Letters that threatened Florida TV stations with criminal penalties if they aired a political ad backing a referendum that would repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban came directly from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office, according to the attorney who signed and sent them.

Attorney John Wilson said that he resigned as general counsel for the Florida Department of Health rather than “complying with the directives” of DeSantis’s executive staff to send more cease-and-desist letters to TV stations running the ad.

“Kamala Harris supports EV mandates, killing Michigan jobs. She wants to end all gas-powered cars. Crazy but true. Harris’s push requiring electric only is failing big, and Michigan autoworkers are paying the price. Massive layoffs already started. She could tank Michigan’s whole economy.”

— Donald Trump campaign ad, released Oct. 17

Donald Trump and other GOP candidates are increasingly targeting transgender people in the election’s closing days, invoking them as boogeymen at rallies and pouring millions into advertising tying Democrats to transgender rights.

At a recent Trump rally in Reno, Nevada, the Trump campaign played a video that included Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking transgender official in the Biden administration, wishing people a happy Pride Month. The crowd booed. When the screen cut to a TikTok video of a drag queen, the crowd booed even louder.

Donald Trump went viral with a carefully staged photo op at McDonalds, an apparent meditation about a golfing legend’s genitalia and crass insults at a charity banquet. He has dominated headlines after issuing dark threats, including deploying the military against the “enemy from within”; repeatedly declined to say he would accept the results of the election; and delivered long, roundabout speeches and an impromptu 39-minute dance session.

Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Friday in Texas, a state she does not believe she will win but one where her campaign plans for her to begin making a closing argument to voters centered on abortion rights.

Harris will travel to Texas, which her campaign calls the “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion bans,” to warn Americans about the threat she believes former president Donald Trump poses to women and those who support women’s reproductive rights, officials said.