On Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump will meet for what might be their only debate of the 2024 presidential election. It is an opportunity, you’ve probably heard, for Harris to help Americans understand who she is and what she stands for. In polling conducted by Siena College for the New York Times, 3 in 10 respondents said they needed to know more about Harris. On Tuesday, she can tell them.

If they’re watching.

That you are reading this article differentiates you from many Americans. You are a member of the subpopulation of people in this country who pay close attention to politics, to the extent that you are currently looking at an analysis about the centrality of that attention-paying to the outcome of this year’s presidential election. Your membership in this group is appreciated, obviously.

But most Americans aren’t reading this article. And most Americans will not watch Tuesday’s debate. While the number of people who have been tuning in to presidential debates has increased since a nadir during the blowout election year of 1996, there are also a lot more people living in America than there were then. (About 67 million more, to be specific.) So the 51.3 million people who watched President Joe Biden and Trump debate in late June was a relatively smaller part of the population than the 51.2 million who watched the third debate in 2004.

Viewership of the (unusually early) June debate was near the 1996-2000 low, adjusted for population.

This is the percentage of the total population, which is what Nielsen measures, rather than excluding kids who probably wouldn’t be inclined to watch — but as the population has gotten larger, it has also skewed more heavily older.

It’s also probably the case that viewership trended upward since 1996 in part because of increased partisan identification. The University of Wisconsin’s Barry Burden made this point before that Biden-Trump debate and it tracks: Higher investment in partisan success would suggest more interest in seeing how well each candidate does.

Interest in June might have been lower in part because the characters were familiar: Trump and Biden debated twice when they ran against each other in 2020. Harris is less well-known than Trump — as is just about everyone in America — which might encourage higher ratings on Tuesday.

Whether that means people who aren’t paying much attention to the election will tune in is another question entirely.

YouGov recently conducted polling for the Economist in which they asked Americans how much attention they had given the presidential contest. Less than half of respondents said they’d been paying a lot of attention. About three-quarters said they’d been paying at least some attention.

Attention was lower among a number of groups that would seem to be natural bases of support for Harris: women, younger voters and Black and Hispanic voters. In the Times-Siena College poll, these were also groups that were more likely to say they wanted to know more about Harris — and, at least in the latter categories, groups for which likely voters were more supportive of Harris than registered voters overall.

As we’ve noted before, there is an often underrecognized overlap between America’s younger, non-White and politically independent populations. Independents generally don’t pay as much attention to politics; that so many young people are independents is important to bear in mind here.

Will those people who aren’t paying attention watch the debate? Many won’t. But, then, research shows that the 2016 debates did less to shape views of candidates than the commentary that followed. It’s likely that a lot of people casually attached to the political process will encounter the debate through clips on social media. And many will not pay much attention until much closer to Election Day. In 2016, independents coalesced around Trump only in the last days of the election.

This is the other way in which attention and interest are informing our understanding of the presidential contest: It’s not clear who will turn out to vote. Trump has a steady base of support that in 2016 and 2020 sat a bit under 50 percent of voters. Running against Biden in 2024 before the president left the race, Trump started to see majority support in some polls. Against Harris, though, that has waned.

There are also signs that Harris could benefit from an energy that Biden lacked. Biden ran close to Trump in large part because voters wanted to express opposition to Trump; his support with younger and non-White voters this year lagged his own support in 2020. Now Black voters, a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds, are more energized to vote in November. Harris also is better positioned on abortion, a central issue in recent elections. When ballot measures or candidates have focused on increasing access to abortion, they have generally fared well, although it’s hard to know whether that pattern will translate to a higher-turnout presidential contest.

Debate viewership is driven by highly engaged people tuning in. So are elections, but they’re often decided by people who aren’t highly engaged, the sorts of people who somehow didn’t make it 800 words into an article about the dynamics of the election. They are also people who are definitionally harder to contact and inform — one reason that polling in recent years has at times been off the mark, including in underestimating the effects of the abortion-access question.

If debate viewership surges dramatically, it might indicate a surge in support that tells us something about the election outcome — but probably only in retrospect. Dissatisfying as it is, the best measure of how much attention people are paying will come on Election Day.

Six months ago, Donald Trump presented us all with a Rorschach test by predicting a “bloodbath” if he loses the 2024 election. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it,” Trump said while discussing the economy and his tariff plan. “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

Those on the left largely took Trump literally, citing how his supporters have risen up violently before, on Jan. 6, 2021. Those on the right argued that Trump was just speaking figuratively. The latter said he was talking about a metaphorical bloodbath.

Trump has now invoked the prospect of blood again, even after his own blood was spilled just two months ago. As usual, his comments are infused with the kind of suggestiveness that allows plausible deniability.

And as usual, the point is less about what he specifically meant than that Trump continues to unmistakably toy with the prospect of righteous violence — something that we well know can inflame his supporters.

Trump said Saturday in Wisconsin that cracking down on undocumented immigrants would be a “bloody story.”

He referred to the recent sensational claims about a Venezuelan street gang taking over an apartment complex in a Denver suburb. (Police say this has not happened.)

“And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said. “They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”

What follows here is a familiar exercise. Trump has promised a mass deportation operation if he’s elected — something that basic logic and history suggests could be fraught and violent, as “Operation Wetback” was in the 1950s. Trump’s critics read into his comments a promise that his plan, too, would be a “bloody story.” Trump’s defenders, by contrast, note that this was an extended riff specifically about Colorado; they say Trump was merely predicting that will be the resolution there because of how violent the Venezuelan street gang is. (You can see the full video and transcript and judge for yourself.)

The point is less what Trump specifically meant than the fact that he keeps painting these kinds of pictures. Even after his personal experiences with violence, Trump hasn’t been dissuaded from injecting the prospect of blood and violence into our discourse, often with a sense of righteousness attached to it.

Some key examples:

• He predicted “riots” if denied the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s 2016 convention.
• He said in November 2020 that a ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would “induce violence in the streets.”
• He warned in August 2022 that “terrible things are going to happen” after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. (He also promoted Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) prediction of “riots in the streets.”)
• He last year promoted a social media post in which a supporter said: “People my age and old[er] will physically fight for him this time. … They got my 6 and we Are Locked and LOADED.”
• Around the same time, he warned of “potential death & destruction” if he were indicted in Manhattan. He also posted, “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”
• In January, he warned of “bedlam in the country” if he were pursued on federal charges that he tried to interfere in the 2020 election.
• After his conviction in the New York hush money case, he alluded to his supporters reaching “a breaking point.”
• His former defense secretary has said Trump mused privately about shooting and wounding racial justice protesters to disperse demonstrations, and other reporting indicates he floated similarly violent crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and demonstrators.
• He has previously encouraged police to rough up criminals; praised a Montana politician while citing his assault of a reporter; invoked a notorious quote about shooting looters; suggested gun-rights supporters would be the last line of defense against Hillary Clinton’s judicial picks if she were president; alluded to police, soldiers and bikers loyal to him no longer being peaceful; and repeatedly made light of a brutal attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband.

Trump even did that last one again last weekend, citing how the wall around the Pelosis’ residence “didn’t help too much with the problem she had.”

It’s abundantly clear that Trump would at the very least like us all to imagine — and in his supporters’ cases perhaps fantasize about — his allies rising up and law enforcement engaging in deadly clashes to right the wrongs of society and take care of the ne’er-do-wells. It has characterized his rhetoric for years.

And it yet again suggests ugly scenes could be ahead.

Seemingly out of the blue Monday morning, supporters of former president Donald Trump began posting myriad AI-generated images depicting the Republican presidential nominee as a savior. Not of the American Dream or of Christianity, mind you, the normal targets of such praise. Instead, Trump was shown protecting ducks and kitty cats.

If you are not a denizen of the right’s conversational bubble, this will probably strike you as incomprehensible. If you are such a denizen, though, you know what’s happening: Trump and his allies — and his running mate! — are elevating false or unsubstantiated claims about immigrants injuring and eating pets and other animals. And of course, blaming the Biden administration and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for this thing-that-is-not-demonstrably-happening happening.

The claim centers on Springfield, Ohio, a small city a bit southwest of the state capital of Columbus. A screenshot of a Facebook post purportedly from a local resident warns that the author’s neighbor’s daughter’s friend had discovered that her neighbors — supposedly Haitian immigrants — were trying to eat her cat. She also claimed (this time crediting “Rangers & police”) that similar fates were befalling ducks and geese at a local park.

This message was clipped and shared by a putative breaking-news account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It was paired with a photo of a Black man carrying a goose and walking down a street. In short order, the post was picked up by a number of prominent voices on the right, including Trump adviser Stephen Miller. From there it metastasized, with people plucking pieces of information off the internet and attaching it to the original claim as though it was supporting evidence. A guy at a community meeting mentioned the ducks! An Ohio woman was recently arrested for eating a cat! Just proves the point.

Except that the guy carrying the goose was photographed in Columbus a month ago and is not obviously an immigrant from Haiti, much less one in Springfield.

And except that the woman arrested for eating the cat was also not obviously an immigrant — and was arrested in a different Ohio town about 100 miles northeast of Springfield.

And except that the local police say they have no reports of pets being stolen in a manner consistent with the posts. That guy who mentioned the ducks? A local podcaster wearing a sweatshirt promoting his mayoral bid in next year’s election.

None of this stopped Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), from jumping into the fray.

“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” he posted on X. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

Reports don’t “show” that, certainly, and the video clip Vance linked, from several months previously, includes no similar allegations. Instead, it focuses on the strain on public services and particularly housing that the town faced in light of the increase in new arrivals, an issue common to other places as well. What’s more, the Haitian immigrants at issue aren’t there illegally, as the city’s website explains. But the conversation in Vance’s universe was focused on the purported threat to Springfield’s cats, so he jumped right on in.

So did X’s owner, Elon Musk, as you might expect. The guy who bought Twitter with the explicit aim of making it friendlier to outlandish right-wing claims helpfully pointed out the eating-cats thing to activist Charlie Kirk, lest Kirk have missed that component of the fearmongering.

The story snowballed from various unverified reports, with people all over X and other platforms chucking their own little hunks of snow at it. In MAGA world, the alleged pet-eating is already a matter of fact, and Republican elected officials, including Vance, are hurrying to join the clout rush, the scramble to get attention and likes and followers by treating it as a serious issue.

This is a central reason that Vance and others on the right are susceptible to being described as “weird.” There’s an online world in which things get taken to the nth-degree because its economy rewards that sort of hyperbole. But then these obsessions and claims are taken out of that bubble and presented to everyone else and they don’t hold up. What else can you do but marvel at how strange it all is?

There’s another small-town Ohio story that got some traction over the weekend, too. In this one, a guy claims that his daughter sought to enroll her kid in preschool, only to learn that she would need to hire a translator since the class would be conducted entirely in Spanish to accommodate the other kids. The claim, elevated by a prominent right-wing account, has been retweeted more than 20,000 times.

It comes from the account “christianprepperr” on TikTok, and, like the claims about the pets, offers no evidence beyond anecdotes a few steps removed from the original source. It does tell a useful political story, though, one that the right is eager to hear.

Unfortunately for christianprepperr, the Springfield story ticked a few more of the boxes that make a rumor popular within that bubble. There’s always next time.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has expressed support for loosening federal restrictions on marijuana, aligning himself with the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to do exactly that.

In a social media post Sunday, Trump also said he would vote “yes” on a Florida ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana for adults in his home state.

“As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states’ rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens,” Trump wrote.

Trump had previously signaled support for the Florida ballot measure, though his latest post offered more detail about his policy views on marijuana. It is also the first time the former president has endorsed the easing of federal restrictions on the drug, a notable change given that his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, took a hard-line stance against marijuana and reestablished legal guidance allowing federal prosecutors to pursue cannabis crimes in states where the drug is legal.

Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia. In May, Biden endorsed his Justice Department’s proposal to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III controlled substance, removing it from the Schedule I category that includes heroin and LSD. That measure would put marijuana in the same category as prescription drugs such as ketamine and anabolic steroids, and speed up research into marijuana’s health benefits.

It would also boost profits for the flagging marijuana industry by allowing companies to claim federal tax deductions. Many financial institutions, including banks and credit card companies, will not provide services to marijuana companies because of the drug’s current status as a Schedule I drug; congressional members from both parties have supported legislation that would ensure cannabis companies access to those services.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has scheduled a Dec. 2 hearing on the proposed rescheduling, raising the possibility that it will not be decided until after the winner of the Nov. 5 presidential election takes office.

Trump’s announcement was surprising because it aligns him with President Joe Biden on marijuana reform, said Lee Hannah, a professor of political science in Wright State University in Ohio, which last year became the largest red state to legalize recreational marijuana. It also marks the first instance presidential candidates from both major political parties support large-scale cannabis reform. Trump’s support for loosening restrictions on marijuana could help on the electoral margins because the drug is popular across parties, said Hannah, co-author of “Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the American States.”

“You could view it as Trump definitely trying to court young voters and young men,” Hannah said.

Hannah said Trump’s appointment of Sessions during his presidency was more about cracking down on illegal immigration. “Sessions came with being a hard-liner on drugs,” Hannah said. “I think Trump has always been a little looser and less concerned about the issue.”

Despite unease among some members of his party on loosening marijuana restrictions, Trump on Sunday wrote on Truth Social: “It is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”

Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes marijuana rescheduling, called Trump’s announcement “election-year politics at its worst.” He said many Republican leaders he knows “behind closed doors are extremely disappointed.”

Two dozen congressional Republicans have spoken out against reclassifying the drug. In July, 23 GOP lawmakers urged the administration to withdraw the proposal. “It is clear that this proposed rule was not properly researched … and is merely responding to the popularity of marijuana and not the actual science,” wrote the group led by Rep. Pete Sessions (Tex.) and Sen. James Lankford (Okla.).

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said in a statement that “while we have always enjoyed bipartisan support, it should be a powerful signal to the rest of the Republican Party when even Donald Trump can get on board.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, after Trump first suggested he was supporting the Florida ballot measure, her campaign accused him of “brazen flip-flops” on multiple issues.

“Trump now suggests he is for legalizing marijuana — but as President, his own Justice Department cracked down on marijuana offenses,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams said in a memo.

As vice president, Harris has been a vocal proponent of reclassifying marijuana. In March, while the federal government was still reviewing the classification, she said the process needs to be done “as quickly as possible,” and called it “absurd” that marijuana was still treated as more dangerous than fentanyl. She has been less outspoken about marijuana reform since replacing Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee this summer.

In Florida, where Trump lives, the proposed constitutional amendment would legalize possession of up to 3 ounces for those 21 and older. The ballot measure needs 60 percent of the vote to pass and faces opposition from Florida Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former rival for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Marijuana industry organizations immediately hailed Trump’s support.

Trump joins millions of Americans who have “reassessed their views on cannabis in recent years,” said David Culver, vice president of the U.S. Cannabis Council, a trade group representing the regulated marijuana industry. “We believe cannabis reform is a winning issue.”

When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, one of his desired outcomes was to bolster his wavering leadership position. He didn’t exactly get what he wanted; soon after Johnson touted Trump’s support, the former president told reporters that Johnson’s fate was still up in the air.

But Trump got what he wanted, which was Johnson’s commitment to focusing on a new — and almost entirely imaginary — threat to America’s elections.

A few weeks later, Johnson stood outside the Capitol with a phalanx of Trump supporters and allies in the president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election to promote a new piece of legislation. Its focus? Illegal votes cast by noncitizens.

Reporters pointed out to Johnson that there was no evidence this happened to any significant degree, a point that Johnson couldn’t rebut. Still, he insisted, “we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable.” So he and his allies pressed on, repeatedly claiming that this “intuitive” problem existed and demanded a resolution.

For Republicans generally and Trump specifically, it’s easy to see the political appeal. The contrived issue combines the right’s interest in centering the presidential contest on immigration with Trump’s insistences that our elections are under attack from fraud. And it’s easy to disparage Democrats for opposing a law that makes noncitizen voting illegal — even though it already is.

Polling conducted by Ipsos last month shows that the idea that immigrants in the country illegally will cast invalid ballots this November hasn’t gained much traction; only a third of Americans believe that’s likely to happen. But a third is a lot — and that third is made up heavily of Republicans. Within Trump’s and Johnson’s party, nearly two-thirds say this threat is serious.

It’s useful to consider that in light of other recent polling from Ipsos, conducted for ABC News. It determined that about two-thirds of Americans believed that Joe Biden’s 2020 election was legitimate — though only a third of Republicans said that it was.

Since ABC News first asked about the legitimacy of 2020 in January 2021 (soon after the Capitol riot), views of Biden’s election haven’t changed much. Then, about 30 percent of respondents said he wasn’t legitimately elected. Now, about 30 percent still do.

Other polling shows a similar pattern. CNN, for example, has repeatedly asked not only whether Biden’s election was legitimate but whether Americans felt that there was solid evidence to suggest that it wasn’t. The percentage of Republicans who say the election was illegitimate has been consistent even as the percentage claiming that there’s solid evidence has fallen. But it was still the case in August 2023 that 4 in 10 Republicans say solid evidence exists that the election was illegitimate.

Again, that was in August 2023, more than 30 months after the 2020 election. Thirty months, mind you, in which Trump and his supporters worked feverishly to find any such evidence, without luck. It’s simply a belief either that debunked or insignificant claims are valid or that non-debunked evidence exists out there somewhere, awaiting discovery by objective observers.

They knew intuitively that the election was illegitimate, you might say, but it’s not been easily provable.

So we have this new idea, one bolstered by incessant reinforcement from Republican officials and misleading campaigns by their right-wing allies. And it is working, convincing Republicans that immigrants in the country illegally — and therefore presumably trying to stay off the government’s radar — are going to risk their security to be one of perhaps as many as 160 million votes cast across the country.

Trump’s recent pledge to prosecute election “cheaters” should be considered in light of this issue. His base is primed not only to reject an unfavorable outcome in November but to see immigrants as a culpable party in his defeat. It’s a belief that Trump and Johnson and others have inculcated not because it’s a real problem but because by doing so, they think, they increase the odds of retaking the White House.

One way or another.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s election police unit is investigating alleged fraud in signature gathering for the state’s upcoming abortion referendum in a move that critics say is designed to intimidate voters.

In the past week, two people reported that an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived at their homes and asked them about petitions they had signed months ago to add Amendment 4 to the November ballot.

One voter, Isaac Menasche, posted on his Facebook page Wednesday that a detective questioned him about his signature and showed him a folder containing 10 pages of his personal information.

“The experience left me shaken,” Menasche wrote, adding that he had signed the petition. “Troubling that so much resources were devoted to this.”

Menasche confirmed the content of the post to The Washington Post but declined to comment further.

The probe comes as Democrats and election experts express concern that DeSantis is using the powers of the state to derail the referendum, which would nullify a six-week abortion ban the Republican governor signed into law last year. The state’s health care agency recently launched a website that claims the amendment “threatens women’s safety.”

“They want people to stay home and to not vote,” Democratic state Rep. Fentrice Driskell said at a virtual news conference Monday. “They want people to read these articles and hear it on social media that the police showed up at somebody’s door and intimidated them and made them feel bad about signing an Amendment 4 petition.”

DeSantis, for his part, defended the actions of his election police unit, saying Monday the state received “a lot of complaints” about a petition-gathering group. He said the group had submitted “dozens of petitions” on behalf of dead people. He did not name the group, and a Florida Department of State spokesperson declined to answer a request for more details, pointing only to DeSantis’s remarks on the issue.

“They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re following the law, and they’re ensuring that anyone that broke the law is going to be held accountable,” DeSantis said. “Our tolerance in the state of Florida for any type of election related fraud is zero.”

Although confirmed cases of voter fraud in Florida and across the country are rare, DeSantis urged the legislature to create the Office of Election Crimes and Security Unit in 2022. The unit has fielded thousands of complaints since then but has reported only a few dozen arrests.

Many of the arrests involve formerly incarcerated people accused of breaking the law by casting a ballot. Florida restored voting rights for most felons through a constitutional referendum in 2018, except those who had been charged with murder or felony sexual offenses. Several of those charged said they were unaware certain felons could not vote and that they applied for voter registration cards, which the state granted.

A number of their cases were initially dismissed by judges on grounds that the statewide prosecutor did not have jurisdiction over the cases. Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature later changed state law to ensure that the prosecutor did have the right to pursue those cases.

Proponents of the abortion rights amendment were required to collect 891,523 signatures verified by the state Division of Elections by Feb. 1 to place the amendment on the ballot.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the umbrella group that helped coordinate the signature collection effort across the state, said it gathered more than 1 million petition signatures for the amendment a month before the deadline. The state verified 910,946 of those signatures in January.

Elections investigators began reviewing petitions last year for proposed ballot issues including the abortion rights proposal, but also other measures, such as an upcoming vote on recreational marijuana.

In February and March, the agency announced charges against three people accused of submitting 50 fraudulent petitions for the abortion amendment. The FDLE said two of those people had used the names of dead people on “multiple constitutional amendment initiatives.” The investigations of the two people began before the Amendment 4 petition drive began.

The DeSantis administration has challenged the abortion referendum in court with mixed results. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody succeeded in having a financial impact statement placed on the ballot. The state Supreme Court approved the financial language last month.

But the same court, where DeSantis appointees make up the majority, also surprised the governor’s administration when it allowed the abortion amendment to go on the ballot.

Floridians Protecting Freedom hired PCI Consultants to do most of the petition-gathering. PCI president Angelo Paparella said about 1,000 paid canvassers, along with hundreds of volunteers, collected more than 1.3 million signatures. He said about 1 million were valid registered voters and that a “very small number” were turned over to elections supervisors on suspicion of being fraudulent.

Paparella’s California-based company has been collecting signatures for Florida ballot initiatives since 1998.

“If we suspected fraud, we proactively turned those over to the county,” he said. “It’s such a small number, and we catch a lot of it. The counties check if the signatures match. Anybody committing fraud, it’s just a really stupid crime. It’s very time consuming, and they’re not making that much money. They may as well just do it the right way.”

NEW YORK — Justice Elena Kagan on Monday brushed aside concerns about whether lower-court judges could effectively enforce the Supreme Court’s new ethics rules, saying those on the federal bench are more than capable of holding justices to account.

“I just think judges are not so afraid of us,” Kagan said. “I think there are plenty of judges around this country who could do a task like that in a very fair-minded and serious way.”

Kagan was expanding on her recent suggestion that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appoint an outside panel of highly experienced judges to review allegations of wrongdoing or questions about recusal decisions by the justices, some of whom have faced questions in recent years over unreported gifts of luxury travel and potential conflicts of interest in key cases.

The court adopted a code of conduct specific to the nine justices last fall for the first time. But the policy was quickly panned because it does not include a way to examine alleged misconduct, review whether the justices have recused themselves when necessary, or clear or sanction justices who might violate the rules.

Having an oversight committee made up of well-respected lower-court judges “seems like a good idea to me in terms of ensuring that we comply with our code of conduct going forward in the future; it seems like a good idea in terms of ensuring that people have confidence that we’re doing exactly that,” Kagan said during a wide-ranging conversation at New York University Law School with professor Melissa Murray, co-host of a liberal podcast about the court called “Strict Scrutiny.”

The discussion touched on the historic number of women on the high court, collegiality among the justices and the rising number of requests for emergency action that can require the justices to quickly resolve complex issues — at least temporarily — without holding oral argument.

Kagan said she and her three female colleagues — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — have made their voices known on a court historically dominated by men. She noted that together the four of them speak more at oral argument than the five men on the bench.

“We’re not shrinking violets,” Kagan said, while emphasizing that the women can differ markedly in their views. “It’s not a matter of outcomes. It’s a matter of what messages you’re sending to society about the role of women in the society and about how they can participate at the highest levels.”

When asked about the decline in the number of cases on the Supreme Court’s docket in the last decade, Kagan noted that the court has in contrast been inundated with emergency requests from the federal government and state attorneys general. She suggested that the court should be restrained in taking up cases without a full briefing and before the appeals courts have ruled.

There are times, she said, that the court has to intervene quickly when the majority thinks a lower-court ruling is so out of step or involves such broad harm that the justices can’t wait years for a case to make its way to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, Kagan said, “I don’t think we do our best work in this way.”

Kagan is one of three justices nominated by a Democratic president on a bench with a conservative supermajority that has rapidly moved the law to the right. In the term that ended in July, Kagan was on the losing side in several high-profile cases, most notably when the majority granted Donald Trump broad immunity from prosecution for his official actions in the White House. She authored the dissent when the majority overturned a 40-year-old precedent to rein in the power of federal agencies to regulate major areas of American life.

The justices are preparing for another contentious term that will begin next month. Already on the docket are cases involving state bans on gender transition care for people younger than 18 and a challenge to the Biden administration’s restrictions on “ghost guns,” weapons made from homemade kits that can be assembled into firearms. And the justices almost certainly will be called on to resolve election-related disputes surrounding the presidential contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new term will open as public confidence in the Supreme Court remains at historic lows. Seven in 10 Americans think the justices make decisions based on their own ideologies, rather than serving as an independent check on the government, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released in June.

The court has been under intense scrutiny, with some justices facing questions about their off-the-bench conduct. In the case last term involving Trump, two justices — Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.— dismissed calls to recuse themselves because of perceived potential conflicts of interest involving political activity by their wives.

President Joe Biden has proposed sweeping changes for the high court, including 18-year term limits for the justices and a binding, enforceable ethics code.

None of the justices have spoken out publicly about the term limits idea, but Kagan in July called for a committee of judges to enforce the ethics code, and Jackson has said she would also support some type of enforcement mechanism.

On Monday, Kagan was asked to respond to criticism of her proposed enforcement mechanism, including from Kelly Shackelford, president of the influential Christian conservative legal organization First Liberty. In a private conference call in late July, ProPublica reported, Shackelford characterized Kagan’s suggestion as “somewhat treasonous” and “disloyal” and said it would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.”

Kagan emphasized on Monday that she was referring to steps the court itself could take to ensure its rules are enforced. She has great confidence, she said, in the chief justice’s ability to appoint a commission of judges, as he has to address past issues. Kagan said she was not commenting on legislation that Congress might try to impose on the court because such a proposal could end up in litigation before the Supreme Court.

Kagan joked that Shackelford’s characterization was a little like saying someone is “somewhat pregnant,” adding, “I don’t want to dignify that any further.”

First Liberty Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser told The Washington Post on Monday that Shackelford had sent a letter, dated Sept. 9, to apologize to Kagan for using an inappropriate term and for assuming she was inviting other branches in to control the court.

Some Republicans, including Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, on Monday amplified the false and dehumanizing claim that immigrants in Ohio who came into the country during the Biden-Harris administration are injuring and eating Americans’ pets.

The baseless and bizarre belief drew Republicans’ attention Monday after Vance — who has long claimed that immigrants are draining resources in towns like Springfield, Ohio — shared a post on X in which he cited unnamed “reports” claiming that people in the town west of Columbus “have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Police in Springfield told local news outlets that there are no reports of pets being stolen or eaten in the city.

Still, Vance tied the baseless suggestion that immigrants are hurting animals to the Biden-Harris administration, in what appeared to be an effort to attack Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“Where is our border czar?” Vance said in his post on X — calling Harris by a label Republicans have given to the vice president, despite there being no position by that name in the Biden administration.

Though Harris was not in charge of border policy during the Biden administration, she was tasked with meeting with the leaders of Central American countries to discuss the factors that push immigrants out of their home countries — a role Republicans have sought to use to tie the issue of immigration to her on the campaign trail. Spokespeople for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Republicans’ attacks.

On Monday, Vance’s sentiment attacking Harris and demonizing immigrants in Springfield was quickly echoed by the Trump campaign and other Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.). In a news release, the Trump campaign said residents of Springfield have “been left in terror as migrants overtake the once-quiet city” and that migrants were “dumped” “unvetted” in the city because of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.

While Vance, who represents Ohio in the Senate, and the Trump campaign appeared to suggest that Haitian immigrants in Springfield arrived illegally and without proper vetting, the growing population of Haitian immigrants there live and work in the United States legally, according to an FAQ put together by the City of Springfield. Per the document, Haitian immigrants in Springfield arrived under the Immigration Parole Program and were allowed to apply for temporary protected status, an authorization that gives them the ability to work legally in the United States. To receive such status, immigrants must maintain a clean crime record.

In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for Vance said the senator received a “high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield,” which prompted his tweet attacking Harris and citing the unverified reports about immigrants.

“Many residents have contacted Senator Vance to share their concerns over crime and traffic accidents, and to express that they no longer feel safe in their own homes,” the spokesperson said. “JD takes his constituents’ concerns seriously,” the spokesperson added.

The baseless notion that immigrants are hurting animals in Springfield appears to come from a viral Facebook post first shared in a Springfield Facebook group in which a user claimed that their neighbor’s daughter’s friend had found her lost cat hanging from a branch at a home where a Haitian neighbor lives.

The user then claimed, without evidence, that “Rangers & police” had told them that Haitian neighbors had also been hanging ducks and geese for butchering. Per the Springfield News-Sun, Springfield Police said Monday they are aware of the social media posts but that there was no evidence of such claims and that the issue is “not something that’s on our radar right now.”

But the police statement did not stop Republicans from amplifying Vance and the Trump campaign’s messaging against Harris and immigrants. The Trump campaign, in its news release, cited a Daily Mail story covering the Facebook user’s baseless claims and, in a post shared on X, the Trump War Room said Trump, if elected “will deport migrants who eat pets. Kamala Harris will send them to your town next. Make your choice, America.”

Cruz on X shared an image of two cats hugging each other with overlaid text reading: “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.” Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Tex.) shared a video on X that contained AI-generated footage of Trump kissing a duck and knitting next to a cat.

“We cannot allow our pets to become a hot lunch for Kamala’s newcomers,” Hunt said in his post. “This November, you can do your part. Protect the Animals. Vote Trump.”

And, also on Monday, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced that his office would “exhaust all possibilities” to address the arrival of “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities,” arguing that residents have, among other things, complained that migrants were reportedly “killing wildlife for food.”

“This is absurd — Springfield has swollen by more than a third due to migrants,” Yost said in a statement. “The problem is not migrants, it is way, way too many migrants in a short period of time.”

The baseless claims that migrants have killed pets and wildlife are part of Trump’s broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants, which during this election cycle has included portraying migrants as violent criminals — despite there being little evidence immigrants cause more crime than native-born Americans — and saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He’s also touted plans for militarized mass deportations of migrants, should he win back the White House.

Vance, specifically, has previously derided Haitian immigrants in Springfield, claiming that migrants have stressed the city’s ability to provide housing opportunities to residents, strained public resources and lowered the wages of American workers. He said that about 15,000 to 20,000 immigrants have arrived in the city of about 60,000 in the past four years — similar numbers as those cited by the City of Springfield, including its mayor, Rob Rue, who in a July interview with “Fox & Friends First” said the city needed federal aid for support as it adjusts to the influx of migrants, many of whom said are Haitian.

“We are doing the best we can to take care of those who have come to us as visitors, those who have come in due to protected asylum,” Rue told Fox News. “The growth has been so large that this is causing difficulties for us to safely serve this community.”

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville has blocked the promotion of an Army general who is a senior aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, people familiar with the matter said, threatening a confrontation between the Republican firebrand and the Pentagon just weeks before the presidential election while reviving a months-old furor over the military chief’s medical secrecy.

Tuberville (Ala.) has frozen the nomination of Lt. Gen. Ronald P. Clark to become the four-star commander of all U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, according to the senator’s spokeswoman, Mallory Jaspers, and two other officials familiar with the emerging standoff. The maneuver, which has not been previously reported, restricts Clark’s nomination from coming up for a vote in the Senate and could mark the beginning of the end of his 36-year military career.

Clark, 58, was serving in his role as Austin’s senior military assistant when the defense secretary underwent surgery on Dec. 22 to treat prostate cancer and a week later was admitted to intensive care in crisis, having developed severe complications from the procedure. Austin, who turned 71 in August, spent about two weeks in the hospital and eventually was diagnosed with infections in his urinary tract and bladder.

The incident caused an uproar in Washington after it emerged that Clark and other senior members of Austin’s staff did not know about his cancer diagnosis and surgery until he was in intensive care on Jan. 2, and then withheld that information from President Joe Biden and senior White House officials for two more days once they were made aware.

Eventually, the Pentagon disclosed Austin’s hospitalization to Congress and the American public on Jan. 5, three days after his top aides learned about it. The secrecy angered lawmakers from both political parties, who said the defense secretary’s decision showed a stunning lack of judgment.

Jaspers, in a statement, linked the hold on Clark’s promotion directly to the political imbroglio over Austin’s health crisis.

“Sen. Tuberville has concerns about Lt. Gen. Clark’s actions during Secretary Austin’s hospitalization,” Jaspers told The Washington Post in a statement. “Lt. Gen. Clark knew that Sec. Austin was incapacitated and did not tell the Commander in Chief. As a senior commissioned officer, Lt. Gen. Clark’s oath requires him to notify POTUS when the chain of command is compromised.” POTUS is shorthand for president of the United States.

Jaspers added that Tuberville is awaiting the results of a forthcoming Defense Department inspector general review of the incident, potentially leaving an off-ramp in the dispute.

Another Senate aide familiar with the issue said that if Tuberville had not placed a hold on Clark’s nomination, another Republican may have done so. Some Democrats also have concerns about how Austin’s hospitalization was handled, the aide added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the issue remains sensitive.

A Pentagon spokesman, James Adams, said in a statement that Clark has served in several positions of leadership in recent military conflicts and previously led troops in the Pacific. The job for which he has been nominated would place him at the forefront of the Pentagon’s efforts to contain China and defend Taiwan.

“Lt. Gen. Clark is highly qualified and was nominated for this critical position because of his experience and strategic expertise,” the statement said. “We urge the Senate to confirm all of our qualified nominees. These holds undermine our military readiness.”

The situation has echoes of an extended hold that Tuberville placed on hundreds of military promotions last year, in a dispute over the Pentagon’s travel-reimbursement policy for personnel who seek an abortion outside the state where they are stationed. Tuberville’s showdown with the Defense Department then gummed up the military personnel system for months. Eventually, his Republican colleagues decried the gambit as damaging and he backed down.

In the case of Austin’s hospitalization, Pentagon officials have said that at no point was command and control of the U.S. military in doubt. Yet they have struggled to explain why they waited days to notify the White House. Austin’s chief of staff at the time, Kelly Magsamen, was sick with the flu, defense officials said, but other senior aides — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. — also knew about Austin’s condition and did not communicate it.

Magsamen resigned from her role in June. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, told reporters then that Magsamen has “earned some well-deserved time off,” and that her departure had nothing to do with forthcoming findings by the inspector general.

Austin apologized to the nation during a news conference on Feb. 1, saying the cancer diagnosis was a “gut punch” that he did not handle well.

“I want to be crystal clear: We did not handle this right. I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters then. “I should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis. I should have also told my team and the American public, and I take full responsibility.”

The matter has been under review by Robert Storch, the Defense Department inspector general, since January, with the independent watchdog promising then “to examine the roles, processes, procedures, and actions” surrounding Austin’s surgery and subsequent hospitalization. Mollie Halpern, a spokeswoman for Storch, said in an email Monday that she was unable to disclose when the review may be completed. The inspector general’s office, she said, does not provide timelines about ongoing work “to protect the integrity of the investigative process.”

Another Pentagon review commissioned by Magsamen found in February that there was “no attempt to obfuscate” Austin’s cancer diagnosis, and that Austin’s aides felt constrained by medical privacy laws. That review, conducted by career civil servants, was dismissed by Republicans as an incomplete examination of the facts by Austin’s subordinates.

North Carolina’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can have his name removed from election ballots in the key swing state, denying an appeal from the State Board of Elections that would have kept him on the ballot.

Local election officials estimate that designing, printing and preparing new ballots without Kennedy’s name will delay the process of sending out ballots by a minimum of two weeks and cost cash-strapped county offices more than $1 million, The Washington Post reported last week.

If Kennedy stays on the ballot, “it could disenfranchise countless voters who mistakenly believe that plaintiff remains a candidate for office,” the North Carolina Supreme Court said in its 4-3 ruling.

It acknowledged that the process of printing new ballots will “require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the State” but said that this was a price worth paying to “protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience.”

When Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed former president Donald Trump last month, he also requested that his name be withdrawn from ballots in 10 battleground states, which he said was to ensure he does not swing the election to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Earlier this week, the North Carolina State Court of Appeals ordered a reprint of mail ballots without Kennedy’s name, prompting the State Board of Elections to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

In its plea, the board pointed out that Kennedy had not sought to remove his name in all states, mitigating his right to do so in North Carolina, particularly considering how local election officials would be adversely affected.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said Monday in a statement following the North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling that 27 counties had started printing ballots and almost all others had finalized their proofs at the time of Kennedy’s withdrawal announcement Aug. 23.

More than half of the counties had started printing ballots by the time Kennedy’s campaign contacted the state board three days later to ask about the process of withdrawing his name, Bell said.

“We will continue to consult with counties and ballot vendors to determine the feasible start date for distributing absentee ballots statewide,” she said, adding that discussions had begun with the Defense Department on a potential waiver of the Sept. 21 federal deadline to send out overseas and military ballots, should ballots not be ready in all counties by that date.

Earlier Monday, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against Kennedy’s request to remove his name from ballots there, reversing a lower court’s ruling last week.

Kennedy “neither pointed to any source of law that prescribes and defines a duty to withdraw a candidate’s name from the ballot nor demonstrated his clear legal right to performance of this specific duty,” the decision said.

Harris and Trump are locked in a tight race in the seven battleground states that are most likely to determine the outcome of the election. In North Carolina, Trump currently leads Harris by less than one point, according to The Washington Post’s polling average, while Harris leads Trump by one point in Michigan.