Missouri’s top election official on Thursday said the state was appealing a judge’s ruling that blocked enforcement of parts of a voter photo identification law, adding that the ruling was causing “mass confusion” ahead of a key election for a U.S. Senate seat.

Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in a statement said the state attorney general had appealed the ruling and asked it to be put on hold as that process plays out. 

At issue is Senior Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan’s recent ruling striking down a requirement that a voter lacking a valid photo ID must sign a sworn statement and present some other form of identification in order to cast a regular ballot. Callahan also blocked the state from advertising that a photo ID is required to vote.

Ashcroft said there’s confusion because Callahan’s ruling “directs the STATE not to use the statement.” But Ashcroft said it’s local election authorities who would have been responsible for requesting that voters without proper photo identification sign an affidavit, “so it is not clear if they are bound by the judge’s decision.”

“The judge’s decision has injected mass confusion into the voting process just weeks before an important election — an action the courts historically and purposely have not taken,” Ashcroft said, adding that many local election authorities already had trained poll workers to require voters to sign sworn statements.

Callahan’s ruling came as voters are preparing for a Nov. 6 election headlined by the race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and her Republican challenger, Attorney General Josh Hawley, whose office is defending the state law on behalf of Ashcroft.

Strategist Symone Sanders of Priorities USA, a Washington-based liberal advocacy group that sued on behalf of some Missouri voters, in a statement praised Callahan’s ruling and criticized the photo ID law as having “required voters to sign a threatening and confusing affidavit to receive a regular ballot if they didn’t have photo identification.”

“What’s confusing is the secretary of state’s support of limiting access to the ballot box,” she said.

Missouri’s 2016 law was enacted when the Republican-led Legislature overrode the veto of then-Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat. Voters in 2016 also approved a constitutional amendment intended to permit photo identification laws. The Missouri law was not yet in effect for the 2016 elections.

Voter photo ID requirements have been pushed by Republicans in numerous states as a means of preventing fraud. They have been opposed by Democrats who contend such laws can disenfranchise poor, elderly, disabled and minority voters who are less likely to have photo IDs.
…

Arkansas’ highest court on Thursday upheld a voter ID law that is nearly identical to a restriction struck down by the court four years ago.

The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed a judge’s ruling against the law approved last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature and governor. A judge had blocked officials from enforcing the restriction, but justices in May stayed that ruling and kept the law in effect while they considered the case.

The high court in 2014 struck down a previous version of the voter ID law as unconstitutional.

The revised voter ID law, which was approved last year, requires voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot. Unlike the previous measure, the new law allows voters to cast provisional ballots if they sign a sworn statement confirming their identities. Opponents of the new measure had argued that it circumvented the 2014 ruling.

In the 5-2 ruling Thursday, justices said lawmakers had the power to enact the restriction by labeling it a change to a constitutional amendment related to voter registration requirements. “It is therefore constitutional,” Justice Robin Wynne wrote in the court’s ruling.

Arkansas officials argued the new law complies with part of the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the 2013 measure. Justices in 2014 unanimously struck down the previous voter ID law, with a majority of the court ruling that it unconstitutionally added a qualification to vote. Three justices, however, ruled the measure didn’t get the two-thirds vote needed to change voter registration requirements.

A majority of the court has changed hands since that ruling, and more than two-thirds of the Arkansas House and Senate approved the new measure last year.

A justice who disagreed with the ruling Thursday questioned the court’s argument that the law was related to voter registration, noting that the state doesn’t require photo ID in order to register to vote.

“If providing photo identification were required at registration, requiring presentation of the card at the polling place would be more defensible,” Justice Jo Hart wrote. “Asking for a photo identification card at the polling place strikes me as locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he is optimistic about Republicans retaining control of both chambers of Congress in next month’s nationwide congressional elections, as well as his own re-election in 2020.

“I think the Republicans are very energized,” Trump told interviewers on his favorite news talk show, “Fox & Friends,” because of the robust U.S. economy and last week’s Senate confirmation of Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. “I really believe we’re going to do well. I think we’ll be successful.”

Trump’s prediction on the Nov. 6 elections halfway through his first four-year White House term is at odds with historical trends favoring the political party out of power, the Democrats at the moment, in U.S. midterm elections.

In addition, independent analysts say polling shows Democrats are poised to take control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans are likely to retain their slim majority in the Senate.

‘Bunch of haters’

Trump said that if Democrats assume control of the House, “We’ll just have to fight it out” over the next two years “because there’s a bunch of haters” against him and his policies. Some Democrats have already said that if they have a majority in the House they plan to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump and investigations of his personal finances and government programs he has changed since he assumed power in January 2017.

Still, Trump said if there is a Democratic takeover in the House, “It’s possible we’ll get along,” because both he and Democrats could reach agreement on infrastructure spending they both favor to repair crumbling highways and bridges in the U.S.

2020

As for 2020, Trump declined to say whether there was any possible single Democratic opponent he feared most in his bid for a second four-year term.

“So far, I like ’em all, everyone of them,” Trump said. “I don’t see a name I don’t like.”

Several Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, say they will make up their minds by the end of the year whether to mount a nationwide campaign against Trump. Already, some of them have been making campaign-style speeches in states with early 2020 Democratic primaries that will play a pivotal role in determining Trump’s eventual opponent.

Republican prospects

Trump said that with the economy doing well, often a key determinant in U.S. presidential elections, “I don’t see why I wouldn’t do well in the election. We’ve done more in less than two years than anyone in history, and I don’t think it’s even close.”

Yet, national surveys show voters consistently disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, currently by about a 53 to 43 percent margin.
…

The question before a panel of U.S. appeals court judges: Should non-native residents of Guam have a say in the territory’s future relationship with the United States?

Three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were at the University of Hawaii’s law school Wednesday to listen to arguments in an appeal of a federal judge’s 2017 ruling that says limiting the vote to those who are considered native inhabitants of the island is unconstitutional.

Voters would have three choices: independence, statehood and free association with the United States similar to island states that allow the U.S. exclusive military access to their land and waters while their citizens have the right to live and work in the U.S.

The case

Arnold Davis, a white, non-Chamorro resident of Guam, sued in 2011 after his application to participate in the vote was denied.

Last year’s ruling concluded that even though Guam has a long history of colonization and its people have a right to determine their political status with the United States, it’s unconstitutional to exclude voters simply because they “do not have the correct ancestry or bloodline.”

The ruling cites a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows non-Native Hawaiians to vote in elections for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees.

Guam appealed.

The vote would only be a “symbolic, but no less sacred, nonbinding expression of a political opinion of a subset of Guam,” Julian Aguon, an attorney representing Guam, argued Wednesday.

The vote would have ramifications for all who live on the island, said Davis’ attorney, Lucas Townsend. 

“This is a taxpayer-funded, government-sponsored vote involving the territory’s election machinery,” he said.

Guam plans to submit results to the president of the United States, Congress and the United Nations, Townsend said.

Who is eligible?

Voters wouldn’t be limited based on their race, but would include only those who were granted U.S. citizenship through the 1950 Guam Organic Act, and their descendants, Aguon said. Court documents in the case cite 1950 census data showing that the vast majority of the noncitizens on Guam at the time were Chamorro.

About one-third of the U.S. territory’s 160,000 people identify as Chamorro, the indigenous group that is believed to have migrated to Guam from Indonesia and the Philippines an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. The U.S. took control of Guam in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. The Navy ruled the island until Japan took control in 1941. The U.S. installed civilian leadership and granted citizenship to Guam residents in 1950.

It’s not clear when the judges will issue a ruling.

Upholding the lower court ruling will effectively end Guam’s self-determination effort, Aguon said after the hearing.

“This case is so important because it’s about defending the sacred right of self-determination, even if it’s a symbolic vote,” he said. “It really matters to the community. Guam has been colonized for hundreds of years, and this would finally give us some semblance of dignity to be able to have just this non-binding vote. And that’s what it means to me as a Chamorro as well.”
…

President Donald Trump is stepping up his attack on Democrats over a health care proposal called Medicare for All, claiming it “would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives.”

One senator who has introduced a Medicare for All proposal dismissed Trump’s statements as lies.

Trump, omitting any mention of improved benefits for seniors that Democrats promise, wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in USA Today, “The Democrats’ plan means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice, seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised.”

But Medicare for All means different things to different Democrats. The plan pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who challenged Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, would expand Medicare to cover almost everyone in the country, and current Medicare recipients would get improved benefits. Other Democratic plans would allow people to buy into a new government system modeled on Medicare, moving toward the goal of coverage for all while leaving private insurance in place.

Trump’s column came as he is looking to paint Democratic candidates as extreme ahead of next month’s midterm elections. A White House official speaking to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to describe internal plans said that Trump’s health care attack would be echoed by the Republican National Committee and other GOP groups and that the president would continue to raise the attack during his campaign rallies.

​’No, Mr. President’

Sanders responded Wednesday in a statement, saying Trump “is lying about the Medicare for All proposal” that he introduced.

“No, Mr. President. Our proposal would not cut benefits for seniors on Medicare. In fact, we expand benefits,” Sanders said.

As Trump escalates his efforts on behalf of fellow Republicans, he is casting health care as one of an expanding list of choices for the electorate this year while seeking to raise the alarm about the consequences of Democratic control of the House or the Senate.

Medicare for All, also called single-payer over the years, was until fairly recently outside the mainstream of Democratic politics, but this year it has become a key litmus test in many party primaries and a rallying cry for progressive candidates. Under the plan by Sanders, all Americans would gain access to government insurance with no co-pays or deductibles for medical services.

Republicans contend that the proposal would be cost-prohibitive and argue it marks government overreach.

Trump has already sought to paint Democrats as extremists after the bitter confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and internal GOP polling obtained last month by the AP shows that the party believes the message will help galvanize Republican voters to the polls.

At a rally in Iowa on Tuesday, Trump argued that the only reason to vote for Democrats “is if you are tired of winning.” He was to hold a rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening. 
…

President Donald Trump says he has been speaking to one of his former advisers, Dina Powell, about the possibility of succeeding Nikki Haley as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and he plans to speak with others about the post.

At the White House on Wednesday, Trump said Powell is one of many people being considered.

Haley announced on Tuesday that she is stepping down as U.N. ambassador and would vacate the post by the end of the year.

“It has been an honor of a lifetime,” Haley said, sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office where they announced her pending departure Tuesday.

The former governor of the state of South Carolina has been seen by some as a relatively moderate voice in Trump’s Cabinet.

Her appointment as ambassador to the U.N. was seen as a surprise because she had been viewed as a critic of Trump’s confrontational style during the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as a proponent of free markets and global trade, in contrast to the president’s “America First” policies.

The 46-year-old Haley, whose parents emigrated from India, is one of six women in Trump’s Cabinet and is regarded as a potential future Republican Party presidential contender.

“No, I’m not running for 2020,” Haley said, adding she would be campaigning for Trump’s re-election in the next presidential election.

Steve Herman contributed to this report.
…

Congress has approved a sprawling bill to improve the nation’s ports, dams and harbors, protect against floods, restore shorelines and support other water-related projects.

The massive Water Resources Development Act would authorize billions in spending for projects nationwide, including one to stem coastal erosion in Galveston, Texas, and restore wetlands damaged by Hurricane Harvey last year.

The bill also would help improve harbors in Seattle; Savannah, Georgia; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and extend a federal program to improve drinking water quality.

The bill also sets up a new framework for large water projects run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The changes are intended to increase local input and improve transparency.

The Senate approved the bill, 99-1, on Wednesday, sending it to President Donald Trump.

 
…

Michael Avenatti held court last month with a dozen Democratic strategists in the main dining room at The Palm — a see-and-be-seen table at one of Washington’s most prominent power lunch spots.

Avenatti did most of the talking. While he offered few details about how he planned to raise enough money or hire the staff to run a presidential campaign, one participant and another person briefed on the lunch said he cast himself as one of the few Democrats who knows how to go head-to-head with President Donald Trump. The sources requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss details of the meeting.

Avenatti’s brash confidence is being closely watched by Democrats in Washington and key political battleground states with a mix of intrigue and trepidation. Trump’s victory over more experienced politicians in the 2016 campaign has reshaped traditional views of who would make a viable presidential candidate. Yet some party leaders are worried about trying to replicate Trump’s approach by backing another untested and unpredictable candidate — a concern that was heightened after Avenatti’s involvement in the recent Supreme Court confirmation fight.

Still, Avenatti has so far managed to stand out among the senators, governors and mayors expected to vie for the Democratic presidential nomination. Early state operatives are offering him advice, and he’s sold out Democratic Party dinners in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s scheduled to be in South Carolina this weekend, and has another trip to New Hampshire planned on October 22.

Raymond Buckley, a veteran New Hampshire Democratic strategist, said ticket sales for a recent Hillsborough County Democratic Party fundraiser tripled within 48 hours after Avenatti was announced as the featured guest.

“There is great interest in him,” said Buckley, who met with the high-profile attorney. “I take everybody seriously. Donald Trump has taught us all a lesson. It is a mistake to be dismissive of anybody.”

But Avenatti has suddenly found himself on the defensive over his role in the acrimonious Supreme Court confirmation fight for Brett Kavanaugh, raising questions about whether his relentless self-promotion could backfire before a presidential campaign ever gets off the ground.

After two women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, Avenatti revealed that he was representing a third accuser, Julie Swetnick. In a signed declaration, Swetnick said she witnessed Kavanaugh engage in sexually inappropriate behavior.

In the same statement, Swetnick said she had been the victim of gang rape — an explosive allegation that garnered significant attention, even though she never accused Kavanaugh of the crime. Avenatti’s promise to provide people to corroborate Swetnick’s account never materialized. He says he tried to bring more information to the FBI, but the bureau never investigated.

Republican congressional aides say Avenatti’s involvement helped turn momentum back toward Kavanaugh. When the deciding vote on the nomination, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, announced that she was supporting Kavanaugh, she cited Swetnick’s “outlandish allegation” and said it was “put forth without any credible supporting evidence.”

Democrats quickly found themselves having to answer for Avenatti’s actions. During an early-voting rally in Iowa Monday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker responded to questions about Avenatti’s client by stressing the validity of the other two accusers, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.

“What is obvious to most Americans, I think, is you have Dr. Ford and Ramirez come forward with credible claims,” said Booker, another Democratic weighing a presidential run.

Avenatti said he’s seen no drop in interest in his potential presidential prospects since he jumped into the confirmation fight, and cast the criticism of him as an inevitable response to his presidential prospects.

“It is being stoked by the Republicans and establishment Democrats that are very nervous about what my intentions are,” Avenatti said. “This is a direct response to individuals coming to the conclusion that I am a threat.”

To questions about his fundraising and planning, Avenatti said that he has not been providing details at introductory meetings, but stressed that he has donors lined up should he run and said that “we are going to have no problem raising money.” He also said he is hearing from people who are “very enthusiastic” about joining the campaign and “the only people that may be wary are establishment Democrats who are concerned because I don’t owe them anything.”

Avenatti’s uneven handling of the Kavanaugh allegations was a stark contrast to his role representing Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Trump and was paid by the president’s lawyer to keep quiet. While Trump and attorney Michael Cohen initially denied Daniels’ claims, details of the payment have been verified during court proceedings. Avenatti became a media fixture in the process, spending hours a day racing from one television studio to the next.

His interest quickly shifted from taking on Trump in the courtroom to challenging him in the presidential election. On Monday, Avenatti formally launched a federal political action committee, The Fight PAC, giving him the ability to support Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, pay for political travel and build a list of supporters. The PAC will not accept money from corporate PACs.

Avenatti’s PAC is being advised by Tracy Austin, a Los Angeles-based fundraiser who has helped several California Democrats, including Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa and Xavier Becerra; Stephen Solomon, a digital media strategist; and Adam Parkhomenko, an aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Ready for Hillary PAC that preceded her campaign.

During his visits to Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on the presidential calendar, Avenatti has also sought out local consultants and party leaders familiar with the caucus and primary races. During a trip to Iowa in August, Avenatti was joined by Matt Paul, an Iowa-based former strategist to Clinton, and Jeff Link, a longtime adviser to former Sen. Tom Harkin.

Avenatti’s handling of the Kavanaugh confirmation fight was met with a mixed reaction in the early presidential voting states.

Steve Shurtleff, the top Democrat in the New Hampshire state house, said Avenatti’s promotion of his client may have undermined the credibility of Kavanaugh’s other accusers.

“If there was any other attorney connected to that woman, it might have helped avoid the three-ring circus it became,” said Shurtleff, who said he doesn’t see Avenatti as a viable presidential contender.

But Iowa Democrat Randy Brown, who hosted Avenatti at a Democratic fundraiser in August, said the prominent lawyer’s involvement may have helped energize some voters who may not have normally paid attention to the confirmation process.

“It fired them up more,” said Brown, chairman of the Iowa Wing Ding fundraiser.

As for the impact on Avenatti’s presidential prospects, Brown said the lawyer was simply “doing what he does best — getting his name out there.”
…

Chants of “Lock her up!” rang once again throughout an Iowa arena as President Donald Trump rallied supporters Tuesday night.

But this time, the staple of Trump’s 2016 campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton had a new target: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Trump, who was in the state boosting Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, claimed that Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had leaked a letter written by California professor Christine Blasey Ford alleging Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.

Feinstein has denied her office was the source of the leak.

“Can you believe that?” Trump said, as his supporters turned the chant once deployed against the former secretary of state on another Democratic woman.

“Did she leak that? 100 percent,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t want to get sued, so 99 percent.”

In a statement, Feinstein called Trump’s remarks “ridiculous and an embarrassment.”

Ford had sought to remain anonymous when she brought the allegation against Kavanaugh to Feinstein’s attention. She later went public after reporters started trying to contact her. Kavanaugh staunchly denied Ford’s accusation.

“Dr. Blasey Ford knows I kept her confidence, she and her lawyers said so repeatedly,” Feinstein said. “Republican senators admit it. Even the reporter who broke the story said it wasn’t me or my staff.”

The rally in Council Bluffs, across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska, was Trump’s latest stop on a busy tour campaigning for Republican candidates in the lead-up to midterms that will determine control of Congress. And it comes as the president is on a high wave following a series of wins, including Kavanaugh’s confirmation. It’s the second appointment Trump has made to the Supreme Court.

Indeed, Trump’s loudest applause came as he continued his victory lap, which has included bashing Democrats for attempting to sink the nomination. Trump and other GOP leaders say the effort energized Republican voters, who had long been considered less energized than Democrats.

“This is truly an historic week for America,” said Trump, praising Republican senators for standing up to what he called “the Democrats’ shameful campaign of political and personal destruction” against his nominee.

“They wanted to destroy that man,” Trump said. “What the Democrats did to Brett and his family is a national embarrassment, a national disgrace.”

Trump also rolled out new fuel standards that will be a boon for Iowa and other farm states that have pushed for greater ethanol sales. The long-expected change will lift the federal ban on summer sales of gasoline with high-ethanol blends and allow them year-round. The EPA currently bans the high-ethanol blend, called E15, during the summer because of concerns that it contributes to smog on hot days. Ethanol industry advocates say that fear is unfounded.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands, Trump said he was delivering a promise he’d made to Iowa voters years ago when he campaigned ahead of the state’s caucuses.

“Promises made, promises kept,” he said. He charged without offering evidence that if Democrats take control of Congress next month, they will seek to roll back his efforts.

The move was also seen as a reward for Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who led Kavanaugh’s contentious but successful confirmation fight. Trump praised Grassley on Tuesday night as a “tough cookie” as he applauded local leaders including Iowa’s Republican Rep. David Young and Gov. Kim Reynolds, who face tough re-election fights.

Trump also boosted Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who face voters next month. The pair received loud applause from the heavily Nebraskan crowd.

Early voting in Iowa began on Monday, and Trump urged those gathered to cast their ballots now. “Go! Just vote. Get it over with,” he urged.

Early voting accounted for 41 percent of the Iowa vote in 2016, according to the White House.
…

Lynn Fedele sits at a booth at a natural-food deli, next to a wall painted light jungle green with bright red accents. She sips a steaming cup of peppermint chamomile tea and talks politics. 

“I think it’s very important to take the House out of the hands of the Republicans,” she sighs, referring to the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fedele describes herself as a left-leaning progressive. She didn’t vote for Republican Donald Trump for president in 2016. Nor did she vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton, knowing Clinton would win New Jersey. (Clinton won 55 percent to Trump’s 41 percent.)

She instead voted for Jill Stein, hoping that her Green Party would get 5 percent of the vote and the federal matching funds that go with it. Stein finished with just over 1 percent of the U.S. vote.

The U.S. midterm congressional elections, held halfway through a president’s term, typically signal the public’s judgment of the performance of the incumbent president. If voters turn against Trump, they could change the control of Congress. Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats in the House to take control of that chamber and two seats in the Senate to achieve a majority there.

Key bloc

Many analysts agree the key voting bloc that could flip Congress consists of women like Fedele.

White? Check.

Suburban? Check. She lives in Montclair, N.J.

Educated? Check. She has a master’s degree in English and has been teaching high school English for 27 years.

Education is on top of her list of political priorities, followed by housing inequality, environmental protection, health care and Planned Parenthood.

​Who’s voting?

A Politico poll taken in mid-September showed more than 64 percent of women were “very motivated” to vote in the midterms. Among Democratic women, that number jumped to 71 percent.

Fedele believes the bitter battle to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and the sexual assault accusations that were brought against him by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez will prompt many more women to vote for Democratic congressional candidates. Fedele said the way Ford was treated and mocked by Trump and Republican senators “is an affront to any woman who has been assaulted.”

On the other hand, Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders insist the Kavanaugh debate — and what they characterized as an “angry mob” of Democratic protesters — will motivate Republicans to vote for Senate candidates to confirm more conservatives like Kavanaugh.

Even so, Kate Smith, 49, is not planning to vote.

“It’s so contentious. I just don’t enjoy politics anymore,” she said.

Smith, the mother of a 5-year-old, is a registered independent. She said if she suddenly decided to vote, she would support someone who is fiscally responsible, who supports curbing government regulatory programs. Smith has a doctorate and runs a financial business.

Women and the 2016 race

Democrats have typically won the women’s vote since 1992, according to Pew Research. In the 2016 presidential election, Clinton won the overall women’s vote with 54 percent. But she lost the white women’s vote — 52 percent of them voted for Trump. However, college-educated white women were more inclined to vote for Clinton than Trump, and they are overwhelmingly supporting Democratic candidates in their congressional districts this year, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School survey.

Chris Elliott backed Trump. She emigrated from Ireland as a child and now lives in New Jersey. Her political hot buttons are jobs and education. She’s voted for the past 40 years but said she’s never seen partisan acrimony like this.

Elliott blames the president and said he’s turning female voters away because they don’t like how he “acts like a bully.” Though she regrets voting for Trump, she will remain a Republican voter in the midterms because of the administration’s strict immigration rules that have cracked down on illegal immigrants.

“That illegal alien,” Elliott said, “I’m not for that.”

Brigid Callahan Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., and author of Women in American Politics, said she’s seeing presidential “buyer’s remorse” like Elliott’s among white Republican women, specifically young white women. That remorse, she thinks, will determine the outcomes of many competitive House races.

“Perhaps some of these women will now flip to the Democratic side, or young women will be increasingly mobilized to vote,” she said.

New Jersey’s 11th District

Political analysts are looking at New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, which includes Montclair, as an illustration of that pushback by women voters.

The 11th, formerly a Republican stronghold, is a wealthy suburb west of New York City. Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen has held the district since 1995 but is not seeking re-election. Currently, the Cook Political Report shows the 11th District race competitive, but leaning left.

Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, is a political newcomer. Her Republican rival, Jay Webber, is a New Jersey assemblyman. Sherrill recently filled a banquet hall with screaming supporters as former Vice President Joe Biden arrived to campaign with her.

“A lot of our women voters are concerned about the same economic issues that all of our voters are,” Sherrill told VOA. “We have infrastructure needs. We have health care needs here, like the rest of the country. So a lot of women, some of them heads of the household [or] … single mothers, they’re very concerned about the economy as well.”

Webber said female voters want the same thing as men, and that’s what he’s campaigning on: “A thriving economy. The opportunity to have a job and provide for their families. And save for retirement and their kids’ education.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be held after U.S. congressional elections on Nov. 6.

Speaking to reporters as he flew to Iowa for a political rally, Trump said: “It’ll be after the midterms. I just can’t leave now.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that plans were being made for his second summit with Kim and that he thought “incredible” progress had been made in U.S. talks with the long-isolated North Asian country.

He said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had very good talks with Kim over the weekend and that three or four locations were being considered.

Pompeo echoed Trump’s comments when he spoke briefly to reporters during a Tuesday afternoon visit to the White House.

“While there’s still a long way to go and much work to do, we can now see a path where we will achieve (our) ultimate goal, which is the full and final verified denuclearization of North Korea,” he said.

Trump and Kim held a historic first summit in Singapore on June 12 at which Kim pledged to work toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. His actions have fallen short, however, of Washington’s demands for a complete inventory of its weapons and facilities and irreversible steps to give up its nuclear arsenal, which could threaten the United States.

‘No Rockets Flying’

Still, Trump was upbeat on progress so far.

“You got no rockets flying, you have no missiles flying, you have no nuclear testing,” Trump said in the Oval  Office. “We’ve made incredible progress – beyond incredible.

“But I have agreed to meet,” he said. “We have a very good relationship with Chairman Kim. I like him, he likes me, the relationship is good.”

Pompeo said on Monday the two sides were “pretty close” to agreeing on details for a second summit.

He added that Kim had said he was ready to allow international inspectors into North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site and the Sohae missile engine test facility as soon as the United States and North Korea agreed on logistics.

But experts questioned what Pompeo achieved on Sunday on his fourth visit to Pyongyang this year. They said the North Korean leader appeared simply to be repackaging and dragging out past pledges.

Trump noted that the United States had not lifted the “very big sanctions” it has imposed on Pyongyang.

“I’d love to remove them, but we have to get something for doing it,” Trump said.

North Korea is very interested in reaching some sort of agreement on denuclearization so that it can grow economically with the benefit of the foreign investment closed to it now, Trump said.

The U.N. World Food Program said on Tuesday that the supply of food remained precarious in North Korea, where one in five children is stunted by malnutrition. More than 10 million North Koreans, nearly 40 percent of the population, are undernourished and need humanitarian aid, it said.

“I will tell you they’re calling, wanting to go there and wanting to invest,” Trump said. “At some point, when Chairman Kim makes that decision, I think he’s going to unleash something that’s going to be spectacular, really spectacular. And I think he knows it and I think that’s one of the reasons that we’re having very successful conversations.”
…