Trump, at Florida Rally, Revisits Supreme Court Battle After Casting Doubt on Election

[Live Presidential Debate stream and updates between Trump and Biden.]

At a Florida rally, Trump returns to attacking Democrats over the Supreme Court.

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President Trump speaking at a campaign event in Jacksonville, Fla., on Thursday.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Speaking to several thousand supporters at an airport in Jacksonville, Fla., President Trump warned that his opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would “pack” the Supreme Court, even though Mr. Biden has not embraced calls from some Democrats to do so, warning that Mr. Trump could do the same.

“If given power, Biden and his supporters would pack the court,” Mr. Trump said. “You know they’re talking about packing the court.”

The number of Supreme Court justices is set by law, not the Constitution, and some Democrats have proposed adding seats to the court that Mr. Biden could fill if the former vice president wins in November.

Mr. Biden has said he opposes the idea, although earlier this week he declined to restate his view, saying it would “shift all the focus” to Mr. Trump’s advantage.

“I guess we could do that too, right?” Mr. Trump added. “We could do that.”

Mr. Trump also expressed renewed appreciation for his frequent political foil, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who voted to remove Mr. Trump from office during his impeachment trial but says he will vote for Mr. Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“I’m no longer angry at Mitt, because he’s being very nice on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump added that Democrats have themselves to blame for their apparent inability to block his nominee, and singled out the former Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid.

In 2013, Mr. Reid exercised what was known as “the nuclear option,” eliminating the filibuster power that allowed the Senate minority to block executive branch and federal judiciary appointments with 41 votes. Mr. Reid preserved that power for Supreme Court nominations, but after Republicans took control of the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, eliminated it.

“It was Harry Reid who made this all possible. Thank you very much Harry, I hope you’re enjoying your evening,” Mr. Trump said. “They blame us. Harry Reid gave us the power — ‘nuclear option.’”

Mr. Trump has accelerated the pace of his campaigning this fall and is now holding rallies more days than not. Speaking with an oversized American flag flapping overhead, Mr. Trump suggested that he has ample time to speak to voters.

Early in his remarks he told people standing in the crowd that they might want to sit down because, he said, “I’ll be here for a while.”

“I have nothing else to do,” Mr. Trump added facetiously, “except run a country.”

After the White House said Trump would accept the results of the election, he once again suggests it may be tainted.

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President Trump spoke to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One.Credit...Oliver Contreras for The New York Times

A day after President Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power drew rebukes from Democrats, nervous distancing from Republicans and attempts at reassurance from the White House, Mr. Trump weighed in again Thursday and said that he was not sure the November election could be “honest” because mail-in ballots are “a whole big scam.”

“We want to make sure that the election is honest and I’m not sure that it can be,” Mr. Trump told reporters before leaving the White House for North Carolina.

Mr. Trump was responding to a reporter’s question about whether he would consider the November election results legitimate only if he wins.

Instead of repeating his press secretary’s assurance earlier in the day that he would accept the results of a “free and fair” election, Mr. Trump instead launched into his latest complaint about mail-in ballots, which he has repeatedly asserted without evidence are likely to be tainted by widespread fraud, and suggested that the election will not, in fact, be fairly decided.

“So, we have to be very careful with the ballots. The ballots — you know, that’s a whole big scam,” Mr. Trump said, citing what he said were news reports about ballots found “in a river” and a trash can.

Earlier in the day, Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., told lawmakers that he had not seen evidence of a “coordinated national voter fraud effort,” undercutting Mr. Trump’s effort to stoke fears about mail-in ballots.

The president’s remarks struck a different tone from that of other prominent Republicans, who spent the day making it clear that they were committed to the orderly transfer of power. His refusal Wednesday to commit to accepting the results of November’s election — something no other modern president has put in doubt — led Democrats to condemn him as a threat to American democracy.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump cited an August comment by his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, who said that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “should not concede under any circumstances.” But Mrs. Clinton was referring only to election night itself, warning that a final, accurate tally may not be known until days or weeks later, in part because of potentially late-arriving mail-in votes Mr. Trump aims to discredit.

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Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power prompts McConnell to promise ‘an orderly transition.’

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Trump Refuses to Commit to Peaceful Transfer of Power After Election

President Trump said on Wednesday that “we’re going to have to see what happens” when asked about peacefully transitioning power if he loses the election in November.

“Will you commit here, today, for a peaceful transferral of power after the election?” “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster, and —” Reporter: “I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” “We want to have — get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very, we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else — go ahead.”

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President Trump said on Wednesday that “we’re going to have to see what happens” when asked about peacefully transitioning power if he loses the election in November.CreditCredit...Oliver Contreras for The New York Times

President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results of November’s election — something no other modern president has put in doubt — led several prominent Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, to insist Thursday that there would be a peaceful transfer of power come January. But they stopped short of directly criticizing the president.

“The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th,” Mr. McConnell wrote on Twitter. “There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792.”

Mr. McConnell did not mention Mr. Trump in his comments, and he refused to elaborate on them. But his tweet was in response to Mr. Trump’s comment on Wednesday, when a reporter asked if the president would commit to a peaceful transition, that “We’re going to have to see what happens.”

Mr. Trump went on to question the integrity of “the ballots” — apparently referring to mail-in voting, which he has falsely called rife with fraud — and added that if he were able to “get rid of” the ballots and ensure a “continuation” rather than a “transfer,” it would be peaceful.

The peaceful transfer of power and accepting election results are fundamentals of democracy.

Many Republicans, including Mr. McConnell, while declining to call the president out by name, distanced themselves from the remarks and insisted that there would be a peaceful transfer of power if former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the presidency.

When asked if Republicans would stand up to the president should he resist departing the office in event of a political loss, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, told reporters on Thursday that he believed they would.

“Republicans believe in the rule of law, we believe in the Constitution, and that’s what dictates what happens in our election process,” Mr. Thune told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Moderate Republicans, including those facing tough bids for re-election, dismissed the suggestion that there would be anything other than a peaceful transition of power, with Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, declaring, “of course we’re going to have a peaceful transition of power. We’re the United States of America. We’re not a banana republic.”

“I don’t know what his thinking was, but we have always had a controlled transition between administrations,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. She said that “the peaceful transfer of power is a fundamental tenet of our democracy, and I am confident that we will see it occur once again.”

Some Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, sought to change the subject from Mr. Trump’s remarks, arguing that his comments were no different from comments Hillary Clinton made last month suggesting Mr. Biden should not concede. Ms. Clinton did not say Mr. Biden should “never” concede, but rather that because vote counting could be protracted this year because of the increase in mail ballots, he should not concede, if he was trailing, until the results were finalized.

“I think there will be a peaceful transfer of power, and I think the real concern in terms of the election is that Joe Biden has been explicit that if he doesn’t win on Election Day, he intends to challenge the legitimacy of the election,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, though it was not immediately clear what remarks he was referring to and Mr. Biden has repeatedly warned that it is Mr. Trump who is seeking to undermine the election results.

Mr. Cruz also raised the specter of Ms. Clinton’s comments. “I think that threat to challenge the election is one of the real reasons why it is so important that we confirm the Supreme Court nominees so that there’s a full Supreme Court on the bench to resolve any election challenge,’' he said.

In an interview on Fox on Thursday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, used the outcry over Mr. Trump’s remarks to push for the quick confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court justice, arguing that the seat should be filled in case the nation’s highest court needed to rule on the outcome of the November election.

“People wonder about the peaceful transfer of power,” he said. “I can assure you, it will be peaceful.” He added, “I promise you as a Republican, if the Supreme Court decides that Joe Biden wins, I will accept the result. The court will decide, and if Republicans lose, we’ll accept the result.”

That promise comes as Mr. Graham and other Republicans face sharp criticism for their reversal on their past vow not to fill a Supreme Court seat during an election year.

Even as he drew a comparison between Ms. Clinton’s remarks and those made by Mr. Trump on Wednesday, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that “I think all of this talk, by both the Biden campaign and the president, is unhelpful.”

Democrats sound alarms about Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power: ‘This is how democracy dies.’

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared President Trump’s refusal to guarantee he would accept the results of November’s election to an authoritarian grab for power.CreditCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Democratic lawmakers warned Americans on Thursday to take deadly seriously President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results of November’s election, accusing the president of poisoning the wellspring of democracy in a cynical attempt to hold onto power.

“When a leader with authoritarian tendencies tells you they intend to do something outrageous, like not accept a peaceful transition after an election, as President Trump said, you should believe them,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a close ally of Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, the nation’s third highest officeholder, balanced criticizing Mr. Trump with trying to project calm.

“You are not in North Korea; you are not in Turkey,” Ms. Pelosi said to Mr. Trump, citing nations with authoritarian leaders. “You are in the United States of America. It is a democracy, so why don’t you just try for a moment to honor your oath of office to the Constitution of the United States.”

She told reporters that she had a good sense of what Mr. Trump was trying to do and would fight tooth and nail to prevent it. The most important thing, she said, was for Americans to vote and insist their ballots are counted.

“The antidote to almost every ailment I have named is the vote,” she said.

After four years of outrageous statements and threats to bulldoze over institutional norms that govern the nation’s democracy, congressional Democrats are exceedingly accustomed to chiding Mr. Trump. Even so, their comments betrayed a greater level of alarm than normal — and than did remarks by Mr. Biden, who said Wednesday night that Mr. Trump said “the most irrational things” and wondered, “What country are we in?”

Asked during a call with reporters on Thursday to respond to Mr. Trump’s remarks, Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said that he “has participated in a peaceful transition of power before. He certainly will this time around as well.”

“Donald Trump is trying to distract from his catastrophic failures as president of the United States in order to talk about something that frankly, you know, spins up the press corps,” she added.

Calling Mr. Trump “the greatest threat to democracy,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the party leader in the Senate, demanded that Republicans join Democrats in insisting Mr. Trump accept the election results. He said too many were trying to “brush it by.”

“At this perilous moment, every Republican in this chamber should stand up and say that a president who isn’t entirely sure if he’ll commit to a peaceful transfer of power isn’t a president at all,” he added.

Several prominent Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, insisted Thursday that there would be a peaceful transition, but they stopped short of criticizing the president directly for his remarks.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, who led the drive to impeach Mr. Trump in the House and argued forcefully for his removal in a Senate trial earlier this year, said flatly: “This is how democracy dies.”

He pledged Democrats would fight back.

“America belongs to the people,” Mr. Schiff said.

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Trump, who is seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act, outlined his own plan today in North Carolina.

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Trump Promises Prescription Discount Cards for Seniors

President Trump promised to send $200 prescription drug discount cards to 33 million older Americans in the coming weeks as he announced his health care plan in Charlotte, N.C.

Today I will lay out my vision for a health care system that puts patients first, families first and perhaps most importantly for all of us, America first. Under the America First health care plan, we will ensure the highest standard of care anywhere in the world. Cutting-edge treatment, state of the art medicine, groundbreaking cures and true health security for you and your loved ones. Under my plan, 33 million Medicare beneficiaries will soon receive a card in the mail containing $200 that they can use to help pay for prescription drugs. Nobody’s seen this before. These cards are incredible. The cards will be mailed out in coming weeks. I will always take care of our wonderful senior citizens.

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President Trump promised to send $200 prescription drug discount cards to 33 million older Americans in the coming weeks as he announced his health care plan in Charlotte, N.C.CreditCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

President Trump on Thursday announced his long-awaited health care plan, but one of its core provisions — protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions — is already part of the Affordable Care Act, which he is trying to repeal. Another, a push to end surprise medical billing, is largely symbolic and would require legislation passed by Congress.

Top administration officials, including Alex M. Azar, the health secretary, previewed the plan on a call with reporters Thursday afternoon; Mr. Trump announced it on a visit to North Carolina. Mr. Azar said Mr. Trump would sign an executive order declaring it is “the policy of the United States” that people who have pre-existing conditions should be able to get insurance coverage. A White House official billed it as the first such executive order “in American history.”

But Mr. Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had to sign a law — the Affordable Care Act — to require insurers to protect pre-existing conditions. Now Mr. Trump is asking the Supreme Court to declare that law unconstitutional. Should the law be overturned, Mr. Azar said, the administration would “work with Congress or otherwise to ensure that they’re protected.”

Mr. Trump has been promising since he ran for president in 2016 that he would put together a plan to lower costs, expand coverage and protect people with pre-existing conditions — the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act.

But it has taken him years to do so, and the plan his aides previewed was less a coherent vision than a laundry list of other executive action and rules the administration has already enacted. Administration officials including Mr. Azar made the case that those actions have already lowered the cost of health care premiums and prescription drugs.

Facebook removes Russian-linked disinformation networks with the potential to warp the election.

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Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook cybersecurity policy, testifies on Capitol Hill.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

Facebook announced on Thursday that it was taking down three disinformation networks that it says are linked to the Russian military and intelligence agencies, and to the Internet Research Agency, which was central to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

None of the networks were large, and they operated almost entirely abroad — from Japan to Belarus. But Facebook said it was acting proactively to dismantle infrastructure Russia could use around the Nov. 3 presidential election, either in an effort to influence the vote or to dispute its outcome, by calling into question the fairness of the balloting.

“We haven’t seen these networks directly target the 2020 election,” Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of security policy for Facebook, said in an interview. “But they are linked to actors associated with election interference in the U.S. in the past, including in the ‘DCLeaks’ in 2016.” He was referring to a website that was later determined to have been set up by a Russian military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., to make public emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

“We want to be proactive,” said Mr. Gleicher, in a subtle acknowledgment of the criticism Facebook received for being so unaware four years ago of how foreign actors, mostly Russian, were making use of the social network to amplify divisive messages, spread disinformation and even organize protests and counterprotests.

Facebook’s action came only two days after the F.B.I. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency of the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint warning that the vulnerability of American voting systems may be greatest in the days after the election. Intelligence officials have privately and publicly expressed concerns that Russian and other actors will have an major opening if mail-in ballots are slow to be counted, or there are charges and countercharges about the handling of mail-in ballots, which President Trump has already said are being used to “rig” the outcome.

During that time, the two agencies said, hackers could amplify “disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.”

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Nine ballots were discarded in Pennsylvania. Now, there’s a D.O.J. investigation.

The Justice Department on Thursday released details about an investigation into nine discarded mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania, an unusual step that stoked new fears that President Trump’s political appointees were using the levers of law enforcement to sow doubt about the election.

The U.S. attorney for central Pennsylvania, David J. Freed, announced in a statement that F.B.I. investigators were examining mail-in ballots from military members in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania that had been “discarded.” Seven of the nine ballots were cast for Mr. Trump, Mr. Freed said.

In a letter to the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections released on Thursday evening, Mr. Freed said investigators found that the nine ballots had been “improperly opened by your elections staff.” Under Pennsylvania election law, no ballots can be opened until Election Day, even for processing.

Mr. Freed added that the investigation found that “envelopes used for official overseas, military, absentee and mail-in ballot requests are so similar, that the staff believed that adhering to the protocol of preserving envelopes unopened would cause them to miss such ballot requests,” and had been opening envelopes.

Election experts said the announcement was highly irregular. Justice Department policy calls for keeping voter fraud investigations under wraps to avoid affecting the election outcome, and the experts said it was almost unheard-of for the department to provide an update on the case and disclose the name of the candidate for whom the ballots had been cast.

“The question of who voters voted for would be immaterial in any kind of tampering investigation, and it seems to be in there for political reasons, to bolster the president’s arguments that the election is being rigged against him,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.

Take me out to … vote. Fenway Park is approved as an early voting site in Boston.

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An abandoned Fenway Park during the coronavirus pandemic in Boston. It will be repurposed, temporarily, as a polling place.Credit...Cassandra Klos for The New York Times

It’s not quite the Fall Classic.

But Fenway Park, the oldest stadium in Major League Baseball, home to the Green Monster and the Pesky Pole, will be buzzing with activity this October after all — just not on the diamond.

The Boston Red Sox, who have played this pandemic-shortened season without fans and have been eliminated from playoff contention, will open the hallowed ballpark on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18 to city residents for early voting.

The ballpark, which opened in 1912, was approved on Thursday as one of 21 early-voting sites in the city by the Boston Election Commission.

“Voting is one of the best ways to support and champion the issues and policies we value and what better way for the Red Sox to help with that effort than to open up our ballpark for Boston residents to cast their early ballots,” Sam Kennedy, the president and chief executive of the Red Sox, said in a statement on Thursday.

The opportunity will be limited to city residents, who will be required to wear masks and practice social distancing, according to the Red Sox. Voting hours will be 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“We have seen in past years the success of early voting, and with vote-by-mail and in-person voting on Election Day, we are offering an array of options for voters to cast their ballots safely in the midst of Covid-19,” Martin J. Walsh, the mayor of Boston, said in a statement. “I’m grateful for how the Red Sox have stepped forward to help our city during this crisis.”

One fan went to extreme lengths to sneak into Fenway Park last weekend when the Red Sox played the Yankees. The fan, who scaled the back of the Green Monster, was taken into police custody, the website MassLive.com reported.

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Bernie Sanders says America faces an election ‘between Donald Trump and democracy.’

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Senator Bernie Sanders said  in strong words from Washington on Thursday that the choice for voters was between Donald Trump and democracy.Credit...Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont gave an address Thursday about a topic he said he had never in his “wildest dreams” expected that he would have to confront: “the need to make certain that the president of the United States, if he loses this election, will abide by the will of the voters and leave office peacefully.”

“This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Mr. Sanders said in a speech at George Washington University that was streamed online a day after President Trump declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event he lost the election. “This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy — and democracy must win.”

Mr. Sanders accused the president of trying to suppress the vote by seeking cuts at the Postal Service and challenging mail-in ballots.

“Finding himself behind in many polls, he is attempting massive voter suppression,” Mr. Sanders said.

Then he outlined his plan to preserve American democracy. He urged voters to turn out, saying that “a landslide victory for Biden will make it virtually impossible for Trump to deny the results and is our best means for defending democracy.”

He called on state legislatures to allow mail-in votes to be counted before Election Day as a way to prevent Mr. Trump from declaring the race over before all the votes had been tallied. And he called for a unified plan from Congress and state legislatures to ensure a peaceful election.

Mr. Sanders also urged media outlets to prepare voters for the reality that the final results might not be known on election night, and urged social media companies to “get their act together and stop people from using their tools to spread disinformation.”

‘Vote him out,’ protesters chant as Trump visits Justice Ginsburg’s coffin.

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Crowd Chants ‘Vote Him Out’ as Trump Visits Ginsburg’s Coffin

President Trump was greeted by protesters at the Supreme Court on Thursday as he paid his respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

[crowd jeering] Crowd: “Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out! Vote him out!”

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President Trump was greeted by protesters at the Supreme Court on Thursday as he paid his respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.CreditCredit...Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times

President Trump paid his respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Thursday morning, standing silently by her coffin at the top of the Supreme Court steps as he was jeered by protesters on the street below.

Wearing a face mask — unusual for him — and a sky-blue tie instead of his trademark red power tie, Mr. Trump stared ahead, and closed his eyes at times, near the justice’s flag-draped coffin.

But the quiet of the moment was punctured by the loud boos and shouts of demonstrators about a block away. A chant of “Vote him out!” erupted, along with calls of “Honor her wish!”a reference to Justice Ginsburg’s deathbed request that her replacement not be confirmed until a “new president is installed.”

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, who joined him, could hear the heckling, which was clearly audible on television. They stayed for less than two minutes.

Following Mr. Trump was his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien. Both men also wore masks, and bowed their heads with their eyes closed. Justice Ginsburg, who died last Friday, lay in repose at the court on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Fact Check

Ted Cruz misleadingly claims that Biden will challenge election results if he loses.

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Senator Ted Cruz speaks during a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on Capitol Hill.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has repeatedly and inaccurately charged Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, with saying he might refuse to accept the results of the November election.

Responding to questions over President Trump’s refusal Wednesday to commit to a peaceful transition should he lose, Mr. Cruz said there would be a peaceful process and added, “I think the real concern in terms of the election is that Joe Biden has been explicit that if he doesn’t win on Election Day, he intends to challenge the legitimacy of the election.”

It was an echo of remarks he made on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday: “Because Joe Biden has been explicit. He has said if he doesn’t win, he’s going to challenge this election. He’s going to go to court. He’s going to challenge it.”

The Times was unable to find an instance of Mr. Biden’s making such a statement. In fact, he has said the opposite: that he would accept the results of the election.

“Would you commit tonight to accepting the results of the electorate?” Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, asked during a Sept. 17 town hall.

“Sure, if the full results count every vote,” Mr. Biden said. “Can anybody — any of you history majors out there think of any president who said early on ‘I’m not sure I’m going to accept the results of the election. It depends.’ I mean what’s happened to us in this case? It’s not who we are. This is not what America is. No president’s ever said anything like that.”

Asked what Mr. Cruz was basing his statements on, a spokeswoman did not provide any evidence of Mr. Biden’s explicitly saying he would challenge the election, as Mr. Cruz had claimed. “As much as The New York Times wants to pretend otherwise, Democrats have contested the last election for four years and are clearly planning to contest this election,” she said.

Mr. Cruz may have been referring to comments made by Hillary Clinton, not Mr. Biden. Ms. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, warned in August that Mr. Trump may have a close lead on election night and advised Mr. Biden to dig in his heels to await the count of mailed-in ballots and prepare for court fights.

“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out,” she said. “Eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is.”

Separately, the Biden campaign has established a large legal team in anticipation of courtroom fights over election issues, such as voter suppression and ballot counting processes. But that is standard in modern elections. The Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign also employ lawyers to battle over voting procedures.

Trump’s grip on states he handily won in 2016 weakens, as women favor Biden, and Ohio is a dead heat, polls show.

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Joseph R. Biden Jr. has resisted pressure to compete for Texas, a huge and complicated state that Democrats believe is unlikely to furnish the decisive 270th Electoral College vote.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

President Trump is on the defensive in three red states he carried in 2016, narrowly trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Iowa and battling to stay ahead of him in Georgia and Texas, as Mr. Trump continues to face a wall of opposition from women that has also endangered his party’s control of the Senate, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

The New York Times /
Siena College poll

Joe Biden has made significant gains in states Donald Trump won handily in 2016.

2016 result
NYT/Siena
Sept. 2020
Iowa Iowa (n=501)
+9 Trump
+3 Biden 45-42
Georgia Ga. (523)
+5 Trump
Tied 45-45
Texas Texas (653)
+9 Trump
+3 Trump 43-46

Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters from Sept. 16 to Sept. 22.

Mr. Trump’s vulnerability even in conservative-leaning states underscores just how precarious his political position is, less than six weeks before Election Day. While he and Mr. Biden are competing aggressively for traditional swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the poll suggests that Mr. Biden has assembled a coalition formidable enough to jeopardize Mr. Trump even in historically Republican parts of the South and Midwest.

A yawning gender gap in all three states is working in Mr. Biden’s favor, with the former vice president making inroads into conservative territory with strong support from women. In Iowa, where Mr. Biden is ahead of Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 42 percent, he is up among women by 14 percentage points. Men favor Mr. Trump by eight points.

In Georgia, where the two candidates are tied at 45 percent, Mr. Biden leads among women by 10 points. Mr. Trump is ahead with men by a similar margin of 11 percentage points.

Mr. Trump’s large advantage among men in Texas is enough to give him a small advantage there, 46 percent to 43 percent. Men prefer the president to his Democratic challenger by 16 points, while women favor Mr. Biden by an eight-point margin.

The pivotal state of Ohio remains very much torn between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, according to a Quinnipiac University poll that was released on Thursday that showed the two adversaries in a virtual tie. Mr. Biden clung to a one-point lead over Mr. Trump, 48-to-47 percent, among likely voters. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

“Ohio could hinge on a sliver of likely voters who signal they may have a change of heart and the four percent who say they are unsure right now who they’ll back,” Mary Snow, a Quinnipiac polling analyst, said.

At the same time, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by six percentage points in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden was born and which Mr. Trump carried by just over 44,000 votes against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump 48-to-42 percent among likely voters, according to a Franklin & Marshall College poll that was released on Thursday. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus six-and-a-half percentage points. Mr. Biden’s lead was nine percentage points among registered voters.

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Ad Watch

A Spanish-language Trump ad glosses over his contentious history with Puerto Rico.

The Trump campaign released a trio of Spanish-language ads this week, including one targeted at Puerto Rican voters as his campaign tries to keep making inroads among Latinos.

The Message

The ad begins with an attack on Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., showing him face to face with the former governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, as a narrator claims that Democrats have “ignored Puerto Rico” and supported a law that contributed to the island’s fiscal crisis.

President Trump, the ad claims, has protected Puerto Rico’s future with “historic investments” as scenes of construction and what appears to be rebuilding after the devastation of Hurricane Maria flash onscreen. The ad closes with a new graphic from the Trump campaign: “Boricuas for Trump” — Puerto Ricans for Trump, featuring the Puerto Rican flag.

Fact Check

Despite the ad’s rosy depiction, Mr. Trump has had a contentious relationship with Puerto Rico. He has spent much of his first term harshly attacking the Puerto Rican government, and blocked or placed restrictions on federal assistance following the back-to-back hurricanes that battered the island in 2017. He even discussed the prospect of selling Puerto Rico.

A sentence onscreen trumpets the $13 billion that Mr. Trump released last week to help rebuild the island’s electrical grid and repair schools, but neglects to mention that it was delayed for a full three years after the hurricanes hit.

The ad also notes a contract that the Department of Defense announced last month with a pharmaceutical company to manufacture coronavirus testing swabs in Puerto Rico.

Where It’s Running

On television in Florida, Georgia and Ohio, according to Advertising Analytics.

The Takeaway

The Trump campaign has made a concerted effort to chip away at Mr. Biden’s lead among Latinos, most notably in Florida. But the president’s yearslong criticisms of the island’s institutions and officials, and his withholding of federal disaster aid, will likely loom over any outreach to Puerto Ricans.

Mary Trump files a lawsuit claiming that fraud was a ‘way of life’ for her family.

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Mary L. Trump during a video interview in August. Her lawsuit describes a plot by her family to cheat her out of her inheritance.Credit...Alba Vigaray/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mary L. Trump, President Trump’s niece, filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing the president and his siblings of cheating her out of her inheritance, and claiming that, for the Trumps, “fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.”

The suit by Ms. Trump, who claimed in her best-selling memoir that the president and other relatives had tricked, bullied and ultimately cheated her out of an inheritance worth tens of millions of dollars, was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. It accused Mr. Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and their brother Robert, who died in August, of fraud and civil conspiracy. It seeks to recover the millions of dollars Ms. Trump claims to have lost.

Ms. Trump, 55, claims to be one of her family’s victims. Her suit describes a plot against her, broken cinematically into three separate acts: “The Grift,” “The Devaluing” and “The Squeeze-Out.”

It recounts a narrative that began in 1981, when Ms. Trump’s father, Fred Trump Jr., unexpectedly died, leaving her, at age 16, with a valuable minority stake in the family empire. The story ends nearly 40 years later, when Ms. Trump says she discovered, with the help of journalists from The New York Times, that President Trump and his siblings “used their position of power to con her into signing her interests away.”

The White House has previously cast doubt on Ms. Trump’s book, which contains similar allegations, and has said the memoir was “in Ms. Trump’s own financial interest.”

Lawyers for the president and Robert Trump were not immediately available for comment. Maryanne Trump Barry also did not immediately return a telephone call from a reporter.

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The F.B.I. has seen no evidence of a nationwide effort to defraud mail-in ballots, its director says.

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Workers prepared ballot applications at a Board of Elections office in Charlotte, N.C., this month.Credit...Logan Cyrus/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The F.B.I. has not seen evidence of a “coordinated national voter fraud effort,” its director, Christopher A. Wray, told lawmakers on Thursday, undercutting President Trump’s effort to stoke fears about mail-in ballots by claiming without evidence that voting by mail is an election threat.

Any fraud would have to be widespread and well coordinated to change the election outcome, and carrying it out would be a “major challenge for an adversary,” Mr. Wray said in comments before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But he made clear he was not minimizing other threats to election security, including smaller-scale frauds on a local level.

Mr. Wray’s testimony came a week after the president publicly attacked him for asserting at a House hearing that Russia was conducting election interference operations and that violent extremism was a significant threat. Though both issues are well-documented, Mr. Trump has long downplayed the Russia threat, seeing it as a threat to his legitimacy. And he has emphasized far-left extremism over the more prevalent threat from the far right and white supremacists.

Earlier this week, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security warned of potential interference in the election by foreigners aiming to exploit the extra time it takes to sort through the crush of ballots that are expected to be cast by mail by voters wary of the pandemic.

During that time, the agencies said, hackers could amplify “disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.”

Michigan passes a bill allowing extra time for ballot processing.

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Workers Melissa Thompson and Kyle Thompson stuffing ballots that will be sent to voters West Bloomfield Township, Mich. Local clerks there will have extra time to count ballots.Credit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times

Michigan lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that will provide an extra 10 hours on Nov. 2 for towns to begin processing what is expected to be a surge of absentee ballots.

Under the bill, municipal clerks in communities with at least 25,000 people may work 10 a.m.-8 p.m. on Nov. 2, opening absentee ballot envelopes and removing the ballots, each of which should be in a secrecy sleeve. If the sleeve is missing, the clerks must provide one, then store the ballot in a locked container until 7 a.m. on Election Day, when counting may begin.

The new provision on secrecy sleeves could help avoid the possibility of tens of thousands of ballots’ being thrown out, as Philadelphia’s top election official warned could happen in Pennsylvania. The State Supreme Court there ruled that ballots returned without secrecy sleeves must be rejected.

The Michigan bill also requires clerks to notify absentee voters if their signature on the ballot envelope doesn’t match the signature on the qualified voter list, giving the voter a chance to rectify the matter.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has said she will sign the bill, which received wide bipartisan support in both state chambers, as soon as it reaches her desk.

The secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and local clerks, have been campaigning for extra time for months in anticipation of a record turnout in November.

Kyle Whitney, deputy clerk of Marquette, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said the bill won’t help him. With 21,000 people, his city’s falls just under the threshold for extra processing time in a year when he expects the number of absentee ballots in November to be triple the usual number. His election supply budget would only pay half the $35,000 cost of a high-speed tabulator\.

“We need more resources or we need more time,” Mr. Whitney said. “We’ve reached the limit on resources, and this bill doesn’t give us more time.”

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Senator Thom Tillis reinforces a conspiracy theory falsely suggesting the coronavirus death toll is inflated.

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Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina speaking to reporters Wednesday. On Thursday he told callers to a town hall that the coronavirus death toll had been inflated, a claim that scientists have shown to be false.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina on Thursday reinforced a conspiracy theory that falsely suggests that the government’s coronavirus death toll was inflated because many of those who died also had underlying health conditions.

A Republican in a tight race for re-election, Mr. Tillis told a caller in a telephone town hall that she was “absolutely right” when she claimed the “200,000 death mark” includes deaths “from things like heart attacks and slip and falls.’’ The caller, named Casey, added: “How many people has Covid actually killed? Because I think the numbers are skewed.’’

“You’re making a very, very important point,’’ Mr. Tillis said adding, “In fact, we understand that 95 percent of the deaths were co-morbidities.”

The debunked theory, which has spread on social media and been amplified by President Trump, is a misreading of data from the Centers for Disease Control, according to health experts. It took off in August based on C.D.C. reporting that death certificates for Covid-19 victims listed other causes of death in 94 percent of cases.

Mr. Tillis, according to a recording made by the North Carolina Democratic Party, suggested the C.D.C.’s death count was meant “to encourage people to use social distancing and try and end the spread of the virus.”

“But I think when the final accounting is done, you are going to see, sadly, that a number of people who died from this may have died from an underlying health condition at the same time that they had Covid,’’ he continued. “Now the question is, and what will be difficult to prove out, but for Covid, would they have had that heart attack? Would they have had a complication with diabetes?”

Health experts emphasize that having an underlying health condition doesn’t mean the novel coronavirus was not the cause of death.

“That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didn’t die of Covid-19. They did,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infections disease experts, said on Sept. 1 as the death toll passed 180,000.

In a statement after this article was published, a spokesman for Mr. Tillis said the senator began his town hall by affirming the accuracy of the 200,000-plus death count. The spokesman, Andrew Romeo, said that Mr. Tillis “noted at the granular level, scientists will likely look back and analyze the numbers to see the impact of co-morbidities on Covid-19 deaths, and whether Covid-19 caused serious life-threatening health issues they would have otherwise not had.’’

President Trump, who has sought to play down the impact of the virus, retweeted a false claim in August that fewer than 10,000 people had died of Covid-19. That post was removed by Twitter.

Mr. Tillis’s remarks echoed similar ones by Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, who earlier this month said she was “so skeptical” of government death statistics for the virus. She later acknowledged the death count from Covid-19 was accurate.

Polls show Mr. Tillis narrowly trailing his Democratic opponent, Cal Cunningham.

A Texas oil billionaire gave $10 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.

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Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer, gave $10 million last month to a super PAC aligned with President Trump. Mr. Warren’s company built the Dakota Access pipeline, which has been the focus of opposition by environmentalists and Native Americans.Credit...John L. Mone/Associated Press

A Texas oil billionaire whose company is embroiled in a bitter legal feud with environmentalists and Native Americans over the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline gave $10 million last month to a super PAC aligned with President Trump, new filings with the Federal Election Commission show.

The billionaire, Kelcy L. Warren, made the contribution on Aug. 31 to America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC that has raised nearly $82 million from individual contributors from January 2019 through the end of August, according to the F.E.C. The contribution was reported earlier by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in elections.

Unlike candidates for federal office, who are limited to raising $5,600 from each individual campaign donor, super PACs can accept unlimited sums of money from wealthy donors, a largess that has drawn scrutiny from election watchdogs.

Mr. Warren is chairman and chief executive of Energy Transfer, the Dallas company that owns the pipeline, an oil route from North Dakota to Illinois that has encountered substantial opposition.

Right after taking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive memorandum that sought to fast-track the regulatory approvals for the pipeline project.

In July, Mr. Trump and Mr. Warren’s company faced a setback when a federal judge ordered the pipeline to be shut down and emptied of oil pending an environmental review. A month later, a federal appeals court overturned part of the order, allowing the pipeline to operate but keeping the environmental review in place.

Though they are barred from direct collaboration with candidates, super PACs have left an indelible mark on American politics with an onslaught of television attack ads and advocacy initiatives.

Priorities USA Action, the largest Democratic super PAC, has spent $72.7 million overall this election cycle, while America First Action has spent $50.7 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

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