State News

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry on Thursday confirmed at least four counties in the commonwealth had "defeated" fraudulent voter registration schemes after multiple counties went public with their findings. The attorney general, a Democrat who was nominated to the position by Governor Josh Shapiro after his election in 2022, confirmed "[a]pparent attempts to submit fraudulent voter registration forms in Berks, Lancaster, Monroe, and York Counties," in a press release posted to her office's website.

Virginia agricultural and forestry small businesses impacted by Hurricane Helene now have another place to turn for help. Individuals and state and local governments in federally designated disaster zones can already apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance, as the president approved a Major Disaster Declaration for the commonwealth within a week of the storm.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are locked in a dead heat in Wisconsin, the latest polling shows. In a two-way race, both candidates garner 48% support, with 2% still undecided, according to the American Greatness-TIPP poll of 831 likely voters in the state, conducted Oct. 28-30.

Arizonans can now have marijuana brought to their doorstep. The Arizona Department of Health Services announced the change will go into effect on Friday.

Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown holds a slim lead while outspending his Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, nearly four-to-one in one of the most expensive Senate races this cycle. Ohio’s Senate race is currently the most expensive in the country, totaling $425,802,726 including outside spending, according to OpenSecrets data. Brown is currently leading by 1 percentage point at 47.4% to Moreno’s 46.4%, according to polling averages by RealClear Polling.

A tax on strip clubs that goes into a fund to help child sexual exploitation victims is constitutional, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled. Georgia voters approved the tax through a ballot question. The collections go to the Safe Harbor Commission, which helps child exploitation victims and raises awareness of trafficking.

Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., said he has seen a political shift in the swing state of Michigan. “It’s interesting to see how Michigan has just grown in importance, and as a crossroads,” Huizenga told The Daily Signal, “quite literally the road to the White House, the road to the Senate [Republican] majority, and the road to our own majority in the House of Representatives, I think runs right through Michigan.”

A poll released by Florida Atlantic University shows former President Donald Trump with a big lead in the presidential race and also has good news for incumbent U.S. Sen. Rick Scott. The poll of 913 registered voters by the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab and Mainstreet Research USA shows Trump with 53%, with 44% going for Vice President Kamala Harris and only 2% undecided.

A tax on strip clubs that goes into a fund to help child sexual exploitation victims is constitutional, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled. Georgia voters approved the tax through a ballot question. The collections go to the Safe Harbor Commission, which helps child exploitation victims and raises awareness of trafficking.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center sued a Georgia county on Friday, over allegations that it failed to send out approximately 3,000 absentee ballots by a requested deadline.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick released an advertisement highlighting the friendship between Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) and President Joe Biden after the president referred to supporters of former President Donald Trump as "garbage" in comments the White House later claimed referred to a comedian. "According to Bob Casey, his 'close friend' Joe Biden is the picture of integrity," wrote McCormick in a post to the social media platform X. "He just called half our nation 'garbage.'"

The Arizona race for U.S. Senate between Kari Lake and Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) is statistically tied, according to dueling polls that each show the Republican or Democrat leading by less than 1 percent in the race to fill the seat being vacated by Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). First, a survey released by Data Orbital on Tuesday found Lake with the support of 45.2 percent of likely voters, leading Gallego by 0.7 percent, with the Democrat at 44.5 percent. The pollsters found an additional 5.8 percent were undecided, while 1.6 percent plan to vote for Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana.

Nearly all of explicitly partisan donations from faculty at the Ohio State University appear to have gone to Democratic candidates or aligned causes, according to an analysis by The College Fix. Professors at Ohio’s largest university gave $302,982.90 to Democratic candidates or groups that primarily support Democrats between January 1, 2023 and October 19, 2024, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Ruben Gallego sent a panicky text message to supporters this week, after a new poll showed Kari Lake pulling ahead in the U.S. Senate race just days before the election. A survey released on Tuesday from Data Orbital showed Lake ahead by about a point, 45.2 percent to 44.5 percent. Data Orbital is ranked the eighth highest accurate pollster out of hundreds of polling companies by the polling aggregator site 538. AtlasIntel, which is ranked 22nd for accuracy by 538 and considered very reputable by the left-leaning site MediaBias/FactCheck, released a poll about the same time which showed Gallego just one point ahead of Lake. However, that survey was heavily weighted with women responding, who trend more Democratic than men, surveying about 53 percent women to 46 percent men. It also failed to survey Democrats and Republicans relative to their numbers in the state; oversampling Democrats. 

While the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday affirmed the right of Virginia to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls, Attorney General Jason Miyares said on Wednesday he remains "deeply concerned and alarmed" by the legal action taken against Virginia by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) prior to the high court's intervention. The Biden-Harris administration sued Virginia earlier in October, claiming they violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by removing about 1,600 noncitzens from the commonwealth's voter rolls within 90 days of an election.