Following reports of letters containing fentanyl being mailed to multiple state election offices, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger said that he has been informed that there is another suspicious letter in transit.

Speaking to CNN, Raffensberger said:

“We have been informed by the postal officials that there is a letter in transit so that’s a three to five day transit through their system. Obviously they will try to intercept that when it comes through the Atlanta processing facility but it hasn’t arrived to Georgia yet so we don’t know if it will be intercepted. And that’s why we’ve prepared staff at the Fulton county election office if it does actually make it through the system and it arrives.”

He added that officials are going to make sure that there is Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, available in all election offices that do receive incoming mail and that staff will be trained on how to administer Narcan.

Authorities across the country are currently investigation letters sent to several states’ election offices that contained fentanyl.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

Law enforcement officials in the US are searching for the people responsible for sending letters with suspicious substances sent to election offices in at least five states, acts some election officials described as “terrorism”.

Election offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington state all were sent the letters, four of which contained the deadly drug fentanyl, the Associated Press reported. Some of the letters were intercepted before they arrived. The FBI and United States Postal Service are investigating.

In Washington, election offices in four counties – Skagit, Spokane, Pierce and King, which includes Seattle – were evacuated as workers counted ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the letters tested positive for fentanyl. Steve Hobbs, Washington’s Democratic secretary of state, said the letters were “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”

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Anti-abortion members of the Ohio General Assembly have responded to the state’s passage of Issue 1 during Tuesday’s election.

Condemning the language of the proposal which enshrines abortion rights into the state’s constitution, several dozen anti-abortion state representatives said:

“Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion.

This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.

The day so far

Johnson expected to release government funding proposal over weekend, House could vote Tuesday – report

Meanwhile in South Carolina, Kamala Harris officially filed the Biden campaign’s paperwork to appear on its primary ballot:

Joe Biden’s victory in the state’s primary three years ago revived a presidential campaign that appeared to be flagging. After winning the White House, he successfully pushed to make it the first state to vote in the Democrats’ nominating calendar, arguing the process should better reflect the country’s diversity, though not all Democrats were happy about the decision.

Last month, the Biden administration approved building new barriers along the US border with Mexico, and resumed deportation flights to Venezuela – in the eyes of immigration advocates, exactly the types of policies Donald Trump would enact. Here’s more on that particular point of political tension, from the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino:

As a candidate in the 2020 election, Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump over what he cast as his rival’s ineffective and un-American approach to immigration – one that undermined the nation’s long history of welcoming those seeking refuge in the United States.

Now as president, facing a migrant crisis that is straining resources at the border and feeding into major US cities, Biden has taken a series of steps that critics on his left say are hardly distinguishable from his predecessor.

This week, the Biden administration announced that it will waive a series of federal laws to expedite construction of new barriers along the southern border with Mexico and, separately, resume deportation flights to Venezuela. The actions represent a striking reversal for a president who stopped construction of the border wall on the first day of his administration, after promising on the campaign trail that there would “not be another foot” built on his watch.

Biden insisted on Thursday that the move did not reflect a change of position and were simply appropriated funds being spent as they were allocated. Yet they underscore the complex political landscape the president faces in confronting this crisis ahead of next year’s presidential election, with humanitarian disasters across the globe driving more people to the US’s borders.

As Biden’s challenges at the border deepen, Republicans are intensifying their efforts to put immigration at the center of the political debate in 2024. Republicans believe immigration and border security are among the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities. According to the latest NBC News poll, voters also give Republicans the overwhelming advantage on the question of which party is better equipped to handle immigration, a margin that has doubled since Biden’s first year in office.

But the issue has also created a wedge between the administration and some of Biden’s staunchest allies.

Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke criticizes Biden border policy, says president is ‘really failing us’

A funder of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and several other rightwing Republican candidates is staying out of next year’s election, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:

Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and sunk millions more into underperforming Maga candidates in subsequent election cycles, has confirmed rumors that he is stepping away from 2024 political funding.

In an interview with the Atlantic, Thiel said voting for Trump “was like a not very articulate scream for help” and that things had not turned out the way he had hoped when he donated $1.25m to Trump and Trump-affiliated political funds eight years ago.

“There are a lot of things I got wrong,” he said. “It was crazier than I thought. It was more dangerous than I thought. They couldn’t get the most basic pieces of the government to work. So that was – I think that part was maybe worse than even my low expectations.”

Thiel told the magazine that Trump had called him earlier this year to solicit $10m – the same amount that he had donated to Blake Masters, a former protege who campaigned and lost a Senate bid in Arizona last year, and JD Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy who won an Ohio Senate seat.

When Thiel turned down Trump’s request, he said the former president told him that “he was very sad, very sad to hear that”. He later heard that Trump had insulted him to Masters, calling him a “fucking scumbag”.

Lately, Donald Trump has been spending a lot of time in the New York City courtroom where a judge is deciding how much of a penalty to levy on his business empire for committing what he found to be civil fraud. Earlier this week, Trump took the witness stand for what the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani described as “his most expensive rally ever”. Here’s more:

When Donald Trump took the witness stand on Monday morning, he started what might turn out to be his most expensive rally ever.

This was supposed to be his chance to give his side of the case in a $250m fraud trial that threatens to end his business career in New York state. On the stand, Trump mentioned crime in New York City and “election interference” as if he were in front of a crowd.

“Many people are leaving New York … you have the attorney general sitting here all day long, it’s a shame what’s going on,” Trump said. “We have a hostile judge, and it’s sad.”

The former president’s appearance on the witness stand would feel familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a glimpse of Trump’s rallies. Outside a huge line of reporters waited to get in. Banks of TV cameras parked outside the venue. Protesters shouted. The trial judge is the sole decider of this case and the fine that is at stake. But when Trump comes to town, the circus follows.

Even his testimony was reminiscent of his rallies. His statements about his real estate company were wistful, boastful and bizarre. “If I want to build something, I built a very big ballroom, a big ballroom that was built by me, it was very large, very beautiful,” Trump said when talking about using the value of Mar-a-Lago. Talking about his Scottish golf club, he promised: “At some point, at a very old age, I’ll do the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” he didn’t reveal what.

Donald Trump will have a heavy schedule of court appointments early next year, right in the middle of primary season.

Here’s a rundown of all the trial dates and other proceedings scheduled in the criminal and civil suits the former president and current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination is facing:

Federal judge declines to change trial date in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case — for now

Trump mulls indicting political rivals if elected president in 2024

Moderate House GOP lawmakers call for backing off Biden impeachment inquiry, arguing president is unpopular enough – report

All eyes on House speaker Johnson as US government one week out from shutdown