The 2024 election is less than three weeks away. But who wins isn’t the only major question; so too is what happens afterward. And more specifically, it’s whether a large chunk of the country baselessly rejects the election results (again) and whether a segment of them might take to drastic measures (again).

The bad news on that front: Despite the utter lack of evidence — nearly four years later — that the 2020 election was stolen, Donald Trump’s supporters actually appear more primed to believe the election will be stolen in 2024 than they were in 2020.

The differences aren’t huge, but the big chunk of Trump supporters who are inclined to distrust the election results looms large as Trump prepares to again reject a potential loss.

A new Economist/YouGov poll shows Trump supporters say by a 2-to-1 margin that they have little or no confidence that the election results will be fair, versus having a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence. While more than 4 in 10 say they have little or no confidence, fewer than a quarter say they have a lot. (The rest say they have “moderate” confidence.)

Just before the 2020 election, it was close to an even split, with only slightly more expressing a lack of confidence.

The numbers were similar in an NPR/PBS News/Marist College poll released earlier this month.

That survey showed 57 percent of Republicans were “very concerned” there would be voter fraud in the 2024 election. That’s compared to just more than 4 in 10 who thought such fraud was “very likely” in early 2020.

These same polls show Democrats have become marginally more confident in the election results, despite already having been far more confident than Republicans.

Other data get at just how prevalent these beliefs are today, including in the swing states.

A recent poll in Pennsylvania showed Republicans said 63 percent to 37 percent that they were “not too confident” or “not at all confident” that the election results would be counted fairly and accurately. A poll in Georgia in September showed a majority of Republicans there lacked confidence (though that was at least down from the same poll in June).

The Marist poll also shows 58 percent of Trump supporters are “very concerned” about noncitizens voting in the 2024 election, and nearly 9 in 10 are at least “concerned” about that.

That gets at the problem here. At least with voter fraud, there are isolated incidents that people can point to (even as there has been no widespread fraud). There is far less proof of noncitizen voting. But Republicans have played up the issue anyway, using misleading claims about noncitizens being on the voter rolls and pushing for legislative fixes.

They say that’s needed to instill confidence in the process, but that confidence is depressed in large part because of Trump’s many ridiculous and debunked claims about voter fraud. And it’s easy to see how playing up a purported problem with so little evidence behind it might actually increase suspicions.

Just because Trump supporters are more primed to worry about voter fraud in 2024 doesn’t mean we’ll see a repeat of 2020; that’s not the only factor here. Other factors include how close the election is in the key states and how much Trump’s allies go along with whatever stolen-election campaign Trump mounts. Republicans could reason that election denialism is a losing issue for them after a third straight disappointing election.

Conservative media outlets and others who echoed and credulously promoted the claims of voter fraud could be given pause by the lawsuits that resulted from their handling of the 2020 election; Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, and some of the most prominent election deniers, such as Rudy Giuliani, have faced their own legal reckonings. Those who might consider drastic measures might also worry about their fate matching that of the hundreds of Capitol riot defendants who have been convicted of crimes.

But the new numbers are particularly striking because there was some evidence after the 2022 election that this fever was breaking. While some Republicans, such as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, made similar claims about their races being stolen, few others did. And polls showed Republicans by and large didn’t reject or question the results nearly as much as they had in 2020 — even as the election was another disappointment for their party.

Of course, now Trump is running again and stoking their fears again. And the early evidence is that’s a toxic mixture for democracy and the country — again.

Nebraska residents who were convicted of felonies and have finished their sentences can vote in the November election, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, potentially opening the door for thousands of Nebraskans to cast their ballot.

The ruling could have implications for the presidential race as Nebraska, which is solidly red, is one of two states that awards some of its electoral votes by congressional district.

Wednesday’s ruling comes after Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R) in July directed county officials to stop registering people to vote who had felony convictions and had not been pardoned by the Nebraska Board of Pardons. Evnen and two of his Republican colleagues, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and Attorney General Mike Hilgers, make up the board.

Shortly after Evnen gave the directive, the American Civil Liberties Union and others sued, saying that Evnen’s decision “effectively orders county election officials to disregard state law.” Nebraska in April passed L.B. 20, a bill restoring voting rights for felons upon completion of their sentence, including probation and parole time. The state’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Evnen to comply with L.B. 20 and “remove any disqualification on registration he has imposed that is not contained within” the law.

Nebraska’s split electoral vote system offers Vice President Kamala Harris a shot at securing one of the state’s five electoral votes. But former president Donald Trump and his GOP allies in the state, including Pillen, in recent weeks have undertaken a last-minute push for the state to move to a winner-take-all system.

In recent years, multiple states have moved to allow people with felony convictions to vote. According to the ACLU, 15 states allow people with felony convictions to vote only upon completion of their sentence and 10 others allow some felons to vote, while restricting others based on the nature of their offense or whether they have been pardoned. In most of the other states, people who are in prison cannot vote, but everyone else can. Two states, Maine and Vermont, allow everyone to vote.

Jeremy Jonak, a plaintiff in the lawsuit to enforce L.B. 20 in Nebraska, described the ruling as a “weight off my shoulders.” Jonak, a resident of Hall County, Nebraska, had completed the sentence for his felony conviction and wanted to register to vote, according to the ACLU’s lawsuit.

“Over the years, so many of us have earned a second chance,” Jonak said in a statement Wednesday. “We live in every part of the state, and the truth is most of us are just trying to live our lives and leave the past behind us. Thanks to this decision, we get to have a say as part of our communities.”

Evnen said in a statement Wednesday that his office would be “following the requirements of the decision,” adding that it was “working to ensure that those who were made eligible to register to vote under LB 20 may now do so.”

Nebraska’s deadline for online voter registration is Friday, and the state allows in person registrations until Oct. 25.

President Joe Biden, who has long idolized Robert F. Kennedy and who served for decades in the Senate with Edward M. Kennedy, on Wednesday delivered an emotional eulogy for Ethel Kennedy.

He dabbed his eyes several times. He apologized for his emotions. His voice grew faint as he recounted the ways in which Ethel Kennedy, Robert’s widow, comforted him in times of grief, when he considered leaving public office and when his family was shattered.

“Like she did for the country, Ethel helped my family find a way forward with principle and purpose,” Biden said. “To the Kennedy family, the Biden family is here for you, as you’ve always been for us. You changed the life of my boys, you really did.”

Biden’s remarks were the culmination of nearly three hours in Washington’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle marking the life of Ethel Kennedy, who died last week at age 96. The memorial service brought together stars from decades of Democratic politics, with musical performances from Sting, Stevie Wonder and Kenny Chesney, as well as plenty of Washington intrigue.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ethel Kennedy’s son, whose independent run for president divided the family and whose endorsement of Donald Trump has infuriated many within it, was among those in attendance. But while many of Ethel Kennedy’s children spoke during the service, RFK Jr. did not play any role.

Few figures could have attracted the political royalty that attended Wednesday’s event, a reminder of the dominant, glamorous role played by the Kennedys in a Washington gone by. Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat just a few seats away from Biden, but the two did not appear to interact. Pelosi has recently said they have not spoken in months, after she played a catalytic role in pressing Biden to end his bid for reelection.

Biden was seated beside two of his predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “Mr. President. Mr. President. Mr. President,” Pelosi said from the stage, acknowledging the trio. “How perfect for Ethel to have three great presidents of the United States speak at her funeral.”

When Biden spoke later, he looked into the audience and recognized Obama and Clinton by name, before lumping Pelosi in with “other distinguished guests.”

The service focused on a matriarch who, speakers said, had a love of sailboats and a dining room table that could always fit one more, a lively spirit who poured her heart into both social causes and family charade games. Her children talked about “Mummy” leading them on ski trips, piling them into a convertible — and bringing them to Senate hearings or to the Department of Justice to visit their father at work.

Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, served as attorney general in the Kennedy administration from 1961 through 1963, when JFK was assassinated. He was then elected to the Senate from New York, mounting his own presidential run in 1968 until he, too, was assassinated on June 5 of that year.

Kennedy and Biden are the only two Catholic presidents in American history, and that, as well as a shared history of tragedy, has bound their families together. Biden lost his first wife and infant daughter in a car crash in 1972 shortly after being elected to the Senate, and his son Beau died in 2015 of brain cancer.

At the memorial, Ethel’s grandchildren talked about her roguish sense of humor and her regular advice to seek forgiveness rather than permission. She imparted, in the words of one of her grandchildren, “the value of both manners and mischief.”

“She was a big dose in a small package,” Obama said, calling her “a spitfire” who had an “irrepressible spirit.” He recounted a touch football game in which she bit author George Plimpton in the ankle. He noted her menagerie of family pets that included dogs and cats as well as a hawk, an armadillo and a seal (“Not sure where they kept the seal,” Obama added).

“Her life was marked by more tragedy and heartbreak than most of us could bear,” Obama said. “And she would have been forgiven, I think, if at any point she had stepped away from public life or allowed bitterness to fester after all she and her family had been through. But that’s not what Ethel did, because that’s not who she was.”

Clinton initially said he was not sure he could add anything that had not already been said, but then he found a way: “I thought your mother was the cat’s meow,” he told Ethel’s children. “She would flirt with me in the most innocent ways.”

Clinton also noted that his wife Hillary Clinton once held the same Senate seat as Robert Kennedy, and that Ethel provided him with advice on being a senatorial spouse. “The good Lord knows, if anybody ever deserved a quality escort to the pearly gates, it’s you,” Clinton said.

Martin Luther King III, son of another murdered hero of the 1960s, spoke about the bond of tragedy he shared with Ethel.

“I remember when Mrs. Kennedy came to our home with Senator Kennedy in 1968, after my father was assassinated. That was the first time I remember meeting Mrs. Kennedy,” King said. “And just two months later, my mom went to the Kennedy home to express her condolences after the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.”

Joe Kennedy III, a former congressman and one of Ethel’s grandsons, recounted some of her life’s lessons: “Triscuits should be fried. Bacon goes with everything. If you want to get to 96, you should eat deviled eggs, fried chicken and clam chowder for lunch every day.”

He recalled that his grandmother ordered those at her table to keep their elbows off of it — “always” — but paid no mind to the three dogs beneath it.

Rory Kennedy, Ethel’s daughter who was born after Robert Kennedy’s death, spoke of the time she told her mother that she wanted to get arrested protesting apartheid as a teenager.

“Great,” her mother responded. “I’ll drive.”

Many of the speakers remarked that while Ethel’s early life was dedicated to assisting her husband’s political career, she found her own purpose after his assassination. “My father has been gone for 55 years. Mom’s work was not simply Daddy’s reflected glory, but a light that shone from deep within her. She let that light shine,” Kerry Kennedy said. “This legacy is hers.”

Biden was the last speaker, and one of the more poignant. The president, now 81, is in the twilight of a long political career, and at times, recently, he has grown more reflective.

Like many Democrats of his era, Biden traces his interest in politics to JFK, and there is a notable echo between the first Irish Catholic to occupy the Oval Office (Kennedy, the youngest president) and the second (Biden, the oldest).

When Biden first ran for Senate in 1972, his mother hosted “coffees” that were modeled on a Kennedy family technique, even bringing in an old Kennedy hand, Matt Reese, who had helped organize the events for the Kennedy family.

When Biden’s wife and daughter were killed in a car accident just weeks after his election, Ethel Kennedy was there, he said, offering him comfort. “She had no idea for a 29-year-old kid in that circumstance how much it meant,” the president reflected.

“She got me through a time I didn’t want to stick around. I wanted no part of being in the Congress and the Senate,” Biden said, recalling that in his grief he asked the governor of Delaware to look for a replacement to serve in the Senate. “But Teddy and Ethel Kennedy would hear none of it.”

Biden and Edward Kennedy worked for many decades together in the Senate, serving together on the Judiciary Committee, until Kennedy died of brain cancer in August 2009, just after Biden became vice president.

Shortly after he was elected president in 2020, Biden said, he got a handwritten letter from Ethel — “She had written that she took great comfort in knowing the country was in good hands,” he said — and not long after that, a Valentine’s Day card. It featured a picture of her and Biden, surrounded by flowers, with text that read, “I’m not Biden my time waiting for you, Valentine.”

Biden noted that during his time in the Oval Office he has displayed busts of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who he called his two political idols. Toward the end of his remarks, Biden recounted how his son Beau died of glioblastoma, the same cancer that killed Ted Kennedy.

“Your mom was there then, too,” he said to Ethel’s children, his voice shaking. He paused for six seconds to gather himself. “I apologize,” he said finally. After recounting some of the lyrics to a favorite hymn “On Eagle’s Wings,” he concluded by saying, “May God bless Ethel Kennedy.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hoped the ongoing violence in the Middle East might simmer below the surface in the final weeks of the presidential race, but fresh Israeli military offensives are making that virtually impossible, U.S. officials and campaign aides say.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set the Gaza Strip ablaze with a renewed bombing campaign and launched a ground invasion into Lebanon alongside aerial strikes in Beirut aimed at annihilating the militant group Hezbollah. He is expected to order an imminent attack on Iran’s military facilities in response to its missile strike on Israel this month.

The rapid escalation has tied the Biden administration in knots, resulting in the United States first calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon only to reverse that policy nine days later and openly endorse Israel’s ground offensive.

The whiplash has caused confusion and consternation among Washington’s European and Arab allies who are pushing for the United States to restrain its closest ally in the Middle East. But administration officials remain loath to pick a public fight at such a tenuous moment politically.

“They clearly want to avoid any public confrontation with Netanyahu over Lebanon or Gaza that could result in blowback from Israel’s supporters before the election,” said Frank Lowenstein, a Biden ally and former Middle East negotiator in the Obama administration.

“At the same time, they are sensitive to losing critical Arab American votes in key swing states if their rhetoric leans too far in Israel’s direction,” he added.

The administration has issued statements in response to recent incidents that have drawn international backlash, including Israel’s attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon; its deadly bombing of Gaza’s al-Aqsa hospital, which engulfed nearby tent camps in flames; and a U.N. report indicating no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly two weeks. Yet those remarks have been carefully calibrated to avoid portraying a sharp break with Netanyahu.

The latest opportunity to do so came Tuesday, when Israeli media published the contents of a confidential letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urging Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza or face potential restrictions on U.S. military assistance. Within hours of the letter’s disclosure, spokespeople for the White House and State Department clarified that it “was not meant to be taken as a threat” and that no action would be taken in the next 30 days — pushing any potential punitive action until after the election. They declined to say if weapons restrictions were even on the table.

This account of the Biden administration’s handling of ballooning violence in the Middle East during the election’s final weeks is based on interviews with more than two dozen officials from the United States, Europe and the Middle East as well as Harris’s campaign. The dynamic they conveyed is of an improvisational White House that has followed Israel’s lead into a widening regional war while only marginally influencing Netanyahu’s actions. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their observations.

The war’s spread has alarmed the Harris campaign, which sees the images of dead civilians as complicating her path to victory in key swing states with sizable Arab American and Muslim populations.

“It’s a huge concern. It comes down to people saying, ‘I can’t support anyone who supports a genocide,’” a person who advises the campaign said.

Israel denies that its military operations in Gaza constitute genocide.

‘Look at our track record’

The Biden administration contends that critics underestimate the impact it has had in reducing the scale of Israel’s invasion into Lebanon, increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and preventing a full-scale war with Iran. Officials say they are constantly working to dissuade Netanyahu from bombing Beirut and scale back his planned counterattack on Iran, which some fear could include strikes on nuclear or oil facilities, a prospect that could upend the global economy.

“Look at our track record of intervening to get humanitarian assistance in,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday. “When we have seen the results not measure up to the standards that we expect, we have intervened with them.”

But according to the administration’s own assessment, the amount of aid delivered to Gaza has dropped by more than 50 percent since the spring. In Lebanon on Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes resumed near Beirut’s southern suburb, hitting what the Israeli military called an underground weapon storage facility used by Hezbollah. Other Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon hit government buildings in Nabatieh, killing at least six people, including the mayor.

Israeli officials say they will not kowtow to the United States about targets in Lebanon, where more than 1,700 people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced since fighting intensified in mid-September. “We will continue to hit Hezbollah mercilessly in all parts of Lebanon — also in Beirut,” Netanyahu said.

No final decision has been made about targets to strike in Iran, Israeli officials say, but an attack is expected in the coming days.

In Gaza, most U.S. officials concede the two sides will not reach a cease-fire-hostage deal by the end of the year. That process was bogged down amid demands from Hamas about prisoner exchanges and Israel on keeping its troops along the Gaza-Egypt border.

The dilemma has caused current and former officials to reflect on how Washington could have avoided the quagmire.

Andrew Miller, who recently stepped down as the State Department’s top official for Israeli-Palestinian issues, said the United States was too quick to accept Israel’s expanding operations without understanding their scope.

“What we did had the effect of endorsing Israel’s military campaign before understanding whether Israel had a viable exit strategy,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the administration who could say with a straight face Israel had a clearly defined end-state.”

Inside the Harris campaign, concerns are particularly acute in Michigan, home to one of the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations, with about 300,000 people who claim ancestry from North Africa or the Middle East.

Polls show Harris and her Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, effectively tied there and in other battleground states that will decide the election. Harris’s clearest path to victory is in the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and she has few paths to the presidency without winning the Wolverine State, where she is holding five events in three days this week.

When Harris first entered the race, her advisers hoped the fact that she had distinguished herself from Biden by speaking more forcefully about Palestinian suffering would help win over a sizable segment of Arab American and Muslim voters who are angry over the administration’s support of Israel.

But winning their support has become more difficult as Israel’s military campaign has intensified with U.S. backing.

Israeli officials say the assaults are needed to prevent another Oct. 7, the day in 2023 that Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostage. The American political calendar is not a factor in the sequencing of the war, an Israeli official told The Washington Post. “The timing of strikes is solely determined by operational considerations, nothing else,” the official said.

The botched cease-fire

Despite a year’s worth of failed efforts to end hostilities in Lebanon and Gaza, U.S. officials saw their last best opportunity during the U.N. General Assembly in New York late last month.

Biden’s envoy, Amos Hochstein, had been holding calls with Lebanese negotiators in Beirut into the early hours of the morning on Sept. 26 as he consulted with Israeli officials in New York on the language of a cease-fire statement.

Eventually, U.S. and French officials received enough positive signals from Israeli and Lebanese counterparts to release a joint U.S.-French statement calling for a 21-day cessation of hostilities. U.S. officials touted the statement to reporters as a “breakthrough.” The optimists in Biden’s inner circle thought a cease-fire in Lebanon could open a backdoor to one in Gaza, ending hostilities just before the election.

Diplomats discussed the details of a possible U.N. Security Council resolution, including semantics like whether to use the word “cease-fire” or “truce,” a Western diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu instructed his armed forces to “continue fighting at full force” in remarks that embarrassed U.S. officials who leaned on the prime minister’s top aide, Ron Dermer, to issue a statement in support of the cease-fire discussions.

French and Lebanese officials believed the various sides were close to entering a truce while U.S. officials said they were still days away from implementing an agreement due to discrepancies, including rules for Hezbollah and Israeli troops movements.

Then on Sept. 27, a fleet of Israeli F-15s dropped dozens of bombs on a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and his top aides. The attack eliminated one of Israel’s most ruthless foes, a dominant political and military figure in Lebanon for decades. It also killed any chance for the U.S.-France cease-fire proposal.

“It all went up into thin air,” the Western diplomat said.

Israeli officials said that Netanyahu was never interested in a cease-fire and that a miscommunication occurred between the White House and the prime minister’s office. U.S. officials say the prime minister changed his mind, either as a result of pressure from his right-wing cabinet or upon receiving actionable intelligence about Nasrallah’s whereabouts.

The next phase

Sensing an opportunity to build on the decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership, Netanyahu authorized a ground invasion of Lebanon on Oct. 1 to destroy the infrastructure the group used to fire rockets into Israel.

In a televised address, Netanyahu said the people of Lebanon could oust Hezbollah or suffer the fate of Gaza, where more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to local health authorities. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss,” Netanyahu said.

Privately, administration officials were outraged and said Netanyahu’s threats risked uniting Lebanon’s fractured society against the invasion. “He’s an unbelievably flawed messenger,” a senior U.S. official said.

But Biden and his top advisers agreed with Netanyahu’s premise that the weakening of Hezbollah could be exploited to reshape Lebanon’s politics and appoint a new president. A limited incursion was backed by Blinken, Hochstein, Austin, Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, said officials familiar with the matter.

But like with other Israeli promises, the mission expanded, including major bombardments of towns and villages involving civilian casualties that U.S. officials say they strongly oppose.

Analysts are skeptical that the lofty goals of the United States and Israel in Lebanon are achievable before Biden leaves office.

“I don’t think there’s enough time left to accomplish that,” said Andrew Miller, the former State Department official. “At the most, you could potentially see the appointment of a new president, but even that’s going to be extraordinarily difficult.”

El Chamaa reported from Beirut. Kareem Fahim in Beirut and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

Powered by small-dollar donors, Democrats have seized control of the fundraising game in the battle for the House and the Senate, leaving Republicans at a disadvantage — and increasingly reliant on a small clutch of mega-rich donors.

In 25 of the 26 most competitive House races, the Democratic candidate raised more than the Republican in the third quarter, including 16 races in which the Democrat raised at least double their GOP candidate, according to a Washington Post analysis of reports filed Tuesday to the Federal Election Commission.

In the Senate, Republican candidates trailed their opponent in all 11 of the most competitive races. In eight of those, the Democratic campaign more that doubled the financial haul of the GOP campaign, including three that tripled their margin.

This translated into a massive spending advantage in which Democratic House candidates in those 26 battlegrounds spent almost $92 million from July through September — more than double what their Republican counterparts spent.

In the key Senate races, Republicans got outspent by more than 150 percent by their 10 Democratic and one independent opponents. And Democratic candidates for both chambers still maintained a slight cash-on-hand advantage at the end of September.

A tight race

Despite this advantage, the battle for control of Congress remains at a razor’s edge in both chambers.

A shift of four seats in the House would hand Democrats the majority, but toss-up races, as defined by the Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, almost split evenly at this point: 14 are currently held by Republicans, 12 by Democrats.

With Senate Democrats conceding the seat of retiring Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-W.Va.) to Republicans, the GOP needs a net gain of just one additional seat to assure they will reclaim the majority for the first time in four years. Of those 11 key races, the Democratic caucus holds eight, including seats in conservative-friendly Montana and Ohio.

Any number of factors could tip the balance in either direction, including whether Vice President Kamala Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump break away to a clear win at the top of the ticket. If the Senate ends up tied 50-50, the presidential contest will decide the majority as the new vice president serves as the tiebreaker.

Democrats have learned that massive fundraising does not guarantee victory. In 2020, three of their Senate candidates set fundraising records in Kentucky, Maine and South Carolina, about $300 million combined, and all three lost by big margins.

But GOP leaders have been concerned about their cash problems for several years. Rep. Richard Hudson (N.C.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has issued public and private warnings about the cash disadvantage for GOP candidates.

In a recent interview, Hudson said Republicans are performing better financially now than in 2022, when those campaign cash deficits led to key defeats that only left their party with a narrow majority that empowered a small hard-right faction to clash with leadership.

Democrats, meanwhile, remain cautiously optimistic about their fundraising advantage. Their candidates “have the resources to talk to voters and hold Republicans accountable for their positions,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (Wash.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a recent interview.

Enter the megadonors

To make up for this disparity, Republicans have relied on mega-rich donors who write seven- and eight-figure checks to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP super PAC, and the Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP super PAC.

Early Wednesday, the CLF announced it had dropped $12 million into TV and digital advertising to defend at least 10 House Republican incumbents who are facing the most difficult races this fall.

On Tuesday, the SLF reported raising $115.7 million for the third quarter, including $30 million combined from a pair of billionaire hedge fund managers, Ken Griffin and Paul Singer. Miriam Adelson, the owner of the Las Vegas Sands casino conglomerate, has donated $15 million to the SLF.

The super PAC had $112.3 million on hand at the start of the month, as it expanded its advertising beyond its initial targets of Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) into campaigns against Democratic senators in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Democratic super PACs have never had the same success with those types of donations. The top contributors to the Senate Majority PAC, closely aligned with Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), have given $6 million and $5 million. Those donations were from Chicago entrepreneur Fred Eychaner and Michelle Chan, the sister-in-law of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, respectively.

The SMP has remained competitive with its Republican counterpart, raising $119.1 million in the third quarter and beginning the final five-week push to Election Day with $108.9 million on hand.

An uneven ad race

Veteran strategists in both parties know, however, that every political dollar is not worth the same amount.

Federal law requires TV stations to offer individual campaigns the cheapest advertising rates and the best time slots for airing those ads, while national party committees and outside super PACs pay about twice as much and do not get the prime opportunities.

As a result, super PACs can appear to even the financial battle, but in reality the candidates can get more ads from their dollars than those outside groups.

In Michigan, for example, Republicans have spent or reserved more than $94 million to benefit their candidate, Mike Rogers, to about $87 million for the Democratic nominee, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, according to data from AdImpact, a political research firm.

But Rogers has very little money of his own and has not been able to air any ads totally funded by his campaign, while Slotkin has reserved more than $26 million in advertising from her coffers.

The two candidates have each run about the same in so-called hybrid ads with their national party committees that get lower rates but have requirements that campaign operatives consider awkward in messaging.

Rogers is almost entirely reliant on roughly $75 million in outside spending from conservative groups, but Slotkin’s side is expected to run more ads.

After the underwhelming Republican performance two years ago, GOP operatives circulated a report from Smart Media Group, a political campaign firm that studied the six most competitive Senate races and 15 most competitive House races.

In those six Senate races, Democratic campaigns had a $194 million edge over their opponents and aired 154 different messages appealing to voters. For every dollar spent by Republicans on air, 75 cents came from outside super PACs.

In the 15 House races, Democratic campaigns spent $24 million and had 35 more messages in those ads than their Republican counterparts.

Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, a veteran of America’s clandestine operations who served as the point man for the transactions in the Iran-contra affair, the arms-for-hostages scandal that metastasized into the most serious crisis of the Reagan administration, died Oct. 15 at a nursing home in Port Orange, Fla. He was 92.

A grandson, John Secord Jr., confirmed the death but did not provide an immediate cause.

For his role in the scandal, Gen. Secord pleaded guilty to one felony count of lying to Congress and was sentenced to probation. He maintained that he had been made a fall guy for an operation approved at the highest levels of government. “I feel I was betrayed,” he told Playboy magazine in a 1987 interview. “We were acting in good faith every step of the way.”

Gen. Secord was drawn into the scheme in the summer of 1984. By then retired from the military and working as a private arms dealer, he received an overture from Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, then a National Security Council aide.

The Reagan administration was pursuing dual policy objectives. In the Middle East, the White House wanted to use back-channel arms sales to the Islamic regime in Iran to help win the release of Americans held captive in Lebanon.

At the same time, in Nicaragua there was an effort underway to prop up the contra rebels fighting the Marxist Sandinista government, ultimately by using funds generated from the Iran deals. The operation was carried out secretly because in October 1984, Congress had cut off all military aid to the contras.

In Gen. Secord, a pugnacious West Point graduate with boundless self-assurance, North and national security adviser Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter had found perhaps the ideal candidate to handle the byzantine logistics of their plan, which became known simply as the “Enterprise.”

Gen. Secord, whose 28-year Air Force career had been as colorful as it was distinguished, was experienced in covert operations. As a young officer in Indochina in the early 1960s, he flew more than 200 secret combat missions against the Viet Cong, then helped the CIA supply Laotian tribesmen fighting the local communist forces.

He had later been stationed for several years as an American military liaison to the shah of Iran, specializing in weapons procurement. During his tour he arranged for $17 billion worth of arms deals for the shah, who nevertheless was soon toppled from power.

Once considered a possible Air Force chief of staff, he had risen to become a deputy assistant secretary of defense but left the military under a cloud in 1983. He said he had “been tarred” by his relationship with Edwin P. Wilson, a renegade former CIA operative whom he knew socially from the old-boy spy world, and who was convicted of selling explosives to Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Gen. Secord was never charged with any wrongdoing.

In his memoir “Honored and Betrayed” (1992), written with Jay Wurts, Gen. Secord maintained that he agreed to participate in the Iran-contra operation out of what he saw as his patriotic duty — though later disclosures would suggest financial motives played no small role.

“He wanted to come across as a white knight,” said Malcolm Byrne, author of “Iran-contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power.” “But the reality was he had a mixed bag of motives.”

Creating a labyrinth

Gen. Secord and his business partner, Albert Hakim, an Iranian-born American arms dealer, set about creating a labyrinth of shell accounts in Swiss banks. The aim, as established by North, was to build a free-standing unit for clandestine activities that could not be traced to the U.S. government, in spy parlance a “cutout” operation.

An admiring North later wrote, “Why Dick can do something in 5 min. that the CIA cannot do in two days is beyond me — but he does.”

In early 1985, with funds mostly from Saudi Arabia, the Enterprise partners began buying weaponry on the worldwide gray market and reselling the equipment to the contras.

From the outset, Gen. Secord and Hakim made it clear that they weren’t running an international charity ward. One contra leader later complained that the arms sold to the rebels had been marked up by as much as 60 percent.

In early 1985, North enlisted Gen. Secord and his partner to begin dealing weaponry, which was to consist of antitank and antiaircraft missiles, to the Iranian government, with the profits earmarked for diversion to the contras.

Money from the Iran and contra initiatives circulated with scanty accounting in what amounted to an enormous slush fund. According to later government investigators, more than $47 million passed through the Enterprise.

“The whole thing was back-of-the-envelope and off-the-books,” said Byrne, deputy director of the Washington-based National Security Archive anti-secrecy group. “The priority was get the job done.”

In early 1986, at North’s direction, Gen. Secord drew on his network of clandestine contacts to begin setting up a more elaborate system for resupplying the contras.

The various operations had been carried out under a blanket of secrecy that was unexpectedly lifted in early October 1986, when the Sandinistas shot down a supply plane bound for the contras. The wreckage yielded a telephone log listing calls from a contra safe house to Gen. Secord’s home and office in Virginia.

The following month, the entire operation came unraveled when a Lebanese weekly printed details of the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. In short order, President Ronald Reagan fired North, an independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, was appointed, and Congress launched a raft of investigations.

When a joint congressional panel began hearings on the Iran-contra affair in May 1987, Gen. Secord was called as the first witness.

In contrast with several other key witnesses, including North, Poindexter and Hakim, he testified without immunity. In his four days before the panel, he indignantly insisted that he was not a profiteer. In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, he dismissed concerns about the Enterprise’s financial dealings as “pipsqueak stuff.”

But in the weeks that followed, other evidence and witnesses portrayed Gen. Secord as a man not unduly burdened by questions of propriety. Hakim, for instance, testified that Gen. Secord had used funds from the Enterprise to buy a $32,000 Porsche and a private plane.

Nevertheless, Gen. Secord emerged from the proceedings with fans. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) praised him and North as “the kind of guys the country turns to when it’s in real trouble and it has a dirty job to do.”

In April 1989, Gen. Secord was indicted by a federal grand jury on nine felony counts of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the financial dealings of the secret network.

The heart of the prosecution’s case was that the proceeds of the Enterprise rightfully belonged to the U.S. government.

Investigators found that Gen. Secord realized more than $2 million from his Iran-contra dealings in 1985 and 1986 and that he took precautions to conceal the payments to avoid paying taxes. It also turned out that only about $4 million of the proceeds from the Iran arms deals actually found their way to the contras.

In November 1989, five days before he was due to stand trial, Gen. Secord agreed to plead guilty to one charge of lying to Congress. He admitted that, when asked whether North had benefited financially from the Enterprise, he did not disclose paying for an expensive security system for North’s home, an alleged bribe to ensure that business kept coming Gen. Secord’s way.

Gen. Secord was later sentenced to a $50 fine and probation, with the judge ruling that he had suffered enough.

A general at 43

The son of a truck driver, Richard Vernon Secord was born July 6, 1932, in the farming town of LaRue, Ohio. In 1955, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and received a commission in the Air Force. He ascended swiftly through the ranks, receiving his first general’s star at 43.

In the aftermath of Iran-contra, Gen. Secord returned to private business, serving for a time as a top executive at Computerized Thermal Imaging, a computer imaging firm, and as president of the Air Commando Association.

In 1961, he married Jo Ann Gibson. She died in January. Survivors include three children, Julia, Laura and John; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

To the end, Gen. Secord saw himself as a victim of perfidy in Washington, and he defended the Iran and contra initiatives as necessary steps in advancing the nation’s interest. As he noted at one point in his memoir, “In this we did not seem to me to act like impulsive cowboys, but rather like people who finally woke up and smelled the coffee.”

A Georgia judge on Wednesday blocked a series of rules approved this year by a pro-Trump majority of the state’s election board, admonishing the board in stinging language that the rules are “ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VOID.”

The judge struck down more than a half-dozen new rules, including one that allowed county election officials to launch investigations of irregularities, which critics feared would delay certification.

Democrats and voting rights groups had sued to block the board’s decisions, arguing that they were being imposed too close to the election and would be impossible to implement without causing disruptions in the election process. The decision came on the second day of early voting in Georgia, with day one setting records for turnout.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Cox Jr. also voided a rule that would have mandated the hand-counting of ballots, a decision that mirrored one by a different Fulton County judge, Robert McBurney, on Tuesday.

On Monday, McBurney had ruled that county election boards do not have discretion to withhold certification of results. All of the rulings apply statewide.

Members of the board’s majority have defended the rules, saying they were intended to make state elections more secure and transparent. The flurry of rulemaking, which occurred in recent weeks and months, was the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year.

The three board members — Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares — did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Former president Donald Trump had lauded the three by name at a rally in Georgia this summer, calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

Critics said the board had effectively legislated new law, something that existing statute does not empower it to do. The judge agreed.

“We won,” said Scot Turner, who leads Eternal Vigilance Action, the nonpartisan issue-advocacy organization that brought the suit. “This is a victory for the Constitution and the principle of separation of powers. Every conservative should see this as a win and significant pushback on an unelected board making law.”

Other rules voided by Cox would have imposed new identification standards on people dropping off absentee ballots for loved ones and increased reporting standards for counties about their absentee ballot receipts. The judge also negated a potentially burdensome requirement to provide to any county board members “all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections” if they have questions about the accuracy or integrity of the result.

The new rules “are contrary to the laws of the State of Georgia, the Constitution of the State of Georgia, and the Constitution of the United States,” Cox wrote in his order, and the State Election Board “had no authority to implement” them.

The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates as well as Democratic groups, including the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, which had protested the new rules. They were approved by three conservative members of the state board, all supporters of Donald Trump, and over the objections of the other two board members.

In his decision, Cox ordered the rules to be immediately voided and for all county election officials to be informed that the rules are not to be enforced.

It’s not clear if the board will appeal the decision. The office of Attorney General Chris Carr (R) represents the board and had advised it against acting on several of the rules that were struck down Wednesday.

The environmental fight that played out inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday was unusual in many ways: It featured poop, a whopping $10 billion fine and one of the nation’s greenest cities — San Francisco — battling the Environmental Protection Agency over water pollution rules in a case that could reverberate beyond the Bay Area.

During lively oral arguments, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines over a lawsuit brought by San Francisco arguing that EPA rules regulating how much sewage the city can discharge into the Pacific Ocean are so vague it can’t abide by them. The result: The city has wracked up billions in fines and counting.

“We simply want to understand our prohibition limits so we can comply with them,” Tara M. Steeley, the San Francisco deputy city attorney, told the justices.

The question the high court must decide is whether the Clean Water Act allows the EPA to impose generic prohibitions against violating water quality standards or whether the agency has to create specific pollutant limitations that give clearer guidance about when a line is crossed. For instance, San Francisco’s wastewater permit includes 100 pages of detailed rules on effluent limits, but also “narrative” restrictions such as “no discharge of pollutants shall create pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined by California’s water code.

Assistant Solicitor General Frederick Liu, arguing on behalf of the federal government, told the justices that the Clean Water Act authorizes the EPA to impose those generic prohibitions and that they offer an important backstop to more technical guidelines to ensure water quality remains high. He also said the EPA would like to give San Francisco specific standards, but the city has stymied those efforts by not providing better data to create them. The city disputed that claim.

“I want to be clear about the sort of information that we’re missing that made it impossible for us to impose anything other than these generic limitations,” Liu said in court.

San Francisco has an older wastewater treatment plant that combines sewage and stormwater. It can overflow during heavy rains, sending the wastewater to outfalls that are located off the coast in the Pacific Ocean. The city says it has spent billions of dollars upgrading the system to limit runoff.

The court’s three liberal justices sharply questioned San Francisco’s attorney, while the conservative majority seemed more skeptical of the EPA’s position.

“What in the statute prevents the agency from saying, in addition to or instead of the highly prescriptive…you can only discharge X amount, we want to set a goal, and we want to tell you that you’re obligated to not contribute to violating that goal?” asked Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a conservative, said the generic standards were similar to an older system of water pollution regulation that he said was difficult for parties to navigate: “It didn’t tell people in any predictable way what they can and cannot do.”

San Francisco petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with the EPA.

Some environmental groups had urged San Francisco to drop its lawsuit, warning that the court’s conservative majority could use the case to further limit the EPA’s authority. Court rulings in 2022 and 2023 curbed the agency’s ability to reduce greenhouse gases and protect wetlands from runoff. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors echoed that concern, voting in a non-binding resolution to urge the city to resolve the case quickly to avoid harming water standards nationwide.

The case has “very troubling implications,” said Becky Hammer, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We were disappointed to see San Francisco take this case all the way to the Supreme Court,’ Hammer said. “Given the anti-environment trend of the court in recent years, it’s asking for trouble to bring this case before them.”

At the same time, San Francisco found itself with some unlikely allies in the case, including oil and mining groups that filed friend of the court briefs supporting the city’s position.

The court will probably issue a ruling in the case by June, which is usually the final month of the term.

DORAL, Fla. — Donald Trump on Wednesday at times appeared to attempt a more measured tone on immigration, even as he reprised some false, alarmist attacks against migrants during a town hall that will be televised on the Spanish-language network Univision.

Trump has frequently warned of a migrant “invasion,” and he has used dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants, including calling them “animals.” On Wednesday, he avoided those specific terms and voiced support for legal immigration in broad responses to some questions. But legal immigration rates fell when Trump was president, and he recently vowed to revoke temporary protected status for Haitians.

The appearance, coming less than three weeks before Election Day, showed the Republican presidential nominee in a different setting from the largely White rallies he often speaks at. This time, he was speaking to a broadcast audience that includes many Latino voters. The former president has over the years given conflicting views of his stances on major issues.

Trump faced questions from undecided Latino voters who asked him about a range of topics, including the cost of living, reproductive rights, climate change, his handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and his loss of support from some officials who served in his administration.

Jorge Velázquez, a 64-year-old farmer, asked about who would do farm work if Trump deports undocumented immigrants and how much would food cost then. Most mainstream economists say his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would probably send prices surging. Trump did not directly respond to the question, instead making a broader point about immigration.

“We want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally. They have to love our country. They have to love you, love our people,” he said.

Trump responded to another question by mentioning that immigrants came to the United States during his administration, “but they were coming through a legal process. They were great people coming into our country.”

Still, Trump repeated his false claims that the Biden administration has released “hundreds of thousands of people that are murderers, drug dealers and terrorists.” On the campaign trail, Trump has distorted official Department of Homeland Security statistics on undocumented immigrants with homicide convictions, falsely claiming that the Biden administration “released” them when, in reality, the government numbers Trump is citing span decades and include people who are serving time in state and federal prisons.

At another point, José Saralegui, 67, an engineer and operations director, asked if Trump really believed his promotion of a false and racist trope that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

“This was just reported. I was just saying what was reported,” Trump said. “I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look and I’ll give you a full report when I do.”

“I think you can’t just destroy our country,” he said as he elaborated on migrants, echoing his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Vice President Kamala Harris leads Trump among Hispanic voters, polls show. But her margins have concerned some Democrats. A recent New York Times-Siena poll found Harris leading Trump among Latino voters by 19 points, as she garnered 56 percent of Hispanic likely voters to Trump’s 37 percent. In 2020, exit polls showed Biden winning this group by 33 points, with 65 percent of Latinos backing him compared with 32 percent who voted for Trump.

That same poll found that Trump’s attacks on immigrants have not driven Latino voters to Harris. Roughly two-thirds of Hispanic respondents born in the United States said they do not feel Trump is referring to them when he speaks spoke about immigrants. More than half born in another country said the same thing.

Trump was not asked directly at Wednesday’s town hall about his proposal to stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history — nor did he mention it in any of his responses.

The former president also referred to Jan. 6 — the day in 2021 that his supporters stormed the Capitol in a riot that turned deadly — as “a day of love” and said there was “nothing done wrong.” He was responding to a question from Ramiro González, a 56-year-old construction worker and self-described Republican, who said he was alarmed by what took place on Jan. 6, among other concerns with Trump, and wanted to give the former president the “opportunity to try to win back my vote.”

In recent weeks, the former president has suggested that “bad genes” are to blame for people in the country illegally who have committed murders and disparaged undocumented immigrants as “savage criminals” and “animals.” He has said they “poisoning the blood of our country” and his ads mentioning immigration frequently refer to migrants as “illegals.”

Trump on Wednesday repeated his claim that migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are taking jobs from the “African American population and the Hispanic population in particular” — a characterization that many Americans have found offensive and economists have said is false.

The town hall, billed as “Noticias Univision Presents: Latinos Ask, Donald Trump Responds,” was held at Univision Studios, roughly a mile away from Trump’s golf resort here, where he fielded questions before several dozen Hispanic voters from different parts of the country. It will air Wednesday night.

Trump’s participation in the town hall reflects a marked shift in his relationship with Univision, a network his campaign in 2020 referred to as “a leftist propaganda machine and a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” Univision’s approach to the former president has noticeably changed over the past year, as evidenced by an hour-long interview with him in 2023 that had a notably gracious tone and prompted swift backlash from Latino advocacy groups and Democrats.

On Tuesday night at a rally in Atlanta, Trump raised questions about Black and Latino voters backing Harris. The former president has repeatedly ridiculed and questioned the mental state of people in various demographic groups, including Jewish voters, if they aren’t voting for him.

“Any African American or Hispanic … that votes for Kamala, you got to have your head examined,” Trump said Tuesday. “Because they are really screwing you.”

The Harris campaign slammed Trump for his comments.

“If Donald Trump thinks insulting Black and Latino voters is the key to earning their respect and their votes, it’s him who should have his head examined,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.