Polls have closed in South Carolina, which along with Maine, Nebraska and North Dakota are holding primary elections on Tuesday.

One week after President Donald Trump’s endorsement-winning streak in high-profile Republican primaries was snapped, the president’s immense clout over his party is facing another key test in South Carolina’s GOP gubernatorial and Senate nomination races.

But the race grabbing the biggest national spotlight is in Maine, where it’s judgment day for Graham Platner, the embattled Democratic Senate candidate in left-leaning Maine who is aiming to oust longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a crucial race that’s among a handful that will determine if the GOP holds its slim Senate majority in the midterm elections.

Platner, an oyster farmer and military combat veteran who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other top progressive champions, is facing a slew of controversies, which could make his expected Democratic primary victory in Maine much more interesting than originally expected.

PLATNER TO SUPPORTERS: ‘MAINE, YOU HAVE MY BACK’

Platner has been playing defense for the past month, amid mounting controversy. It includes inflammatory online comments made on Reddit, a well-publicized and now covered-up tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol, recent reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married and new allegations last week from ex-girlfriends of a history of rape fantasies, heavy drinking and violent episodes. Platner has called the latest allegations of violence untrue.

The negative headlines have triggered some Democrats in the nation’s capital to question whether Platner was damaged goods. The candidate this past weekend thanked Maine voters for continuing to support him.

“When hurtful things I said on the internet a decade ago came out into the public, as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and darkness of recovery and accountability and growth, Maine had my back,” Platner said at a rally Friday not far from his hometown in Down East, Maine.

“Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated, and weaponized, you have my back. And when politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me. Maine, you have my back.”

SEE IT: MAINE VOTERS SOUND OFF ON PLATNER CONTROVERSIES

Platner, who has acknowledged his battle with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from his three tours of duty in the war in Iraq with the Marines and one tour with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts after they made headlines last fall soon after he launched his Senate campaign.

And Platner has said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007 while drinking with fellow Marines stationed in Croatia. He added that he covered up the tattoo with a new design after learning last year that it resembled a Nazi symbol. But new allegations from an ex-girlfriend raise questions about Platner’s timeline regarding knowledge of the tattoo.

Rep. Ro Khanna, the progressive leader from California who organized Friday’s rally with Platner, was asked by Fox News Digital whether he’s concerned if the current allegations, and any potential future ones, could sink Platner’s campaign and hurt Democrats’ hopes of winning back the Senate.

“I’m more concerned about making it clear that we’re opposed to misogyny, those relationships were toxic and volatile, there’s no excuse for that,” Khanna said. “I talked to Graham, and he says he was at a very dark period, he had come back from two tours of duty in Iraq as an infantryman seeing violence and death. That doesn’t excuse it.”

SEE IT: DEM SENATORS DODGE ON BACKING PLATNER AS MAINE CANDIDATE’S SCANDAL CLOUDS FINAL DAYS BEFORE PRIMARY

But Khanna noted that Platner said “he really grew as a person when he came back to Maine, and he was an oyster farmer, and he found peace, and he is ashamed of that period. To me, that suggests someone taking accountability and improving their lives, and we need that redemption in this country. And I agree with a lot of his economic policies, that we should be taxing the billionaires, we should be focusing on the working class.”

Platner has been considered the all-but-certain Democratic nominee after two-term Gov. Janet Mills, who was backed by longtime Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party establishment, dropped out of the race earlier this spring after significantly trailing Platner in fundraising and polling.

He’s facing two long-shot rivals for the nomination in Tuesday’s primary, but Mills’ name remains on the ballot, which she highlighted in a recent interview. A source in Mills’ wider political orbit confirmed to Fox News last week that the governor was receiving calls urging her to get back in the race amid Platner’s controversies. But there’s no active campaign effort on behalf of Mills.

Maine voters Fox News reporters spoke with ahead of the rally were divided on whether Platner’s controversies would impact their opinions of the candidate and whether the allegations would weaken his ability to defeat Collins.

Collins, returning to Maine on Friday after a busy week on Capitol Hill where she reached a milestone by casting her 10,000th consecutive vote in the Senate, was asked by reporters about the latest allegations facing Platner.

“The allegations in the latest story are troubling,” Collins responded. “And I believe that Graham Platner has a lot of questions to answer.”

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Platner is facing plenty of incoming political fire from Republican groups. A super PAC aligned with Collins has been blasting Platner, running ads spotlighting his multiple controversies.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) charged that Platner is a “fraud.”

“He’s preaching about living a small but decent life growing up in Maine. The truth? Graham Platner is an elitist whose parents sent him to boarding school in Connecticut and bought him a house,” the NRSC wrote.

And the Republican National Committee (RNC) also targeted Platner.

“Graham Platner says his violent and erratic past is being “weaponized” against him. Platner said he would rape someone to show his dominance and “rape was about power,” the RNC research team wrote on X, pointing to the latest allegations against the candidate.

Despite the allegations and the incoming fire from the GOP, no Democratic politicians who have backed Platner have rescinded their endorsements.

“We need to unite and realize that the goal is defeating Susan Collins. And everyone from Schumer to Sanders is unified around that goal,” Khanna told Fox News Digital.

Platner has drawn large crowds and built a healthy fundraising war chest, and Democrats see Maine as a crucial pickup opportunity as they aim to win back the Senate majority.

But beating Collins, a moderate who is running for a sixth six-year term in the Senate and has a history of voting against President Donald Trump’s agenda, won’t be easy. Six years ago, public opinion polls indicated the senator was headed to defeat, but Collins defied expectations and won re-election by topping then-Democratic state House Speaker Sara Gideon by nine points.

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There’s a crowded and competitive field of Democrats running for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in the race to succeed the term-limited Mills. On the Republican side, Bobby Charles — former federal investigator — leads eight other candidates, including Jonathan Bush, nephew of the late President George H.W. Bush.

Also in the spotlight, the Democratic primary in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, in the race to replace moderate Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who announced last year that he would not seek re-election due to political polarization.

Republicans, who are aiming to hold their razor-thin majority in the House, view the mostly rural district which Trump carried in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, as a top pickup opportunity. Former two-term Republican Gov. Paul LePage is uncontested for the GOP nomination.

In South Carolina, Trump’s endorsement is in the spotlight.

The president, a week and a half ago, handed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette 11th-hour support as she seeks to succeed a top Trump ally, term-limited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster.

Evette is facing off in the GOP primary against a handful of top rivals. They are longtime South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, nationally known Rep. Nancy Mace, Rep. Ralph Norman and multimillionaire businessman Rom Reddy.

Since no candidate was expected to top 50% of the primary vote and land a majority, the top two finishers will advance to the June 23 Republican runoff.

The brute force of the president’s endorsement power has been on display in GOP primaries over the past month, with his candidates ousting incumbents he targeted in showdowns in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas that grabbed plenty of national attention.

But his last-minute endorsement of Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa — which came on the same day he also backed Evette — in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn’t enough to muscle the three-term congressman to victory.

Feenstra was narrowly edged by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and former political strategist who was backed by the political wings of MAHA — the acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement aligned with Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Turning Point USA, the powerful conservative organization co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.

In the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, the major contenders had long been highlighting their support for Trump and his agenda, in hopes of landing his support.

Trump, after staying neutral for months, endorsed Evette, praising her as an “America First Patriot” and a “WINNER” in his announcement.

After Trump backed Evette, Mace said that her very vocal push last year for the Justice Department to release the files related to its probe into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein contributed to the president’s backing of her rival.

“I know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files,” the lawmaker wrote. “I demanded it because you deserved the truth — ALL OF IT,” Mace emphasized in a post on X.

Trump, in a social media post endorsing Evette, also said he expected Evette to choose Henry McMaster Jr., the governor’s son, as her running mate for lieutenant governor.

The comment by the president led to blowback in South Carolina political circles and speculation that McMaster, who succeeded then-Gov. Nikki Haley when she stepped down to serve as U.N. ambassador during Trump’s first term and who is in his 10th year as governor, was trying to give his son a political boost.

But McMaster denied any deal or pressure, and Evette has said she wouldn’t name any running mate until after the primary is over.

And on Friday, the younger McMaster took his name out of contention, saying it was “incredibly humbling” to be mentioned as a possible lieutenant governor candidate, but that “now is simply not the right time.”

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The winner of the Republican gubernatorial nomination will be considered the clear favorite in November’s general election in South Carolina.

State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, trial attorney and 2010 gubernatorial candidate William Mullins McLeod Jr., and businessman Billy Webster, who served as chief of staff to then-Democratic Gov. Richard Riley, are running for their party’s nomination.

Longtime Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is the clear favorite in the Republican Senate primary, but is facing a tougher-than-expected challenge from South Carolina businessman Mark Lynch in a race that has devolved into mudslinging.

In Nevada, incumbent Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is expected to fend off a handful of primary challengers as he seeks re-election. On the Democratic side, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is the clear favorite over Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill.

And in solidly red North Dakota, there is a competitive GOP house primary for the state’s at-large district.

Fox News Digital’s Alexis McAdams, Sally Persons, Jessica Sonkin and Luke Trevisan contributed to this report.

California’s slow vote counting process — still underway and causing friction after last week’s primary — may be forced to change before November’s midterm elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether mail ballots must be received by election day to count.

Whether those changes will speed things up — and help tamp down baseless claims from President Trump and others that the slow count is evidence of fraud — will depend on a variety of factors, election experts said, including how the high court rules, how state lawmakers and local elections officials respond, and whether they push any additional steps to quicken the count.

“We’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court does,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

“We’re certainly planning for a bad Supreme Court decision in this case, but we don’t really know all of our options for how to respond until we see the court’s decision,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chair of the Assembly Elections Committee and a former top elections official in Santa Cruz County.

Pellerin said she has been working on contingency plans with other state officials — including some from the offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — and has requested $35 million in state funds to educate voters on any new midterm deadlines, though that funding has not been appropriated.

Federal law has, since 1872, set “election day” as the first Tuesday following a Monday in November, and gives Congress oversight over elections for the president and members of Congress. However, most authority for running elections falls to the states.

California currently provides a grace period for ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by and received within seven days of election day. More than a dozen states have similar laws that allow for counting late-arriving ballots, and most states accept such mail ballots from members of the military who are stationed overseas.

In March, the nation’s high court heard arguments about a five-day grace period in Mississippi, with the court’s conservative majority appearing skeptical. Many observers expect from those arguments that the high court will rule, by the end of this month, that ballots — at least for federal races — must be received by election day to count.

That outcome — in the case Watson vs. Republican National Committee — is considered likely but not assured, and some elections experts believe the high court has little legal precedent to support such a conclusion.

“That is a bogus interpretation of the statute,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law. “It violates what the statute says as a matter of text and history, and just how it’s been understood since the Civil War basically.”

Hasen and others also doubt that such a change would have much impact on the speed of California’s vote counting process, given that huge volumes of mail ballots that are placed in ballot drop boxes or arrive at processing facilities on or just before election day would still count — and would still drag the counting process out for days after the election.

In 2024, California counted more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total.

“The main bottleneck is really not ballots that arrive after election day. The bottleneck is ballots arriving before or on election day,” Hasen said. “So I don’t think the Watson case — however it comes out — is going to appreciably change California’s timing on when they’ll get enough ballots counted in a close race for it to be able to be called by news organizations.”

Nonetheless, state and local elections officials are preparing for changes — and looking for other ways to speed up the vote count, which, as of Monday, had resulted in more than 7.7 million ballots counted from last week’s primary, but more than 1.7 million left to process.

State plans unclear

If the Supreme Court were to rule that votes cast in federal elections must be received by election day, California would need to respond quickly.

It would need to craft a messaging campaign to inform millions of voters of the new rules, and determine when to tell voters they must mail their ballots by in order for their votes to count, experts said. That calculation may be shaped in part by efforts by the Trump administration to assert federal control over the mail ballot process through the U.S. Postal Service, which California and other states are fighting in court.

California officials may also need to determine whether they will create a “bifurcated counting process” with different rules for primary and general elections and different rules for federal races and state and local races on the same ballots, Alexander said, as a narrow Supreme Court ruling may not apply to them all equally.

“That’s a big policy decision that lawmakers will need to make, and I’m not sure how that would go,” Alexander said, citing a lack of detailed public plans from state and local elections officials.

Weber — who urged voters to cast ballots early in last week’s election — did not respond to a request for comment.

Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor’s office doesn’t comment on “hypotheticals,” but that Newsom “is planning for all eventualities, including but not limited to attacks on our democracy and disruptions in our elections.”

Bonta’s office said it is “in communication with election officials and actively preparing for the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could require changes to California’s election procedures,” but that it could not provide details.

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said he was “not in a position to discuss specific contingency planning details” given the high court has yet to rule, but that his office “is closely monitoring the case and has begun evaluating potential impacts to election administration.”

If changes are required by the court, Logan said his office “is prepared to undertake a comprehensive voter education and outreach effort to ensure voters understand any new requirements, deadlines, or voting options,” which would be “multilingual, multi-channel, and designed to reach voters directly across Los Angeles County, particularly in communities that rely heavily on voting by mail and those that have historically done so.”

Funds needed for faster count

Alexander’s group has backed Pellerin’s request for $35 million for a marketing campaign to encourage voters to send midterm ballots in early, and advocated for another $55 million in state funding to support county efforts to build up their vote processing capabilities.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, said it would be “premature” to comment on those requests, but “discussions have been underway and are continuing.”

Both Alexander and Hasen said California should be investing more in its ballot processing capabilities even if the current process is fair and secure and the claims of fraud are baseless, because those claims have succeeded in diminishing trust.

“On the one hand, this is a manufactured crisis. There is nothing that is intrinsically bad about a slow count for a race,” Hasen said. “On the other hand, we live in an era of profound distrust in institutions and in the integrity of elections, in no small part because of Donald Trump.”

In 2012, slightly over half of all California votes were cast via mail ballots. However, that number has increased dramatically since, thanks in part to an expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, and nearly 89% of ballots were cast by mail in last year’s special election.

Alexander said that throughout that same period, California lawmakers have passed new laws to expand access to the ballot but have not provided counties with the necessary funding to keep up with the volume — meaning “counties are left holding the bag.”

Alexander said California should fix that by providing consistent state funding for new ballot counting machines, more modern and efficient county processing facilities, and an expansion of a program backed by Pellerin and available in some counties already that allows voters dropping off ballot envelopes in person to essentially convert those ballots into in-person votes on the spot — which Alexander called a “hybrid” option that saves counties a huge amount of processing time.

She said the state spent millions to educate voters on new COVID-related vote-by-mail protocols and deadlines in 2020, and it led to both record turnout and a faster count — proving access and speed are not mutually exclusive.

“We’re being asked to make a false choice,” Alexander said. “It is possible to have accessible, secure, reliable and verified elections, and also an accelerated vote count.”

Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.

Senate Republicans have struggled to move the ball on President Donald Trump’s voter ID and citizenship verification bill, but a late-night vote in the upper chamber breathed some life into an issue once thought dead. 

During the Senate’s marathon “vote-a-rama” to advance the GOP’s $70 billion immigration enforcement package, Republicans tried twice to attach the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to the massive bill. 

They failed both times, with a cohort of Republicans joining Senate Democrats to stymie the effort, which was destined to fail either way given that the amendments from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, had to break through the filibuster. 

REPUBLICANS FAIL TO ATTACH SAVE AMERICA ACT TO PARTY-LINE FUNDING PACKAGE

Graham’s attempt was to attach the modified version of the SAVE America Act, which included several policy additions, like barring men in women’s sports, that Trump demanded months ago.

Four Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., voted against it. Their defections prevented the bill from even getting 50 votes, a prerequisite for success if Republicans were to launch a talking filibuster. 

But Lee’s attempt did hit 50 votes, with Collins flipping her vote to support the original version of the SAVE America Act. 

Lee cheered the moment on X shortly after as the vote-a-rama still raged and noted that, with Vice President JD Vance serving as a possible 51st vote, the SAVE America Act could pass.

WATCH: HAWLEY FUMES AFTER 4 GOP SENATORS HELP SINK TRUMP-BACKED VOTER ID LAW

“That means that but for the Zombie Filibuster, the House-passed SAVE America Act would now be on its way to the White House for President Trump’s signature,” Lee said. 

The moment was a big victory for the legislation, which thus far has wallowed in the Senate for months.

Conservatives like Lee have pushed Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to launch a talking filibuster to grind down Senate Democrats and pass the legislation at a simple majority threshold.

SEN LEE DARES DEMOCRATS TO REVIVE TALKING FILIBUSTER OVER SAVE ACT, SLAMMING CRITICISM AS ‘PARANOID FANTASY’

But Thune hasn’t pulled the trigger out of concern that Republicans wouldn’t stay together to bat down a deluge of Democratic amendments that could substantially change the legislation or target other elements of Trump’s agenda. 

Senate Republicans did launch a quasi-floor takeover to debate the SAVE America Act in March, but the steam behind that push has since fallen off substantially. 

The other option for Republicans would be to nuke the filibuster, something Trump has demanded they do sporadically throughout his second term.

Again, it’s an issue that Republicans aren’t unified on, and one that several fear could haunt them if and when Democrats regain control of the upper chamber. 

Trump has also shifted his ire to the Senate rules referee, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth Macdonough, who ruled that the SAVE America Act didn’t pass muster to be a part of the immigration package at a 50-vote threshold. He’s called on Thune to fire her a handful of times in recent months. 

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“We have every right to change her, and should do so, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “As long as she’s there, we will never get our desperately needed, SAVE AMERICA ACT, approved, and put into full force and effect!”

But, like the talking filibuster or outright nuking of the filibuster, it’s a move Thune isn’t in a hurry to make. 

“That’s not a new request, as you all know, and as is typically the case, the parliamentarian, the rulings break both ways,” Thune said. “And, you know, we lose a few, we win a few, but that’s been true when Democrats have been in the majority, too.”