washington Post four years ago, Paul Waldman explained: “Turnout projections are running at around 150 million [in 2020], which would mean that ... Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president.”......

But it’s not quite that simple. In fact, in American history, the candidate who received less public support was declared the winner in five presidential elections, and two of the five instances have happened in the 21st century.

It’s precisely why Harris isn’t popping any champagne in response to polls showing her with modest leads: Even if the surveys are largely accurate, our system makes it easier for Republicans to win the White House, even when they receive fewer votes.

The Democratic candidate will need to try to run up the score, not just to deliver a historic rebuke to a corrupt rival, but to ensure her inauguration.

Trump had no reason to keep the Arlington Cemetery controversy alive for another day, but he apparently couldn’t help himself.

In the new twist, the Republican is contradicting his own campaign team — and the US Army — for no reason.

In fact, for reasons that defy comprehension, Trump spent much of Tuesday keeping the story alive for yet another day, starting in the morning with a missive published to his social media platform. It read in part:

“There was no conflict or ‘fighting’ at Arlington National Cemetery last week. It was a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad. She made it all up....”

Soon after, the GOP candidate appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show and echoed the line, insisting that “there was no conflict” between members of his campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery. “There was no fight,” Trump added, “there was no anything.”

At this point, I could spend a few sentences explaining that Vice President Kamala Harris obviously played no role in manufacturing this controversy. I could then add a paragraph or two marveling at the former president voluntarily breathing new life into a damaging scandal that appeared to be nearing its endpoint.......

In fact, as a New York Times report noted, Trump campaign officials also said “they were prepared to release footage of the episode, though the campaign has not yet done so after repeated requests.”

That was last week. This week, the former president himself has decided to contradict his own team’s comments and declare that there was no incident whatsoever, despite the Trump campaign’s recent rhetoric. The entire fiasco, the GOP candidate wants the public to believe, was "made up," reality notwithstanding.

And in case this example of trying to rewrite recent history wasn’t brazen enough, a Washington Post fact-check report added that the Republican nominee, during his appearance at Arlington, also appears to have misled the Gold Star families in attendance about his administration’s record in Afghanistan.

Will Trump find new ways to keep the story going even longer? At this point, I wouldn’t put it past him.

Trump implies nobody walks out while he delivers his speeches: "...for many people it's virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. You know, it's not an easy thing to do and it's an ability."