The Brief

As Democrats confront declining Latino support across three consecutive presidential elections, a fierce debate is unfolding within the party: Are Latino advocacy groups and polling firms helping or hurting the Democratic cause?

Critics argue that a flawed messaging strategy — and a complacent advocacy infrastructure — have led to Latino voters drifting right, even toward Donald Trump. But advocates push back, warning that the narrative of a dramatic rightward shift is exaggerated and politically dangerous.

The Latino vote’s rightward shift 

Latinos’ support for Democrats has dwindled across the last three presidential elections. In 2016, 79% of Latinos voted for Hilary Clinton. In 2020, 70% of Latinos voted for Joe Biden. In 2024, 62% of Latinos voted for Kamala Harris. And a San Francisco Chronicle analysis of voter data found that in California, the counties with higher shares of Latino residents saw larger shifts toward Trump.

The decline in Latino voter support for the Democratic party has led some political insiders to question whether the people in charge of analyzing and shaping the messaging that will resonate with Latino voters are doing a good job.

“You're either winning or you're losing,” said Fernand Amandi, former President Barack Obama's lead Latino-focused pollster and strategist. “And over the last three presidential cycles, Democrats have been losing support amongst Hispanics. If there's no accountability, then why are they even doing this work?”

The debate over immigration

Critics like Amandi and Mike Madrid, a veteran political strategist who founded the Lincoln Project, say that Democrats lost their way with Latino voters by overemphasizing immigration as an issue that motivates the Latino electorate.

They say that this started in the mid aughts, a time when the Latino population surged from roughly 35 million in the year 2000 to more than 50 million in 2010. Democrats were eyeing the ever-growing Latino community and hoping that in the same way that the Black community had become a reliably Democratic voting block by the 1960s, the Latino vote could become reliably blue as well.

“Politically there needed to be an issue that created a racial voting bloc amongst Latinos where none existed,” Madrid said. “For whatever reason immigration [became the] issue.”

Data started to emerge backing up this idea. A firm called Latino Decisions released a poll in 2014 that found immigration reform was the number one issue for Latino voters — at 44%, ahead of things like jobs and the economy, education and healthcare.

Matt Baretto, one of the founders of Latino Decisions, worked on the last three Democratic presidential campaigns, including the Harris-Walz campaign.

Amandi did not think immigration was as big of a motivating issue as others were saying. He argues that pocketbook issues were always more important to the Latino community.

But Baretto stands behind the data his firm gathered about the importance of immigration to the Latino electorate.

“We stand by those analyses. They've been published in social science journals,” Baretto said. “I think the critics are sort of misguided and sort of too focused on the past.”

The Harris campaign’s appeal to Latino voters 

Where Baretto and his critics align is in thinking that when Harris entered the presidential race, she had no chance to win over the Latino electorate, that she was doomed from the start. But they don’t agree on why.

Madrid thinks Harris was not able to woo more Latino voters because her campaign could not realign the perception of where the Democrats stood on immigration in the time she had to campaign.

“She adjusted dramatically to the right,” Madrid said. “But … you can't make up for 15 years of bad branding in 90 days. You just can't do it.”

Conversely, Baretto thinks voters in general across all demographics were simply really unhappy with Democrats.

“Latinos are not the ones who quote lost this election. There was shifts in every single demographic in the United States, and yes, there were shifts in the Latino vote, but there was something much larger going on here,” Baretto said. “We saw a lot of it as … the national and even international moment that we were in, following COVID and the economic recovery. People were frustrated and inflation was only slowly getting addressed and getting abated. The president was not able to wave a magic wand and make inflation go away.”

Where Latinos stand on immigration today

Immigration policy and enforcement has taken center stage again in our national politics as federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps across Los Angeles in the first large-scale enforcement action under the second Trump administration this June. Local immigrants rights groups, which have braced for this for months, pushed back in protests marked by resistance and anger.

Angelica Salas, president of CHIRLA, the coalition for human immigrant rights in Los Angeles, doesn’t think that the Democratic Party’s loss of Latino voter support is necessarily a reflection of Latinos abandoning immigration as an important issue. Salas said it has more to do with Democrats inability to deliver on their promises around immigration.

“Every year there's a promise for a path to citizenship. And then there are no results. And so that also creates a sense of who is able to get things across the finish line,” Salas said.

In fact, Salas finds the argument that Latinos don’t care about immigration to be really dangerous.

“It has been used in order to excuse Republicans doing incredible harm to our community and some of the Democrats," Salas said. "It's also created an excuse not to stand up boldly against some of the worst actions of this administration.”

Braddock Sandoval perused tables with wigs, a Darth Vader mask, a black tutu and other items and garments on an unusually sizzling day in Los Angeles. He found a Hawaiian flower necklace and a shark costume and tried them on.

The chemistry professor at Occidental College heard about a campus swap where he could pick out a free Halloween costume with the goal of keeping it from being thrown away. Curious and in need of one, he swung by to see what he could find.

“I think there’s too much cheap plastic waste in this world. So the idea that people are recycling costumes is fantastic, both for budgets, like me, but also just for the planet,” Sandoval said with a laugh. He planned to attend a Halloween dance party dressed as a great white shark eating a tourist — a costume inspired by the freebies he found at the swap.

Every Halloween, costumes get their big moment. But every year, millions end up in a landfill after a single use, and many are made from synthetic plastics that don’t easily break down, contributing to environmental pollution. In Southern California and across the country, Halloween costume swaps and thrift stores are keeping costumes from going to waste. People can donate clean costumes and pick a new one, reducing waste and the resources and emissions required to make new ones.

This year, the National Retail Federation estimates Americans will spend some $4.4 billion on Halloween costumes. In 2018 alone, they discarded about 11.3 million tons (10.25 million metric tons) of textiles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. When shopping sustainably, experts say, keep three principles in mind: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Shelie Miller, a University of Michigan professor who studies the environmental impacts of products, said Halloween costumes, like fast fashion, are often made cheaply from plastic materials. They tend to fall apart, she said, and are “not really intended to stick around for a very long time.”

And there are other environmental impacts.

Clothing accounts for 4% to 10% of global carbon emissions, she said, while textile dyeing contributes about 20% of wastewater emissions from industrial sources worldwide.

Synthetic fibers used in clothing, including many costumes, can shed microplastics during washing and end up in water sources, she said. Microplastics have been found in the ocean, air, food and water, as well as a range of human tissues. Growing evidence suggests they can pose risks to human health. Many of these materials are made from oil, which emits pollutants when burned, driving climate change and fueling extreme weather.

“The process of making these, the Halloween costumes, it’s incredible,” said Zack Bowersox, a senior lecturer in political science at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches a class on fast fashion and the environment.

Rather than being stitched together, costumes are often heat bonded, with the plastic melted at the edges to join pieces. “After the season, they’re not meant to even be thrifted or returned, they’re just meant to be thrown away. And that’s where most of them end up, it’s in the landfill. Something like 80% of those suits end up in the landfill,” Bowersox said.

Miller said there are many ways to enjoy Halloween without buying a one-off costume.

“Whenever we buy anything, we’re not just buying the one thing, we’re buying all of the environmental impacts of everything that went into making that product,” Miller said. “So whenever we’re using any sort of single-use product, whether we’re talking about single-use plastic or single-use costumes, we really have to be thinking about is this really how we want to spend our time, money, resources, and is there a better way?”

Braddock Sandoval, a chemistry professor at Occidental College, poses for photos with a costume he picked out during a Halloween costume swap on the campus in Los Angeles, Friday, Oct. 16, 2026

(

Jae C. Hong

/

Associated Press

)

How one fashion lover launched a Halloween costume swap

Sustainable fashion advocate Lexy Silverstein founded the Ultimate Halloween Swap last year after realizing how much money and material went into a costume that might be worn only a few hours before being dumped.

As an avid Halloween fan who loves donning costumes, she was forced to reflect on her own consumption and waste.

“That’s a lot of costumes that I’m buying and wearing once and getting rid of,” she told herself. And she began thinking of other seasons that encourage people to buy new things, like back-to-school time.

Last year, the swap collected hundreds of costume donations, including 10 boxes from the LA Clippers basketball team. It was such a success that she decided to do it again and has since expanded across Southern California, including at Occidental College where Sandoval found his shark suit.

Now, Silverstein is hoping to organize swaps for back-to-school, prom season, winter coats and other high-consumption, single-use times of year.

Washington University in St. Louis has its own version going. Its thrift store is stocked with clothes and items collected during student move-outs when many items get left behind, including Halloween costumes and accessories. For the second year, it organized an on-campus pop-up where the campus community could buy used Halloween costumes for a low price.

Cassie Hage, the university’s assistant director at the Office of Sustainability, said this year’s selections included Austin Powers and kiwi outfits, a demon from the hit TV show “Stranger Things” and matching platypus onesies that delighted a group of friends who stumbled upon them.

“They were kind of dancing around” in them, she said. “That was just a really fun moment to watch.”

How to reduce, reuse, recycle

Thrifting, attending clothing swaps and raiding friends’ and family members’ closets are all ways to avoid buying new costumes. You can assemble a Halloween costume from clothes and accessories you or a friend already own, or modify existing pieces to create a new look.

Silverstein also suggests renting costumes by looking through websites like Facebook Marketplace, Depop and Poshmark.

If you have to buy something, Bowersox suggests buying costumes or accessories made of plant-based materials such as cotton or linen. Licensed products can cost more, he said, but can offer greater transparency over how and where they’re made.

Alison Linder, assistant sustainability coordinator at Occidental College, which has a thrift store of its own with Halloween costumes in stock, encouraged people to organize their own swaps with neighbors, friends or school classmates.

“It’s just as easy as asking your friends for a loan and offering to share what you have,” she said. “And just by doing that simple thing, you save money and you’re helping the environment.”

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

In the increasingly bitter legal standoff between President Donald Trump and media outlets whose reporting he dislikes, a new and crucial third party has emerged: citizens who watch and read the news and need it to do their jobs.

A lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of six such citizens — essentially representing the wider public audience — argues that it’s not only the rights of news organizations that are violated when Trump bans them from White House premises. Even more fundamentally, the lawsuit argues, such bans violate the public’s right to independent reporting about its president and government.

“The ultimate injury here … is to the democratic public,” says the suit, filed in federal district court in New York against Trump and three key aides, including the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

“The First Amendment protects the public’s right to know what its government is doing,” said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, along with the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.

“The White House cannot decide what information Americans receive by punishing critical reporting,” Fallow said in a statement. “When the White House expels reporters because of their coverage and threatens others with expulsion, it isn’t just the press that suffers — the public loses access to independent reporting and gets something closer to government propaganda.”

The Trump administration, asked for comment on the lawsuit, responded in a statement that it attributed to an unidentified White House official: “No person may demand access to the Oval Office.” It said media that peddle “misinformation and defamation are completely capable of reporting their manufactured stories from directly outside.”

The plaintiffs all rely on White House news for their work

The six plaintiffs are all people who say they rely on independent and diverse White House reporting for their teaching, journalism or advocacy. They include a noted human rights advocate, a political journalist, a Yale history professor, a high school civics teacher, a legal journalist, and a student journalist at the University of Pennsylvania.

The complaint filed Monday recounts how various news organizations that have been targeted by Trump are already battling the administration in the courts. These cases include the current lawsuit by CNN, MS NOW and Politico, whose journalists were banished from the White House in September.

A federal judge recently extended an order preventing the White House from enforcing the ban while the case makes its way through the legal system. Still affected, though, is CNN’s pool coverage of Trump. The White House has been denying the network its usual slots in the video pool covering the president’s activities and travel, and CNN has threatened further action.

Also continuing is the legal case involving The Associated Press, whose reporters were barred last year from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some events in retaliation for the outlet’s decision not to follow Trump’s lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters, to the Gulf of America.

The New York Times is also involved in litigation, over a Pentagon policy requiring escorts for journalists on its grounds. And ABC is fighting back against the Trump administration in a dispute over renewal of its broadcast licenses.

This lawsuit seeks more wide-ranging relief

The new lawsuit filed Monday, though, is different from previous legal action against the president — first, in that the plaintiffs are ordinary citizens, shifting the focus from news gatherers to news consumers, and thus implying a much larger pool of stakeholders. In addition, it seeks more wide-ranging relief.

The suit, which names Trump as defendant along with Wiles, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, and Secret Service Director Sean M. Curran, calls not merely for reinstatement of access that has already been impacted, but for a broad injunction that would protect from retaliation every news outlet that covers the White House —- now, and in the future.

“Defendants’ policy of restricting the access of disfavored news organizations deprives the public of the reporting of those organizations,” the complaint says. It also “inevitably deprives them of the independent reporting of other news organizations as well, since every journalist who reports from the White House must now account for the possibility that a critical or ill-advised word about the president may result in their access being summarily restricted or revoked.”

“Plaintiffs ... seek a declaration that the policy is unconstitutional because it imposes restrictions on a limited public forum that are viewpoint-based and unreasonable,” the complaint adds. “They also seek an injunction barring defendants from enforcing the policy.”

Plaintiffs include a human rights advocate, a teacher and a student journalist

The plaintiffs are:

—Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch and a lecturer at Yale’s law school and school of global affairs. Roth “relies on newsgathering and reporting from members of the White House press corps to inform his public writing and commentary,” the suit says.

—Daniel Froomkin, media and political journalist and editor of Press Watch, a nonprofit that encourages political journalists to “fulfill their essential mission of creating an informed electorate and holding the powerful accountable.”

—Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor at Yale University who “relies on newsgathering and reporting from the White House press corps to inform her scholarship, public writing and commentary.”

—Peter Schmidt-Nowara, a social studies teacher at a New York City high school, who teaches civics courses and considers White House reporting “essential to his work as an educator.”

—Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, whose publication is “especially reliant on the White House press corps to provide accurate and timely coverage of the president.”

—Ethan Young, a student at the University of Pennsylvania and editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian, who, as a student journalist, “relies on a diverse, independent and trustworthy cohort of White House reporters to serve as his proxy.”

Schmidt-Nowara, who teaches at Brooklyn Technical High School, is quoted in the lawsuit as saying: “As a social studies teacher, I want my students to have access to accurate, independent reporting about their government.” He adds he is “gravely concerned that the Trump administration’s restrictions on White House reporters are cutting off access to crucial information.

“I joined this lawsuit because my students deserve to know what’s happening in their government and to hear from a free and independent press,” he says.

Young, the student journalist, contends that since he can’t personally access White House press spaces, he relies on “a diverse, independent and trustworthy cohort” of White House reporters to serve as his proxy.

The effect of federal policy changes has been “acutely felt on college campuses, Penn’s included,” Young is quoted as saying. “As a student journalist, I rely on reporting from the White House press corps to understand the decisions made in Washington, their consequences, and how they impact my college community. A vibrant free press allows me to do just that.”

A panel of federal appellate judges on Sunday questioned the timing, constitutionality and authority of the Justice Department’s demand that California election officials set aside thousands of mail ballots from people the federal government suspects may not be citizens.

During rare weekend arguments, two of the three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals appeared skeptical of a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump’s administration in mid-October. The lawsuit accuses California officials of failing to meet a 48-hour deadline to review 20,000 names the administration flagged as likely noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.

The administration asked a federal judge to require the state to withhold counting those ballots until the voters’ immigration status could be verified. The district judge scheduled a hearing for Oct. 27, days after the case was assigned, but the federal government appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking an expedited decision.

Justice Department attorney Matthew Donnelly told the panel that California is causing irreparable harm “by allowing noncitizens to vote in violation of their own state laws. The damage is irreversible and irrevocable.”

The Trump administration has made efforts to identify noncitizen voters a priority this year, even though noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, questioned whether the appellate court even has jurisdiction to hear the case even before a ruling by the lower court.

Donnelly argued that the schedule set by the lower court judge was too slow and effectively a denial of the government’s request, as state elections officials process thousands of mail ballots every day.

Judge Gabriel Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, questioned whether the federal government was violating the Tenth Amendment, essentially commandeering the state to enforce a federal law that makes it a misdemeanor for a noncitizen to vote.

The federal government is simply asking California to enforce its own law, which also bans noncitizens from voting, Donnelly said. He argued the state’s refusal to comply with the federal request to set aside the ballots for review was “frustrating the purpose” of the federal law against noncitizen voting.

The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the power to set the time, place and manner of congressional elections, Bennett said. The executive branch may be “unhappy with what they’re doing, and doesn’t like the manner,” Bennett said, but under the Election Clause the state has the right to determine those issues — including how it sorts out any noncitizen voters.

Attorney Seth Waxman, representing Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan, said the federal government’s list was unreliable and that segregating the ballots for a review process would effectively disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters.

Even if election staffers spent just three minutes checking each of the expected 2.75 million mail ballots against the government’s list, the process would take 140,000 man-hours, Waxman said — or about 16 years of working time.

Waxman cited a review of 200 records from the Trump administration’s list conducted by Los Angeles County staffers. Assistant Registrar-Recorder Monica Flores said in a court filing that the sample included canceled or inactive registrations, individuals with no voting history and voters who appeared to have been born in the United States, which the filing notes “is strong evidence of citizenship.”

If the administration disagrees with how California runs its elections, it can ask Congress to change that process, said attorney Sam Siegel, representing California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

The federal government has provided no credible evidence to support its suspicions, said Siegel.

“It has no basis in law or in fact,” he told the panel. “We just dispute the premise that noncitizens are voting.”

But Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, said everyone has an interest in ensuring that only eligible citizens vote. He suggested that granting the administration’s request for an emergency order could provide clarity.

“Without an injunction, you will never know” if that is happening, Bumatay told Siegel.

Bennett said the panel would try to issue a ruling as quickly as possible.

Democrats and outside watchdogs are planning a massive presence at the polls on Election Day driven by concerns that President Donald Trump will further leverage the vast resources of the federal government to interfere with a midterm that could hobble his final two years in office.

They won’t be the only ones there. A sprawling election protection effort on the left that is expected to deploy tens of thousands of monitors will be met by the largest-ever monitoring program by the Justice Department and still more observers from Republican-aligned groups. The result could be unlike anything seen at the polls in modern times.

The effort among Democratic and nonprofit groups includes training volunteers to stand watch outside polling places and report activities they consider concerning. The network includes traditional government watchdogs such as Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union plus a flood of volunteers assembled by state Democratic parties, congressional leaders, national activist groups and organizations focused on protecting democracy.

The Democratic National Committee’s Association of State Democratic Committees created a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity unit staffed by former CIA and FBI officials to monitor and report online misinformation, including artificial intelligence deepfakes, said Jane Kleeb, vice chair of the DNC.

That’s as Democratic mayors, attorneys general and secretaries of state host tabletop exercises simulating worst-case scenarios, such as a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at voting locations or the seizure of ballots and voting equipment.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders have assembled a legal team that rivals that of any presidential campaign.

“We’ve never done this before,” Kleeb said of the party’s sweeping efforts. But “we’ve never had to deal with the president of the United States saying that he may seize ballots, put ICE agents outside polling locations and other kinds of very clear direct threats to the voting process.”

The Department of Justice has already filed lawsuits in California and Alaska that could affect ballot counting or certification.

While Trump continues to make baseless allegations of cheating in the election, administration and military officials have said they have no plans to deploy immigration agents or troops to polling sites.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis blamed “radical Democrats” for creating fears about election security by refusing to enact voter ID requirements and other Republican-backed measures.

“President Trump has done more than any other president to ensure we have free and fair elections,” Bis said.

Tens of thousands of volunteers trained to observe

State Democratic parties have trained an estimated 10,000 volunteers to observe polling places and report anything potentially concerning they might see from federal agents. Common Cause has trained roughly 16,000 more volunteers to stand watch at voting precincts, said Suzanne Almeida, vice president of states for the group

She said a broader Election Protection coalition involving 300 other groups has trained tens of thousands more.

Smaller pockets of volunteers from other groups also are preparing to show up, including roughly 100 organized by Senate Democrats and hundreds more from a Democratic-allied group called Save America, which is training clergy members, veterans, teachers and other local community members. National groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn are activating their own expansive networks.

There are so many organizations working to protect the voting process — including many that cannot legally coordinate with each other — that some officials involved worry about unintentionally creating chaos outside polling locations.

Almeida said Election Day confusion is possible in some precincts but the nature of the threat requires a collective effort.

“It will actually take all of us if some of the threats we are most worried about come to pass,” she said.

Trump administration sends its own team

Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump appointee who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, was asked on CBS’ “60 Minutes” whether the Republican administration is planning to send ICE agents to polling places.

“There is no plan to do that,” she responded.

Still, the Justice Department is planning its largest-ever election monitoring effort, with about 1,000 department staff expected to observe voting and ensure federal laws are being followed, spokesperson Kiersten Pels said. That comes after a primary season in which the department said it deployed more than 100 election monitors across hundreds of polling locations.

At least one of those placements sparked tensions with local officials. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said the behavior of two monitors during that state’s primary was “a bit aggressive” and “irregular.” A Laramie County clerk said the Justice Department monitors arrived at the polls intending to interview voters, but her office didn’t allow it.

The department disagrees that the monitors did anything improper, Pels said. She added that the monitors are trained to comply with federal law governing conduct at polling places and won’t “interfere with the voting process.”

Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates have raised concerns that the Trump administration’s monitors could intimidate voters or abandon the duty they’ve had for decades to protect against civil rights violations.

The department plans to send them to every state, focusing on high-population areas, jurisdictions that have had problems in the past and districts with close elections, according to a senior department official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the department.

The Republican National Committee said its operation involves deploying “election integrity deputy state directors” in 22 states, among them Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina.

Those workers are the “eyes and the ears of the RNC in the field” who recruit volunteers and organize trainings, said Ally Triolo, the RNC’s election integrity communications director. Their mission is to surface anything that seems unlawful.

At the same time, the RNC has enlisted nearly 22,000 poll workers and is recruiting poll-watching volunteers for competitive districts. The poll watchers will “observe the process and help ensure election rules are followed in accordance with the law,” Triolo said.

Local election officials prepare for increased attention

While federal monitors have quietly observed elections for decades, largely without incident, some election officials are taking precautions.

Chris Swope, the city clerk in Lansing, Michigan, said he preemptively contacted law enforcement and his attorney in case federal monitors violate election law, although he expects them to abide by the rules.

The Democratic Mayors Association issued guidance to local Democratic officials with detailed instructions about what to do if federal agents appear at polling locations.

It notes that federal law prohibits the presence of federal immigration agents, the FBI or other investigative personnel. It also issued a reminder that federal agents are not allowed to be armed at the polls, nor are they allowed to interact with voters or handle ballots or election equipment.

Justice Department officials have said their monitors won’t be armed and will not interfere with voting. Asked about department monitors being sent to Georgia, Trump told a reporter recently: “They’re not going to do anything other than watch.”

Some of the poll observations have already begun. Mary Corcoran, Save America’s executive director, said her group’s volunteers have been monitoring precincts during early voting in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio to help give voters a sense of security.

“The fear is the point, and we must do something about it,” she said. “Left unanswered, fear does the work of keeping people home without a single agent setting foot at a polling place.”

— Associated Press writers Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Mich., Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jessica Hill in Las Vegas contributed to this report.