Politico: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday defended comments he made following the 2020 election where he privately slammed Donald Trump as “stupid” and “despicable.” “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the…

NY Times: “A South Carolina man who was the first person in the United States to be convicted of a federal hate crime based on gender identity was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for the killing of a transgender woman in 2019, the authorities said. According to the government, the man, Daqua Lameek…

WaPo: “A 14-year-old boy and his father charged in the deadly shooting at a Georgia high school last month were formally indicted by a grand jury Thursday on dozens of additional charges, a day after investigators revealed new troubling details about the attack. Colt Gray, the suspected shooter, was arrested and charged last month with four counts…

WaPo: “Their home washed away with the floodwaters. So did their jobs on nearby farms. They had come to Centro Unido, a Latino community group serving western North Carolina, to see if anyone could help them get back on their feet. But, because of their immigration status, this family doesn’t qualify for government aid. The best…

Political Wire: “A judge invalidated seven new Georgia election rules Wednesday, including requirements for a ‘reasonable inquiry’ before elections are certified, hand counts on election night and additional access for partisan poll watchers,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. CNN: “Among the rules Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox said violated state law are two that would…

NY Times: “Ashwin Ramaswami, a Democrat running for a Georgia State Senate seat, grew up in a wealthy stretch of Atlanta suburbs transformed by the tech industry and waves of Indian American immigrants, like his parents, who have settled there. It is a part of the American South where the percentage of adults with a…

NY Times: “The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday halted the execution of Robert Roberson, a Texas man convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter, after a roller-coaster series of legal maneuvers initiated by an unusual intervention from a bipartisan group of Texas House members. The decision by the state’s highest civil court related to a procedural…

NY Times: “Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas sued a Dallas pediatrician on Thursday, accusing her of providing gender transition treatment to minors in violation of a 2023 state law. Mr. Paxton described the suit as the state’s first enforcement action under the new law. The doctor, May C. Lau, is an associate professor in…

Democracy Now!: “In Texas, two people were killed and nearly three dozen treated for chemical exposure Thursday following a leak of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas at a Houston-area oil refinery operated by Pemex, the Mexican state-owned petroleum company. Authorities issued a shelter-in-place order for Deer Park and neighboring Pasadena for several hours, telling residents to…

USA Today: “Voters in Georgia turned out in record numbers as the battleground state opened early voting for the Nov. 5 presidential election between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, state officials said on Tuesday. At least 252,000 voters had cast ballots at early-voting sites as of 4 p.m. EDT, nearly double the 136,000 who participated in the first…