CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is returning to the battleground state of North Carolina Friday to address a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police as he tries to portray himself as tougher on crime than his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the campaign’s closing months.

Trump is scheduled to address FOP’s National Board of Trustees fall meeting in Charlotte. The FOP, the world’s largest organization of law enforcement officers, endorsed Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, with its president saying on behalf of its 373,000 members that Trump had “made it crystal clear that he has our backs.”

The imagery of the former president and GOP nominee in a room of law enforcement officers offers Trump the platform to contrast their support with his characterization of Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general whom Trump has called the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said last month in Michigan, one of many generalizations about an America under Harris. “You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”

Harris has showcased her status as a one-time top prosecutor in her home state, regularly saying “I know Donald Trump’s type” after she talks about the “perpetrators of all kinds” in her former roles.

She’s had some help with that messaging from two officers who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and have become surrogates for the Democratic ticket, with both stumping for her at various events across the country and reflecting on that day.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told a group of voters in Arizona this summer. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

At the Democratic National Convention last month, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell — who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries sustained that day — said Trump had “summoned our attackers. … He betrayed us.”

Trump’s courting of the support of law officers also butts up against the sympathies that Trump has shown for those who have defied the orders of police, including a pledge to pardon those charged with beating officers during the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol.

Judges and juries considering those cases have heard police officers describe being savagely attacked while defending the building. All told, about 140 officers were injured that day, making it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement” in American history, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has said.

Over 900 people have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to Jan. 6, and approximately 200 others have been convicted at trial. More than 950 people have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting time behind bars — terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has long expressed support for the Jan. 6 defendants. During a March rally in Ohio, he stood onstage, his hand raised in salute, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack sang the national anthem. An announcer asked the crowd to please rise “for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.”

“Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada this summer. He also falsely claimed that police welcomed rioters into the Capitol, saying they told the crowd, “Go in, go in, go in, go in.”

“What a setup that was,” Trump said. “What a horrible, horrible thing.”

The FOP hasn’t issued its official endorsement for the 2024 election, but other police groups have already lined up behind Trump. During another Charlotte rally, Trump in July won the endorsement of the National Organization of Police Organizations, whose leadership lauded his “steadfast and very public support for our men and women on the front lines.”

In February, the International Union of Police Associations endorsed Trump, calling his support for officers “unmatched.” Last month, he won the backing of the Arizona Police Association, just days after the group endorsed Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego over Trump ally Kari Lake in that state’s Senate race.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

The Republican National Committee (RNC), the North Carolina Republican Party and a voter are suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over its guidance to county election boards that an absentee ballot may be counted even if it isn’t submitted in a sealed container-return envelope.

It’s the latest RNC lawsuit targeting state voting procedures ahead of the 2024 race and third filed in the state over the past two weeks.

The plaintiffs argue the state board’s guidance directly conflicts with state election law on counting absentee ballots. Specifically, state law stipulates that an absentee ballot must, among other things, be received by the appropriate county board of elections in a sealed container-return envelope to be counted by that board.”

Before filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say they submitted a request in May for a declaratory ruling from the NCSBE on the matter. North Carolina law allows an aggrieved person to request a declaratory ruling from a state agency.

The agency responded in August, the complaint said, stating in part that while a second return envelope is required for the absentee ballot, the envelope doesn’t specifically have to be a container-return envelope, so long as it’s in a sealed envelope. The plaintiffs said state law is clear that ballots “must be placed in the container-return envelope which, in turn, must be sealed.”

The plaintiffs are asking a state court to reverse the NCSBE’s ruling and issue a declaratory judgment stating that the only type of envelope that qualifies as a container-return envelope under state law is an envelope that satisfies all of the law’s requirements.

The RNC has brought 14 anti-voting lawsuits challenging voter roll maintenance, canvassing absentee ballots and a host of other procedural issues that impact voting and elections. 

Read the lawsuit here.

Read more about the case here.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina judge refused to take Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name off presidential ballots in the battleground state on Thursday, a day before the first batches of November absentee ballots are slated to be sent to registered voters who requested them.

Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Holt denied the temporary restraining order sought by Kennedy to prevent county elections boards from distributing ballots affixed with his name and requiring it to be removed. State law directs the first absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 elections be mailed to requesters starting Friday. A Kennedy attorney said the decision would be appealed and Holt gave him 24 hours, meaning counties likely won’t send out ballots immediately Friday morning.

Kennedy got on the ballot in July as the nominee of the new We The People party created by his supporters. The elections board gave official recognition to the party after it collected enough voter signatures. But Kennedy suspended his campaign two weeks ago and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump. Since then the environmentalist and author has tried to get his name removed from ballots in several states where the race between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are expected to be close.

In North Carolina, Kennedy and We The People of North Carolina wrote to the board asking for his name be withdrawn. But on a party-line vote Aug. 29 the board’s Democratic members denied the party’s request, calling it impractical given the actions already completed to begin ballot distribution on Sept. 6. Kennedy sued the next day.

North Carolina is slated to be the first state in the nation to distribute fall election ballots. County elections offices were expected Friday to send absentee ballots to more than 125,000 in-state and military and overseas voters who asked for them. And over 2.9 million absentee and in-person ballots overall had already been printed statewide as of Wednesday, state elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in an affidavit.

The process of reprinting ballots without Kennedy’s name and reassembling ballot requests would take at least two weeks, state attorneys said, threatening to miss a federal requirement that ballots be released to military and overseas voters by Sept. 21. But Kennedy lawyer Phil Strach argued in court that Kennedy complied with state law by presenting a written request to step down as the candidate, and that there’s another law allowing the ballot release be delayed under this circumstance. Otherwise, Kennedy’s free-speech rights in the state constitution forcing him to remain on the ballot against his will have been violated, Strach told Holt.

“This is very straight forward case about ballot integrity and following the law,” Strach said, adding that keeping Kennedy on the ballot would bring confusion to voters who thought he was no longer a candidate.

But Special Deputy Attorney General Carla Babb said the confusion would occur if ballot distribution was delayed, potentially forcing the state to have to seek a waiver of the Sept. 21 federal deadline. State laws and regulations gave the elections board the ability to reject Kennedy’s withdrawal based on whether it was practical to have the ballots reprinted, she said.

“Elections are not just a game and states are not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for office,” Babb told Holt.

In rejecting Kennedy’s request, Holt said that while the harm imposed upon Kennedy for staying on ballots is minimal, the harm to the state board with such an order would be substantial, such as the reprinting of ballots at considerable cost to taxpayers.

While Kennedy was still an active candidate, the North Carolina Democratic Party unsuccessfully challenged in court the state board’s decision to certify We The People as a party.

Kennedy on Wednesday sued in Wisconsin to get his name removed from the presidential ballot there after the state elections commission voted to keep him on it. Kennedy also filed a lawsuit in Michigan but a judge ruled Tuesday that he must remain on the ballot there.