House Republican leaders have unveiled their proposal to expand the massive tax law they hustled through Congress last year. They’re aiming to make permanent the individual tax cuts and small-business income deductions now set to expire in 2026.

With midterm elections barely two months away, the second crack at tax cuts outlined Monday is portrayed as championing the middle class and small businesses. Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, who heads the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is looking toward a vote on the legislation by the House this month. The solid Republican majority in the House nearly ensures passage before the November elections.

But prospects for the legislation in the Senate are weak, given the slim Republican majority and concern over the potential for further blowing up the deficit with a new tax cut — without corresponding new revenue sources. And even some House Republicans oppose a new tax bill.

The proposal also calls for new tax incentives for savings by creating a “universal savings account” for families that could be used for a range of purposes and would allow the tax-free earnings to be more easily withdrawn than is the case with existing retirement accounts. In addition, the Republican plan would allow the popular, tax-free 529 college savings accounts to also be used to pay for apprenticeship fees and home schooling expenses, as well as paying off student debt. Also, workers would be able to tap their retirement savings accounts without tax penalty to cover expenses from the birth of a child or an adoption.

Startup businesses would be permitted to write off more of their initial costs.

“This legislation is our commitment to the American worker to ensure our tax code remains the most competitive in the world,” Brady said in a statement. Making the tax cuts permanent would build on the tax law’s economic boost by adding 1.5 million new jobs and increasing wages, he said.

As the elections loom, polls are showing only lukewarm support among voters for the $1.5 trillion package of individual and corporate tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law in December as his signature legislative achievement.

Several Republican House members, facing tough re-election fights in high-tax, Democratic-leaning states like New York and New Jersey, voted against the tax legislation last year and would prefer to do without this new version as well.

The tax law that took effect Jan. 1, the most sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code in three decades, is estimated to add around $1.5 trillion to the ballooning deficit over 10 years. Deficit hawks as well as Democratic lawmakers — who were unanimous in opposing the tax legislation last year — are asking how the Republicans intend to pay for the extended tax cuts.

“After handing massive unpaid-for tax breaks to Big Pharma, Wall Street and the wealthiest 1 percent with the first GOP tax scam for the rich, House Republicans are here with more of the same,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday. “Republicans want to add even more to the deficit, and even more to the bank accounts of the wealthiest 1 percent.”

The new tax law enacted in December provides steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families.

While the law slashed the corporate tax rate permanently from 35 percent to 21 percent, its tax cuts for individuals and the millions of U.S. “pass-through” businesses expire in eight years. The “pass-through” businesses funnel their income to owners and other individuals, who then pay personal income tax on those earnings, not the corporate rate. They are allowed under the new law to deduct 20 percent of the first $315,000 of their earnings.

Also until 2026, the tax law ended the $4,050 personal exemption for individuals and capped at $10,000 the amount of property taxes or state or local taxes that consumers can deduct on their federal returns.

Early this year, millions of working Americans got a boost from the tax law as they saw increases in their paychecks with less tax withheld by employers. But as Trump’s populist attacks against free trade have erupted into trade wars with China and U.S. allies, trade tensions have overshadowed the tax cuts in economically vulnerable areas of the country that depend on exports.
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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says risks to election security are now among the “principal security threats” facing the country.

Nielsen spoke Monday at a summit on election security in suburban St. Louis. The two-day summit is focused partly on halting threats to the nation’s election infrastructure. The event includes secretaries of state from around a dozen states and other election officials.

The U.S. intelligence community says Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit President Donald Trump. Nielsen says that while no attempts have been detected so far that match the scale of the 2016 effort, threats against election systems are “real and evolving.”

Nielsen says Homeland Security can offer states cost-free assistance on technical matters and risk and vulnerability assessment.
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A top Trump administration official on Monday defended a plan to revamp the Endangered Species Act, saying the proposed changes would result in more effective, quicker decisions on species protection.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt dismissed criticism by environmental groups that the plan would “gut” crucial protections for threatened animals and plants.

“That’s laughable,” he said, adding that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and other officials “respect the law” and know the law.

While he disagrees with critics, Bernhardt said he recognizes that any plan to change the 45-year-old law was bound to create controversy.

“People are passionate about the Endangered Species Act, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

Bernhardt told an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation that the Obama administration too often “strayed” from the law to focus solely on species protection without regard for costs to nearby land owners or businesses.

“The reality is there is a cost” to listing a species as endangered or threatened, Bernhardt said. “It’s not a free choice by society.”

The “true costs” of the species law “are often borne by folks who just happen to be in a certain geographical area” where an endangered animal lives, he added.

Conservatives have long complained that the law hinders drilling, logging and other activities while failing to restore endangered species to unprotected status.

The Trump administration proposed a regulatory overhaul in July that would end automatic protections for threatened animals and plants and limit habitat safeguards meant to shield recovering species from harm. The proposal also opens the possibility of including cost-benefit analysis in listing decisions and makes it easier to remove a species from endangered or threatened status.

Democrats and some wildlife advocates said the moves would speed extinctions in the name of furthering the administration’s anti-environment agenda. Species currently under consideration for protections are considered especially at risk, including the North American wolverine and the monarch butterfly, they said.

David Hayes, who served as deputy interior secretary in the Obama administration, said Zinke and Trump were “pandering to fringe elements of the extraction industry that consider any protection for wildlife an unacceptable constraint on profits.”

The proposal comes as Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation to enact broad changes to curtail the landmark law, saying it hinders economic activities while doing little to restore species.

While the administration is happy to work with lawmakers from both parties, Bernhardt called major changes to the law unlikely to pass a divided Congress.

“The Endangered Species Act pretty much as we know it is here and will be with us,” he said. “What we’re thinking about is how can we make the law work in a way that’s good for species and good for people.”

Comments on the proposed changes will be accepted through Sept. 24.
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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Monday he is open to meeting U.S. leader Donald Trump at the United Nations later this month despite expressing concerns that the United States could launch a military intervention on his country.

More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 injured in crackdowns by Nicaraguan police and armed groups in protests that began in April over an abortive plan by leftist Ortega’s government to reduce welfare benefits.

The United States on Sept. 5 declared Nicaragua’s civil unrest a threat to the region’s security, saying government repression of protests risked creating an overwhelming displacement of people akin to Venezuela or Syria.

“We are under threat,” Ortega told France 24 TV in an interview being broadcast on Monday. “We can’t rule out anything out as far as the U.S. is concerned. We can’t rule out a military intervention,” he said.

An advance copy of the interview was given to Reuters by the news TV channel.

U.S. government officials were not immediately available to respond to Ortega’s comments.

April’s protests escalated into broader opposition against Ortega, who has been in office since 2007. He also served as president in the 1980s when he was a notable Cold War antagonist of the United States during Nicaragua’s civil war.

Accusing the U.S. of training armed groups to stoke trouble in his country, Ortega reiterated that early elections would be detrimental to Nicaragua. The next presidential vote is due in late 2020.

Ortega said he would be prepared to meet Trump if it could be arranged.

“The idea of having a dialogue with a power like the U.S. is necessary,” said Ortega, interviewed in Spanish with English translation. “It could be an opportunity [to meet Trump] at the United Nations General Assembly [UNGA]. I’d like to go.”

The annual gathering of world leaders starts on Sept. 24 at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York.

Ortega said he was keen to restart dialogue with his opponents and had approached Spain and Germany to help play a role.

The current violence comes after years of calm in Nicaragua and is the worst since his Sandinista movement battled U.S.-backed “Contra” rebels in the 1980s.

Washington has blamed Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla leader, and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, for the situation. The U.S. has also imposed sanctions against three top Nicaraguan officials, citing human rights abuses.
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Control of Congress and the future of Donald Trump’s presidency are on the line as the primary season closes this week, jump-starting a two-month sprint to Election Day that will test Democrats’ ability to harness opposition to Trump and determine whether the Republican president can get his supporters to the polls.

For both parties, the stakes are exceedingly high.

After crushing defeats in 2016, Democrats open the fall campaign brimming with confidence about their prospects for retaking the House, which would give them power to open a wide swath of investigations into Trump or even launch impeachment proceedings. The outcome of the election, which features a record number of Democratic female and minority candidates, will also help shape the party’s direction heading into the 2020 presidential race.

Republicans have spent the primary season anxiously watching suburban voters, particularly women, peel away because of their disdain for Trump. The shift seems likely to cost the party in several key congressional races. Still, party leaders are optimistic that Republicans can keep control of the Senate, which could help insulate Trump from a raft of Democratic investigations.

History is not on Trump’s side. The president’s party typically suffers big losses in the first midterm election after taking office. And despite a strong economy, Republicans must also contend with the president’s sagging approval rating and the constant swirl of controversy hanging over the White House, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Despite those headwinds, Trump is betting on himself this fall. He’s thrust himself into the center of the campaign and believes he can ramp up turnout among his ardent supporters and offset a wave of Democratic enthusiasm. Aides say he’ll spend much of the fall holding rallies in swing states.

“The great unknown is whether the president can mobilize his base to meet the enthusiasm gap that is clearly presented at this point,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Because the middle won’t be there for Republicans.”

Indeed, Trump’s turbulent summer appears to have put many moderates and independents out of reach for Republican candidates, according to GOP officials. One internal GOP poll obtained by The Associated Press showed Trump’s approval rating among independents in congressional battleground districts dropped 10 points between June and August.

A GOP official who oversaw the survey attributed the drop to negative views of Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the White House’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The official was not authorized to discuss the internal polling publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Those declines put several incumbent GOP lawmakers at risk, including Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, who represents a district in the Washington suburbs, and Rep. Erik Paulsen, whose suburban Minneapolis district has been in Republican hands since 1961.

Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House. Operatives in both parties believe at least 40 seats will be competitive in November.

Corry Bliss, who runs a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, acknowledged a “tough environment” for Republicans that could quickly become too difficult for some incumbents to overcome.

“Incumbents who wake up down in the beginning of October are not going to be able to fix it in this environment,” Bliss said. “But incumbents who go on the offense early can and will win.”

Democratic incumbents had a similar wakeup call during the primaries after New York Rep. Joe Crowley, who held a powerful leadership position in Congress, stunningly lost to 28-year-old first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s among several younger minority candidates who defeated older, more established opponents, signaling a desire among many Democratic voters for generational change.

The result is a Democratic field with more women and minorities on the general-election ballot than ever before, several of whom are poised to make history if elected. Ayanna Pressley, who defeated 10-term Rep. Michael Capuano in a primary last week and is unopposed in the general election, will be the first black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. Rashida Talib of Michigan is on track to become the first Muslim woman in Congress. And Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida would be their states’ first black governors if elected this fall.

Crowley said the wave that led to his own defeat will have long-term benefits for the Democratic Party if it motivates more young people and minorities to vote.

“Look at the positives for the country in terms of engagement and the activity that it’s causing and fervor that is forming,” Crowley said.

Indeed, turnout for Democrats has been high in a series of special elections that preceded the November contest. Nearly 60 Democratic challengers outraised House Republicans in the second quarter of 2018. And of the 10 Senate Democrats running for re-election in states Trump carried two years ago, only Florida Sen. Bill Nelson has been outraised by his Republican opponent.

“We’ve got real wind at our back,” said Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “The breadth and depth of the map is remarkable.”

Despite Democrats’ optimism heading into the fall, party officials concede that taking back control of the Senate may not be realistic. Unlike the competitive House races, which are being fought in territory that is increasingly favorable to Democrats, the most competitive Senate contests are in states Trump won — often decisively.

Democratic operatives are increasingly worried about Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s ability to hang on in North Dakota, a state Trump won by 36 points and visited on Friday. Democratic incumbents also face more conservative electorates in Missouri, Indiana and Montana.

Still, Democrats believe that if momentum builds through the fall and Trump’s approval rating sinks further, the party could not only hold onto its current Senate seats but also add wins in territory that has long been out of reach, including Tennessee and Texas, where Rep. Beto O’Rourke is giving Republican Sen. Ted Cruz a surprising re-election fight.

“There’s engagement and momentum like I haven’t seen since the Ann Richards days,” said Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, referring to the state’s Democratic governor in the early 1990s.

While most of the attention is on the battle for Congress, competition for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 is heating up. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is scheduled to headline the marquee fall banquet for Iowa Democrats next month.

For now, former President Barack Obama is emerging as the top Democrat making the case for the party this fall. He returned to the political fray last week imploring voters upset with Trump to show up in November.

“Just a glance at recent headlines should tell you this moment really is different,” Obama said in a speech Friday. “The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump is assailing a new best-selling book about him and his White House as “just another assault against me, in a barrage of assaults.”

“The Woodward book is a Joke,” the U.S. leader said Monday about investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s highly critical look at Trump’s chaotic 20-month presidency, “Fear: Trump in the White House”, that is being published Tuesday.

The book has already risen to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list, but Trump said the longtime Washington Post reporter and editor used “now disproven unnamed and anonymous sources. Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction. Dems can’t stand losing. I’ll write the real book!”

In one of a string of Twitter comments, Trump said, “Bob Woodward is a liar who is like a Dem operative prior to the Midterms,” claiming the author “was caught cold, even by NBC” in an interview on the network’s Today show about his use of unnamed sources to recreate behind-the-scenes events at the White House since Trump took office in January 2017.

Trump retweeted himself from last week, saying, “The Woodward book is a scam. I don’t talk the way I am quoted . If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up. The author uses every trick in the book to demean and belittle. I wish the people could see the real facts – and our country is doing GREAT!”

Woodward gained journalistic fame nearly five decades ago as one of the Post reporters whose investigative stories about White House corruption helped drive President Richard Nixon from office and now has written books about eight U.S. presidents.

But he told NBC that until Trump he had “never seen an instance when the president is so detached from the reality of what’s going on.”

The 75-year-old Woodward said that at a National Security Council meeting a year into Trump’s presidency, when he was complaining about the cost of posting thousands of U.S. troops in foreign countries, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had to explain the rationale to him.

“We’re doing this to prevent World War III,” Woodward quoted Mattis as telling Trump. “The idea that a secretary of defense has to tell the president that all of these actions are designed to prevent the ultimate catastrophe and then Mattis goes on and says, you know, that if we don’t keep these programs, which are very sensitive, the only deterrent option we have would be the nuclear option.”

Asked by NBC why readers should trust his account using anonymous sources, Woodward said, “The incidents are not anonymous. It gives a date, it gives a time, who participates, most often the president himself and what he says.”

The author quoted White House chief of staff John Kelly as calling Trump an “idiot” and telling a staff meeting in his office, “We’re in crazytown,” and Mattis as saying that Trump had an understanding of world affairs of something akin to a “fifth or sixth-grader,” quotes they both have denied.

“They’re not telling the truth,” Woodward said. He called their denials “political statements to protect their jobs, totally understandable.”

But he said his book “is as carefully done as you can do an excavation of the reality of what goes on” in the Trump White House.

He described the current and former Trump officials who talked to him as “people of conscience, people of courage who said, ‘Look, the world needs to know this.'”

Woodward said the officials believe, like former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn said, “Got to protect the country.”

 
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence called Sunday for the anonymous senior official carrying out inside resistance to the Trump administration to “do the honorable thing and resign.”

Pence told Fox News Sunday that the official, who wrote an op-ed opinion article in The New York Times last week that called Trump amoral, was “literally violating an oath, not to the president, but to the Constitution” by seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency.

Pence reiterated that he did not write the article even though it contained an unusual word — “lodestar,” meaning one who serves as an inspiration — that he has used in numerous speeches. The vice president said he would agree to take a lie detector test “in a heartbeat,” but said it was up to Trump to decide whether other White House officials should do the same to try to identify who wrote the article.

Pence said he does not know who wrote it. The official said he or she was part of an internal resistance “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality,” the official said, denouncing Trump’s “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” leadership style.

Trump has railed against the writer, telling a political rally in Montana last week, “Nobody knows who the hell he is, or she. Unidentified deep state operatives who defy voters to push their secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself.”

The article in the newspaper came a day after the first details were revealed from veteran investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” depicting chaotic White House operations under Trump, with his own key administration officials attacking him as dangerously ignorant of world affairs.

Woodward said Trump aides at times have plucked documents off the president’s Oval Office desk to keep him from signing documents the officials considered to be detrimental to U.S. national security interests. Woodward, a longtime Washington Post reporter and editor, quoted Trump chief of staff John Kelly as saying that the White House under Trump was “crazytown” and that the president was an “idiot,” remarks Kelly denied uttering.

Trump and other White House officials have attacked Woodward’s book as fiction. But the author told CBS on Sunday that the president’s claim he does not speak the way Woodward quoted him is “wrong,” saying his reporting was “meticulous and careful,” backed up by hundreds of hours of interviews with current and past Trump aides.

Woodward said he has no idea who was the writer of the New York Times article, but said its vague description of White House events did not meet his own standard reporting life behind the scenes in Trump’s administration.

Pence defended Trump’s performance, saying the president promotes “a vigorous debate” within the White House over public policy issues, and then “he makes the decision. He’s in command.” Pence called him “a president of almost boundless energy.”

In a Twitter remark last week, Trump assailed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for bringing criminal charges against “two very popular Republican congressmen,” Chris Collins in New York and Duncan Hunter in California, just as they face re-election contests in November. Trump said, “two easy wins now in doubt…. Good job Jeff.”

Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike criticized Trump for saying that the charges should not have been brought because of the political ramifications affecting Republicans.

Pence said the serious charges against the two lawmakers “ought to be pursued,” but defended Trump’s criticism, saying it was aimed at not bringing charges too close to an election, so as to not impact the outcomes.

 
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Former U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday told attendees at a Democratic rally that the United States government “is a government for everybody. It’s not for sale.”

Obama has maintained a low public profile since leaving office, but with midterm elections coming in November, he spoke Saturday at an Anaheim, California, rally in support of Democratic candidates in districts won by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“We are bound by the notion that this is a government of and by and for the people,” he said. “We don’t have a situation where some are more equal than others.”

“The stakes are high in this election,” Obama warned, referring to the congressional elections that will be seen as a referendum on the presidential administration of Donald Trump and Republican rule in Washington. “This is a consequential moment in our history. And the fact is that if we don’t step up, things can get worse. … But the good news is, in two months we have a chance to restore some sanity in our politics.”

Obama also said the biggest threat to U.S. democracy is not one individual, nor is it wealthy political supporters. 

“It’s apathy,” he said. “It’s indifference. It’s us not doing what we’re supposed to do.”

On Friday, Obama made his first appearance in the midterm election battle, in a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he accepted an ethics in government award. He told the students in the audience: “You need to vote because our democracy depends on it.”

The former president said the current state of Washington politics “did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years — a fear and anger that’s rooted in our past but is also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.”

Trump was dismissive of Obama’s speech. At a fundraiser in North Dakota, the U.S. president told a crowd of supporters: “I watched it, but I fell asleep.”
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President Donald Trump concedes that some Apple Inc. products may become more expensive if his administration imposes “massive” additional tariffs on Chinese-made goods, but he says the tech company can fix the problem by moving production to the U.S.

“Start building new plants now. Exciting!” Trump said Saturday in a tweet aimed at the Cupertino, California, company.

This week, Apple said that a proposed additional round of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports would raise prices on some of its products, including the Apple Watch and the Mac mini.

The company is highly exposed to a trade war between the U.S. and China. It makes many of its products for the U.S. market in China, and it also sells gadgets including the iPhone in China, making them a potential target for Chinese retaliation against the Trump tariffs.

Trump tweeted Saturday that “Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China — but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive,” if the company made its products in the U.S. instead of China.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has not announced plans to move manufacturing from China to the U.S.

‘Tax on U.S. consumers’

In its letter this week to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Apple said that “because all tariffs ultimately show up as a tax on U.S. consumers, they will increase the cost of Apple products that our customers have come to rely on in their daily lives.”

The company said tariffs would hit “a wide range of Apple products,” including computers, watches, adapters, chargers and tools used in its U.S. manufacturing, repair and data centers. Apple said the tariffs would raise the cost of its U.S. operations and put it at a disadvantage to foreign rivals.

The White House has accused China of stealing U.S. intellectual property and forcing American companies to share their technology with Chinese companies. The tariffs would pressure China to stop that behavior, the administration has said. Apple said “it is difficult to see” how tariffs would advance the government’s goal.

The presidential tweet was the latest salvo in a dispute between the Trump administration and companies that fear tariffs will hurt their business.

The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports from China, mostly equipment and material used by manufacturers. CEO Tim Cook said in July that those measures had no effect on Apple. The company is concerned, however, about the Trump administration’s proposal to add 25 percent duties on another $200 billion in Chinese goods, including a wider assortment of consumer-related items.
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North Carolina’s elections board agreed Friday to fight federal subpoenas seeking millions of voting documents and ballots, even after prosecutors delayed a quick deadline to fulfill their demands until early next year.

The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement voted unanimously to direct state attorneys to work to block the subpoenas issued last week to the state board and local boards in 44 eastern counties.

U.S. Attorney Bobby Higdon in Raleigh, whose office issued the subpoenas, hasn’t said specifically why immigration enforcement investigators working with a grand jury empaneled in Wilmington are seeking the information. Two weeks ago, Higdon announced charges against 19 non-U.S. citizens for illegal voting, of which more than half were indicted through a Wilmington grand jury.

The subpoenas ordered the documents, which the state board estimated would exceed 20 million pages, be provided by September 25 at a time when election administrators prepped for the midterm elections. Requested documents included voted ballots, voter registration and absentee ballot forms and poll books, some going back to early 2010.

The action by the panel — comprised of four Democrats, four Republicans and one unaffiliated voter — came a day after an assistant prosecutor wrote the board backing off the deadline because of the election and expressing willingness to narrow the scope of the subpoenas.

After close to an hour of meeting privately, board members decided to try to quash the subpoenas altogether.

“The subpoena we’ve received was and remains overly broad, unreasonable, vague, and clearly impacts significant interests of our voters, despite the correspondence received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” board member Joshua Malcolm said during an open portion of the meeting. “The fact is the subpoena has not been withdrawn, despite such correspondence.”

Board Chairman Andy Penry expressed frustration with the timing of the subpoenas, received by the state board office just as the Labor Day weekend began and without advance notice. He said officials in some counties believed their faxed subpoenas were actually bogus attempts to obtain information fraudulently.

While some of the documents and information are public records easily accessible, state law prevents access to voted ballots unless by court order. And Penry said the data sought included very confidential information about voters.

“We have not been given a reason as to why ICE wants that information and candidly I can’t think of any reason for it,” he said.

Voting rights activists and Democrats blasted federal investigators for the massive request, accusing them of trying to interfere in the fall elections and taint the sanctity of the secret ballot to look for what critics consider exaggerated occurrences of voter fraud. Absentee ballots can be traced to the individual voter casting one.

The North Carolina elections include races for Congress and all of the seats in the legislature as well as several constitutional amendments.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice praised the board Friday “for taking steps to defend the privacy interests of North Carolina voters and to prevent likely unlawful fishing expeditions by the federal government that tends to fuel voter suppression and intimidation efforts,” said Allison Riggs, a coalition attorney.

North Carolina’s three Democratic members of Congress and ranking Democrats on four House committees on Friday asked for the U.S. Justice and Homeland Security departments to investigate the reason for the requests and their legality.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Kielmanovich wrote in a letter Friday to board attorney Josh Lawson that his office is “confident in the appropriateness of the subpoenas.”

Kielmanovich wrote Thursday that the original subpoena timeline was designed only to ensure documents wouldn’t be destroyed following state records procedures. But prosecutors want to “avoid any interference with the ongoing election cycle” and “do nothing to impede those preparations or to affect participation in or the outcome of those elections,” he wrote.

In offering a January deadline to comply, Kielmanovich also asked that vote information be redacted from ballots.

 
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The White House has been rocked by scandal after scandal, and President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have been falling. Yet there are a group of supporters who remain deeply committed and loyal to Trump, believing his agenda is good for them and for the country. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara talked to some of them and has this report.
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