NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is asking the judge in his New York hush money criminal case to delay his sentencing until after the November presidential election.

In a letter made public Thursday, a lawyer for the former president and current Republican nominee suggested that sentencing Trump as scheduled on Sept. 18 — about seven weeks before Election Day — would amount to election interference.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote that a delay would also allow Trump time to weigh next steps after the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, is expected to rule Sept. 16 on the defense’s request to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.

“There is no basis for continuing to rush,” Blanche wrote.

Blanche sent the letter to Merchan on Wednesday after the judge rejected the defense’s latest request that he step aside from the case.

In the letter, Blanche reiterated the defense argument that the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a Democratic political consultant, including for Kamala Harris when she sought the 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now running against Trump.

By adjourning the sentencing until after that election, “the Court would reduce, even if not eliminate, issues regarding the integrity of any future proceedings,” Blanche wrote.

Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after Trump’s scheduled Sept. 18 sentencing date.

Merchan, who has said he is confident in his ability to remain fair and impartial, did not immediately rule on the delay request.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, declined to comment.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his business’ records to conceal a 2016 deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with him. Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first campaign.

Trump says all the stories were false, the business records were not and the case was a political maneuver meant to damage his current campaign. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat.

Trump’s defense argued that the payments were indeed for legal work and so were correctly categorized.

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.

In a previous letter, Merchan set Sept. 18 for “the imposition of sentence or other proceedings as appropriate.”

Blanche argued in his letter seeking a delay that the quick turnaround from the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 to sentencing two days later is unfair to Trump.

To prepare for sentencing, Blanche argued, prosecutors will be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. If Merchan rules against Trump on the dismissal request, he will need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” Blanche said.

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance have agreed to debate each other on Oct. 1, setting up a matchup of potential vice presidents as early voting in some states gets underway for the general election.

CBS News on Wednesday posted on its X feed that the network had invited both Vance and Walz to debate in New York City, presenting four possible dates — Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8 — as options.

Walz reposted that message from his own campaign account, “See you on October 1, JD.” The Harris-Walz campaign followed up with a message of its own, saying Walz “looks forward to debating JD Vance — if he shows up.”

Vance posted on X that he would accept the Oct. 1 invitation. He also challenged Walz to meet on Sept. 18.

Officials with the Kamala Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Vance’s acceptance of the earlier debate that he said would be on CNN or whether Walz would participate in that one as well.

Representatives for CNN confirmed that Vance had accepted the network’s debate invitation.

“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” will moderate the Oct. 1 debate, according to the network.

Whether or not Walz and Vance would debate before the Nov. 5 general election had been in question. In just the past several weeks, President Joe Biden left the campaign and Democrats selected Harris to lead their ticket.

Vance has largely kept his focus trained on Harris, whom he would have been set to debate before Biden’s departure from the race. Vance has lobbed critiques against Walz, including questioning the retired Army National Guardsman’s service record.

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has said he wanted Vance to debate Walz on CBS, which had been discussing potential dates for that meeting.

The debate is expected weeks after the Sept. 10 top-of-the-ticket debate recently solidified between Trump and Harris on ABC News.

Trump has said he negotiated several other debate dates, on three different networks. Fox News has also proposed a debate between Harris and Trump to take place on Sept. 4, and NBC News is angling to air one on Sept. 25.

During an appearance in Michigan, Harris said she was “happy to have that conversation” about an additional debate.

AP Media writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.

A mailer from Tony’s PAC features a picture of him with Harris, paired with a quote from former President Barack Obama.

It’s notable for the speed. The mailer from the Broward First PAC arrived in Democratic voters’ mailboxes in Broward County on Friday, just 20 days after Harris entered the presidential race when President Joe Biden ended his campaign for a second term.

Harris has generated enormous excitement among Democratic voters — exactly the supporters he needs in the four-way primary for sheriff. (A Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday found that 94% of likely Democratic voters in the state said they’d vote Harris for president).

The winner of the Democratic primary for sheriff — Tony, Steve Geller, David Howard or Al Pollock — faces only nominal opposition from an independent candidate in November, and is virtually certain to win the general election.

The photo of the sheriff in uniform standing next to the vice president was taken in March, on the day Harris toured the site of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting to discuss gun-violence prevention efforts. The photo was posted months ago on Tony’s Instagram page.

The Broward First mailer is one of many about the sheriff’s race landing in Democratic voters’ mailboxes from candidates and their associated political committees.

The mailing featuring Harris is careful. It doesn’t state that there’s an endorsement of Tony from Harris or Obama.

Its theme is “change,” given that Harris would be the nation’s first woman president and the first with parents who were from Jamaica and India. It reminds voters that Tony changed the agency as “the first African American to serve as Broward County’s sheriff.”

In case all that’s too subtle, the Obama quote states, “We are the change we seek.”

There’s an ironic element to Tony’s Broward First committee paying for a mailer featuring Harris.

Some of the financial muscle behind Broward First comes from Republicans close to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is not exactly a fan of the Democratic presidential nominee. Example of a DeSantis comment: “Her tenure as VP has been disastrous.”

Tony is sheriff because of DeSantis, and the Stoneman Douglas massacre.

DeSantis appointed Tony in 2019 after he suspended previous Sheriff Scott Israel. The governor charged Israel with incompetence and neglect of duty in connection with the 2018 school massacre, in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured, and the 2017 mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, in which five people were killed and six injured.

In 2020, when Tony ran and won a full term as sheriff, his political action committee Broward First got fundraising help from big-name Republican DeSantis allies. As he geared up for the 2024 election, the Republican heavyweights close to the governor again helped raise money for Broward First.

Since Broward First geared up its fundraising for this year’s campaign in the spring of last year, it has raised $820,000. About two-thirds came during the second six months of 2023.

Voters have received some negative information about Tony as well. Democrats received an anti-Tony, pro-Geller mailer from a committee called “Honesty and Integrity for Broward Citizens.”

“Gregory Tony is a proven liar who is not fit to serve,” it declares above a picture of the incumbent.

The flip side declares that “Our current Sheriff has lied and broken the rules time and time again.”

The beneficiary of the mailer, Geller, is shown in a picture from his time in the Plantation Police Department and praised as a candidate of “Integrity. Leadership. Experience.”

And it attempts to remind voters of Tony’s links to DeSantis including a news headline when DeSantis called Tony a favorite Democrat. It came from December 2023, when DeSantis was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Asked to name his favorite Democrat in Florida during a CNN town hall, he said Tony was one of the “good ones.”

The committee has taken in $172,000, according to reports filed with the Florida Division of Elections. All but $7,000 came via four contributions on July 6 and July 10, from Mark Groban, a family friend, of Rockville, Md.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.

The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.

It also follows through on what people familiar with Harris’ forthcoming economic agenda said this week would be a centerpiece of her plans: an aggressive rhetorical attempt to shift the blame for high inflation onto corporate America. Polls show that argument resonates strongly with voters, including independent voters who could decide the November election.

Progressive groups have urged President Joe Biden, and now Harris, to fully embrace that argument.

In a release announcing the policy, Harris campaign officials did not detail how a price-gouging ban would be enforced or what current corporate behaviors would be outlawed if it were enacted. They said Harris would work in her first 100 days to put in place a federal ban “setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”

The officials also said Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” on corporations that fix prices. They said that she would direct more resources toward investigating price-gouging in the supply chain for meat and that she would push federal officials to closely scrutinize proposed grocery mergers.

They also said that Harris would unveil plans Friday related to housing costs and prescription drug prices. Many states ban price gouging, but the federal government does not.

Inflation and prices are an obstacle for Harris as she faces off with former President Donald Trump this fall. Price growth soared in the first two years of Biden’s administration. It is falling toward historically normal levels now, though prices remain elevated from where they were three years ago. On Wednesday, the annual inflation rate dipped under 3% for the first time since 2021.

Economists largely blame a mix of factors for the price surge, including snarls in global supply chains related to the pandemic recession and economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve and Congress — including increased federal spending and tax cuts approved first by Trump, then Biden.

Over the past year, as grocery prices in particular have dragged on Biden’s approval rating, progressive groups urged him to blame something else for high prices: powerful corporations, whose profits soared during the pandemic. Biden has partly complied. He has gone after meatpacking companies and oil companies over high prices. He admonished companies regarding so-called shrinkflation — reducing the size of a product, like a bag of chips or a candy bar, while keeping the price the same or even raising it.

An analysis this year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that corporate consolidation had contributed to recent elevated grocery prices but that corporate factors did not come close to accounting for the majority of the price increases.

Harris appears to be going further. People familiar with her plans said this week that she would seek to connect her price-gouging plans to her political biography, including her record of prosecuting corporate lawbreakers. The Wednesday release confirmed that strategy.

“In her remarks Friday,” it concluded, “Vice President Harris will discuss her lifelong commitment to fighting for the middle class and tackling powerful interests by invoking her time as California’s attorney general and going after corporate greed and price gouging — and winning.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

His effort has been unsuccessful. The news was first reported by The Washington Post.

“We’ve reached out repeatedly through the highest level intermediaries,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Wednesday night. “We’ve been told that they have no interest in talking with me.”

There was little chance the Harris campaign would engage with Kennedy. Public and private polling has found that as he spent the summer attacking President Joe Biden, he began to draw more support from voters otherwise predisposed to back former President Donald Trump. Now Harris does better in some surveys when Kennedy is included than when she is tested in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.

Kennedy, long seen as a potential spoiler in the race, has slipped in polls and struggled to raise money, and he has appeared to consider potential offramps as speculation has grown about whether he might drop out and, if so, whether he would endorse Harris or Trump.

On Wednesday night, Kennedy wrote: “I’ve always argued that we should be willing to talk with each other across party lines. I’m willing to meet with leaders of both parties to discuss the possibility of a unity government.”

The Post reported last month that Kennedy had held talks with Trump about a possible Cabinet job, proposing a role in public health leadership, in exchange for his support. And in a leaked video of a phone call between the two men, Trump tried to cajole Kennedy to exit the race and endorse him.

“I would love you to do something,” the former president said. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.” Kennedy said little in response on the call. The two men also met in person in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention.

Two people familiar with Kennedy’s campaign confirmed that advisers to Trump had raised the possibility of a Cabinet post with people close to Kennedy, but said the discussions were fluid and inconclusive. The political circumstances were also far different at the time, when Biden was still in the race and trailing well behind the former president.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy has confronted a range of negative headlines and setbacks in recent weeks.

This month, he acknowledged he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.”

That bizarre story overshadowed a more serious challenge: a court case in Albany that this week removed him from the ballot in New York. A judge said he had used a “sham” address to maintain his New York residency.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Trump will meet the press at 4:30 p.m. EDT as he steps up his criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for interviews since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her to replace him.

The vice president has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic nominee, though she travels with journalists aboard Air Force Two and sometimes answers shouted questions while boarding or leaving the plane for campaign stops.

In one brief interaction last week, she told reporters she wants “to get an interview together by the end of the month.”

Trump on Wednesday made little effort to stay on message at a rally in North Carolina that his campaign billed as a big economic address, mixing pledges to slash energy prices and “unleash economic abundance” with familiar off-script tangents.

He aired his frustration over the Democrats swapping the vice president in place of Biden at the top of their presidential ticket. He repeatedly denigrated San Francisco, where Harris was once the district attorney, as “unlivable” and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence, saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person” and musing that Democrats were being “politically correct” in trying to elevate the first Black woman and person of south Asian descent to serve as vice president.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy and immigration, issues that he has put at the center of his case for returning to the White House.

In his news conference last week, Trump taunted his rival, boasted of his crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and lashed out at questions about the enthusiasm Harris’ campaign has been generating. He spoke for more than an hour and made a number of false and misleading claims.

Thursday’s news conference will be livestreamed on apnews.com.

In a three-page decision dated Tuesday, the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, slammed Trump’s filing seeking his recusal as “rife with inaccuracies” and repetitive, and dismissed the idea that he had any conflict of interest.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that the judge’s daughter “has a long-standing relationship with Harris” — a claim her colleagues have disputed — and cited her “work for political campaigns” as a Democratic consultant. But prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which secured Trump’s conviction in May on felony charges of falsifying business records, called his request “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” an issue that Merchan had already twice dismissed.

Merchan, a moderate Democrat who was once a registered Republican, rejected Trump’s initial bid to oust him last year and did so again in April, on the first day of trial. The judge, who has no direct ties to Harris, cited a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which determined that his impartiality could not reasonably be questioned based on his daughter’s interests.

Trump, who has stoked right-wing furor against the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, renewed the recusal request once President Joe Biden abandoned his presidential campaign and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. She is now locked in a tight race with Trump, who has falsely portrayed his conviction as a Democratic plot to foil his campaign.

Juan Merchan’s decision, while anticipated, is consequential nonetheless: It enables him to soon decide two crucial matters that will shape Trump’s legal fate.

On Sept. 16, the judge is scheduled to determine whether to throw out Trump’s conviction following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting him broad immunity for official actions as president. The former president’s long-shot request was vigorously opposed by prosecutors, who urged Merchan to uphold the jury’s verdict, noting that the case had nothing to do with Trump’s official acts in the White House.

If Merchan denies Trump’s immunity motion, as expected, Trump could mount an emergency appeal. If that fails, the judge will then proceed with Trump’s sentencing on Sept. 18. Trump faces up to four years in prison, but could receive a far shorter sentence, or even probation.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With less than three months before the U.S. election, Iran is intensifying its efforts to meddle in American politics, U.S. officials and private cybersecurity firms say, with the suspected hack of Donald Trump’s campaign being only the latest and most brazen example.

Iran has long been described as a “chaos agent” when it comes to cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns and in recent months groups linked to the government in Tehran have covertly encouraged protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, impersonated American activists and created networks of fake news websites and social media accounts primed to spread false and misleading information to audiences in the U.S.

While Russia and China remain bigger cyber threats against the U.S., experts and intelligence officials say Iran’s increasingly aggressive stance marks a significant escalation of efforts to confuse, deceive and frighten American voters ahead of the election.

The pace will likely continue to increase as the election nears and America’s adversaries exploit the internet and advancements in artificial intelligence to sow discord and confusion.

“We’re starting to really see that uptick and it makes sense, 90 days out from the election,” said Sean Minor, a former information warfare expert for the U.S. Army who now analyzes online threats for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which has seen a sharp increase in cyber operations from Iran and other nations. “As we get closer, we suspect that these networks will get more aggressive.”

The FBI is investigating the suspected hack of the Trump campaign as well as efforts to infiltrate the campaign of President Joe Biden, which became Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign when Biden dropped out. Trump’s campaign announced Saturday that someone illegally accessed and retrieved internal documents, later distributed to three news outlets. The campaign blamed Iran, noting a recent Microsoft report revealing an attempt by Iranian military intelligence to hack into the systems of one of the presidential campaigns.

“A lot of people think it was Iran. Probably was,” Trump said Tuesday on Univision before shrugging off the value of the leaked material. “I think it’s pretty boring information.”

Iran has denied any involvement in the hack and said it has no interest in meddling with U.S. politics.

That denial is disputed by U.S. intelligence officials and private cybersecurity firms who have linked Iran’s government and military to several recent campaigns targeting the U.S., saying they reflect Iran’s growing capabilities and its increasing willingness to use them.

On Wednesday Google announced it had uncovered a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that it said had tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to Biden and Trump since May.

The company, which contacted law enforcement with its suspicions, said the group is still targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Harris. It wasn’t clear whether the network identified by Google was connected to the attempt that Trump and Microsoft reported, or were part of a second attempt to infiltrate the campaign’s systems.

Iran has a few different motives in seeking to influence U.S. elections, intelligence officials and cybersecurity analysts say. The country seeks to spread confusion and increase polarization in the U.S. while undermining support for Israel. Iran also aims to hurt candidates that it believes would increase tension between Washington and Tehran.

That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of an Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

The two leaders of the Senate intelligence committee issued a joint letter on Wednesday warning Tehran and other governments hostile to the U.S. that attempts to deceive Americans or disrupt the election will not be tolerated.

“There will be consequences to interfering in the American democratic process,” wrote the committee’s chairman, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, along with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the vice chairman.

In 2021, federal authorities charged two Iranian nationals with attempting to interfere with the election the year before. As part of the plot, the men wrote emails claiming to be members of the far-right Proud Boys in which they threatened Democratic voters with violence.

Last month, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Iranian government had covertly supported American protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran’s government also posed as online activists, encouraged campus protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.

Recent reports from Microsoft and Recorded Future have also linked Iran’s government to networks of fake news websites and social media accounts posing as Americans. The networks were discovered before they gained much influence and analysts say they may have been created ahead of time, to be activated in the weeks immediately before the election.

The final weeks before an election may be the most dangerous when it comes to foreign efforts to impact voting. That’s when voters pay the most attention to politics and when false claims about candidates or voting can do the most damage.

So-called ‘hack-and-leak’ attacks like the one reported by Trump’s campaign involve a hacker obtaining sensitive information from a private network and then releasing it, either to select individuals, the news media or to the public. Such attacks not only expose confidential information but can also raise questions about cybersecurity and the vulnerability of critical networks and systems.

Especially concerning for elections, authorities say, would be an attack targeting a state or local election office that reveals sensitive information or disables election operations. Such an incursion could undermine trust in voting, even if the information exposed is worthless. Experts refer to this last possibility as a “perception hack,” when hackers steal information not because of its value, but because they want to flaunt their capabilities while spreading fear and confusion among their adversaries.

“That can actually be more of a threat — the spectacle, the marketing this gives foreign adversaries — than the actual hack,” said Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former National Security Council analyst who specializes in cyber threats.

In 2016, Russian hackers infiltrated Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, ultimately obtaining and releasing some of the campaign’s most protected information in a hack-and-leak that upended the campaign in its final weeks.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier than ever to create and spread disinformation, including lifelike video and audio allowing hackers to impersonate someone and gain access to their organization’s systems. Nevertheless, the alleged hack of the Trump campaign reportedly involved much simpler techniques: someone gained access to an email account that lacked sufficient security protections.

While people and organizations can take steps to minimize their vulnerability to hacks, nothing can eliminate the risk entirely, Wilde said, or completely reduce the likelihood that foreign adversaries will mount attacks on campaigns.

“The tax we pay for being a digital society is that these hacks and leaks are unavoidable,” he said. “Whether you’re a business, a campaign or a government.”

__

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report from New York.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign suffered a blow this week when a judge in New York invalidated his petition to put his name on the state ballot, a ruling that could potentially create problems for the candidate as he faces challenges elsewhere.

Kennedy’s attorneys filed an appeal Wednesday to a ruling this week from Justice Christina Ryba, who said the residence listed on his nominating petitions was a “sham” address he used to maintain his voter registration and to further his political aspirations. The judge ruled in favor of the challengers, who argued Kennedy’s actual residence was the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines.

New York is just one of more than a half-dozen states where challenges have been made to Kennedy’s petitions from Democrats and their allies. Some of the challenges allege he falsely listed the same New York address that was the subject of litigation in that state, or that there were problems with petition signatures.

In Pennsylvania, challengers contend that papers filed by Kennedy list an incorrect address in New York and that he and his running mate demonstrated “at best, a fundamental disregard” of state law and the process by which signatures are gathered. An attorney for Kennedy said the challenge contained specious allegations. A court will conduct an evidentiary hearing next Tuesday in Harrisburg.

Kennedy’s campaign says it has collected enough signatures for ballot access in all 50 states and that it is officially on the ballot in 17 states.

His candidacy has at various times drawn concerns from both Democrats and Republicans who think he could siphon votes from their candidates.

National Democrats in particular have been active in trying to undercut his candidacy, while former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has alternated between criticizing Kennedy as liberal and courting his endorsement or the backing of some of his supporters.

Here’s a look at what is happening in New York, what it might mean and other ballot access challenges Kennedy faces.

What happened in New York? What’s next?

The ruling Monday followed a short trial in state court over whether Kennedy falsely listed a New York residence on his state nominating petitions.

The candidate listed a residence in the well-off suburb of Katonah, where he said he rents a bedroom in a friend’s house. Kennedy testified that he moved to California a decade ago so he could be with his wife, and that he always planned to return to New York, where he is registered to vote.

The lawsuit bought by several voters and backed by Democrat-aligned Clear Choice Action claimed Kennedy’s actual residence is in Los Angeles.

Days after the non-jury trial ended, Ryba ruled that using “a friend’s address for political and voting purposes, while barely stepping foot on the premises, does not equate to residency under the Election Law.”

In announcing the appeal Wednesday, the environmental lawyer and scion of a famous political family said the current Democratic Party was unrecognizable to him.

“The party of my father and uncle’s time was committed to expanding voters’ rights and understood that competition at the ballot box is an essential part of American Democracy,” he said in a statement.

Kennedy’s legal team also promised to seek injunctive relief in federal court in New York City. They argue that the U.S. Constitution’s 12th Amendment governs the residency of presidential and vice presidential candidates, not state law.

If upheld, will the New York decision affect challenges in other states?

Experts say officials in other states might pay attention to the ultimate ruling from New York courts about Kennedy’s residency.

The U.S. Constitution gives broad authority to individual states to oversee elections, said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at Texas Christian University. He said many states have laws that outline strict signature-gathering details or other requirements for candidates to get on the ballot as an independent.

“The question is whether or not in other states where they have similar criteria (as New York), it could be used to disqualify RFK Jr. from the ballot,” Gaddie said. “It may not happen everywhere, but it will happen somewhere else.”

Speaking to reporters after court in Albany last week, Kennedy acknowledged that a loss in New York could lead to lawsuits in other states.

Clear Choice Action said Kennedy has listed the same New York address on nominating petitions in 17 other states.

“It’s up to each state to determine whether Mr. Kennedy violated their laws and statutes by providing a false residence and deceiving voters,” Clear Choice Action founder Pete Kavanaugh said in a prepared statement.

Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News and an activist who supports ballot access for minor parties, said while some state-level challenges to Kennedy’s candidacy already have focused on the issue of his address, he doubted that new challenges will emerge because of the New York ruling.

“I don’t think they can just all of a sudden willy nilly change the basis of their objection,” he said. “I think generally it’s too late.”

He also doubted other laws in other states “make such a big deal” out of a candidate’s address.

Where else has Kennedy been challenged?

Winger said there have been challenges to Kennedy’s candidacy in states including Hawaii, Nebraska, New Jersey and Washington based on a variety of claims, such as problems with his address and the signatures needed to qualify him for the ballot.

The Democratic National Committee is backing challenges to Kennedy’s petitions in Nevada, Delaware and Georgia, according to a spokesperson. The committee is backing a separate lawsuit in New York.

Hearings will begin Monday in Georgia on challenges to ballot petitions filed by Kennedy and other-third party and independent candidates. Among other things, Democrats allege that Kennedy’s petitions are invalid because they are wrongly or incompletely filled out. The Kennedy campaign disputes those claims.

Outside of New York, Clear Choice Action is backing challenges to Kennedy’s petitions in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas. In Texas, an attorney for the group told state officials Kennedy’s listed New York address doesn’t comply with state election laws and that his candidacy should be invalidated.

—

Murphy contributed from Oklahoma City. Also contributing were Associated Press writers Mark Scolforo, Jeff Amy and Nomaan Merchant.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in a tax policy arms race, copying and one-upping each other’s proposals in a bid to court key battleground state voting blocs ahead of a looming battle in Washington to rewrite the tax code.

The duel highlights the central place of the economy in November’s vote, with American households battered by high costs and the campaigns seeking to emphasize pocketbook issues.

The back-and-forth over taxes has escalated in recent days. In an interview with CBS News over the weekend, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to outflank Democrats by floating a $5,000-per-child tax credit — $3,000 more than the size of the current credit and even larger than President Joe Biden has proposed.

Harris, rallying supporters in Nevada, endorsed a version of Trump’s own promise to exempt tipped wages from taxes.

Her pitch, in the same battleground state where Trump made his proposal two months ago, drew the ire of the Republican presidential nominee, who accused his Democratic rival of stealing his idea.

“The tit-for-tat here is amazing,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in an interview with Bloomberg’s Balance of Power.

“Joe Biden wants a child tax credit, so JD Vance wants a bigger child tax credit. Donald Trump says, ‘No tax on tips,’ so Kamala Harris says, ‘no taxes on tips,’ ” he said.

Goldwein, though, raised a critical question: “Who’s going to pay for all this?”

The scope of the tax changes being floated by the candidates could be budget-busting. While the Trump campaign has not released key details of its proposals, increasing the child tax credit could cost $2 trillion over the next decade. If the tax credits are refundable — meaning taxpayers would get money back even if they don’t owe taxes — it could be closer to $3 trillion.

“Detached from reality”

Trump has also proposed ending the tax on Social Security benefits entirely, replacing current policy that gives targeted tax breaks to lower-income seniors. His proposal could cost as much as $1.8 trillion and ultimately endanger the Social Security trust fund itself, according to nonpartisan budget watchers.

Largely absent from the discussion, for now, are the tax cuts from Trump’s 2017 tax law that will expire at the end of 2025. Extending those cuts carries a $4.6 trillion price tag.

“We’re not dealing with the elephant in the room, which is the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” said Erica York of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. “It’s scattershot, and it’s really detached from reality.”

None of the proposals being floated give any consideration to how the tax cuts will shift the tax burden — from older taxpayers to younger ones, from parents to people without dependent children, and from tipped workers to salaried ones.

“I wish we were in a situation where they were trying to one-up each other on serious tax proposals,” York said. “But instead the entire discussion is on the silly side of things.”

Election-year politics is driving the frenzy of proposals.

Trump won voters 65 and older by 5 percentage points in 2020, according to network exit polls. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him in a dead heat with that demographic against Harris.

Vance’s child tax credit proposal came during a round of weekend interviews in which he tried to deflect a barrage of attacks over past comments that the U.S. was run by “childless cat ladies.” Saying the tax code should support “pro-family” policies, Vance proposed a massive expansion of the child tax credit, with no income limits. That means middle- and upper-income families will get a bigger benefit from a tax provision that was originally designed as an anti-poverty program.

And it’s no coincidence that Trump first made his no-tax-on-tips pledge at a rally in the critical battleground of Nevada, a state with the largest proportion of food service and accommodations workers in its workforce. Those employees have historically relied on tips.

Guerrilla marketing

Trump has made “no tax on tips” a centerpiece of his stump speech, and his campaign is employing guerrilla marketing tactics to promote the policy. Donors to his campaign can receive stickers that read “VOTE TRUMP FOR NO TAX ON TIPS” to put on their restaurant checks.

Harris, too, chose Las Vegas to make a similar campaign promise to cut taxes on tips — although her proposal would apply only to federal income taxes and leave payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare intact. That largely accounts for the difference in price tags: about $250 billion over 10 years for the Trump plan, perhaps half that for Harris.

The Trump campaign responded by giving Harris a new nickname: “Copy Cat Kamala Harris.” But the proposal was already generating bipartisan support in Congress, especially among Democratic members of the Nevada delegation.

Vance’s proposal to increase the child tax credit marked an abrupt departure from his party’s orthodoxy. In a Senate vote this month, only three Republicans voted to increase the amount of the refundable credit.

Vance, who was campaigning in Arizona, skipped the vote. He blamed Harris for the measure failing, telling CBS’ Face the Nation that she “failed to show fundamental leadership.”

_____

(With assistance from Joe Mathieu.)

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.