Key rightwing legal groups with ties to Donald Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states that are already sowing distrust of election processes and pushing dangerous conspiracy theories, election watchdogs warn.

They also warn that the groups appear to be laying the groundwork for a concerted challenge to the result of November’s presidential election if Trump is defeated by Kamala Harris.

America First Legal and the Public Interest Legal Foundation together reaped more than $30m dollars from the Wisconsin based Bradley Impact Fund and its parent, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, from 2017 through 2022, according to a financial analysis from the Center for Media and Democracy.

Lawsuits filed by the groups, which overlap with some Republican party litigation, focus in part on conspiratorial charges of non-citizen voting, which is exceedingly rare, and bloated voter rolls, and pre-sage more lawsuits by Trump if his presidential run fails, in an echo of his 2020 election-denialist claims, say watchdogs.

“It seems clear that the lawsuits these rightwing groups are bringing attacking the integrity of the voting rolls, methods of voting and how the ballots are counted are an attempt to make it harder for people to vote, disenfranchise and intimidate legitimate voters, and create confusion,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

Noble added: “At the same time, they also appear to be laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the election after November 5, if Trump loses.”

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As we mentioned in the opening summary, Donald Trump will be campaigning in North Carolina – a crucial swing state – today.

The Republican presidential nominee is visiting the city of Asheville to survey the damage Hurricane Helene brought last month.

Communities in western North Carolina have been reeling since the storm ravaged the region, killing about 100 people and destroying homes and causing widespread power outages.

Trump has falsely accused Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of deliberately diverting assistance away from Republican areas.

As well as visiting Asheville, Trump will be holding a rally in Greenville this afternoon, before attending a meeting of 11th Hour Faith leaders, alongside his son Eric and Dr Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary, in Concord. You can keep up-to-date with Trump’s campaign schedule here.

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, will join Republican Congresswoman and vocal Trump opponent Liz Cheney in Chester County, Pennsylvania, for a campaign event before heading to Waukesha County, Wisconsin, and Oakland County, Michigan.

There are mounting concerns from Trump’s Republican allies that crippling damage from Hurricane Helene will depress turnout in the battleground state’s conservative mountain regions.

Trump won about 62% of the vote in 2020 in the 25 counties declared to be a disaster area after Helene, while Biden won about 51% in the remainder of the state. New emergency voting arrangements have been put in place by the state board of election covering some of the most devastated counties.

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average shows North Carolina is too tight to call with confidence, with Harris, the US vice president and Democratic nominee, trailing behind Trump by 0.7 percentage points.

More than one million North Carolinians have already voted in the November general election, according to estimates. More than 400 early voting sites opened as scheduled on Thursday.

The Harris campaign reported raising $221.8m (£170.4m) in September, compared to Trump’s campaign raising $62.7m (£48.2m), the Washington Post reported after new federal campaign finance filings showed her huge financial advantage in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

The Federal Election Commission filings, released yesterday, also showed that the Democratic National Committee raised $98.6m (£76m) last month, compared to the Republican National Committee raising $37.8m (£29m).

The Washington Post reported:

New reports filed on Tuesday showed that Harris’s primary fundraising vehicle for big-dollar donations, the Harris Victory Fund, brought in a staggering $633m (£486m) during the third quarter. That was more than four times as much as the $145m (£111m) that the victory fund’s GOP counterpart, the Trump 47 committee, brought in, according to reports filed last week.

Despite that huge spending edge and Harris’s sprawling ground game, her campaign has still struggled to significantly outpace Trump in key swing state polls. The vice president’s campaign has a much larger footprint than Trump’s, which relies on outside groups to help it turn out voters, and her advisers are worried about whether they will have enough money to secure victory. Harris’s advisers believe that the race remains close in all of the key swing states, and point to the high cost of targeting hard-to-reach and infrequent voters in seven very different states.

Harris is running a campaign that is about three times the size of Trump’s operation, spending more money on ads and having more staff, volunteers and a larger surrogate operation than her Republican opponent, according to a Washington Post analysis of campaign spending.

Good morning, US politics readers.

There are now only 15 days to go until voting day and the attacks traded between the two presidential candidates – Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R) – are intensifying. On Sunday, Harris celebrated her 60th birthday and gave an interview with Rev Al Sharpton on MSNBC.

Sharpton asked her about Trump calling her a “shit vice-president” at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

Harris, who became the first black vice-president and woman in the role after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, responded:

The American people deserve so much better. That is how I come at it. And to your point, the President of the United States must set a standard – not only for our nation but understanding the standard we as a nation must set for the world.

We representing the United States of America walk into rooms around the world with the earned and self-appointed authority to talk about the importance of democracy, of rule of law and have been thought of as a role model … of what it means to be committed to certain standards, including international rules and norms, but also standards of decorum.

And what you see in my opponent, a former President of the United States, demeans the office. And I have said – and I am very clear about this – Donald Trump should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States. He has not earned the right … and that is why he is going to lose.

The presidential race is essentially deadlocked, both nationally and in so-called battleground states. The contest on 5 November will be decided by the slimmest of margins. In order to appeal to voters in the critical swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), both Trump and Harris are trying to appeal to moderate, swing voters and ensure their bases are enthused enough to go out and vote.

Later today, Harris will be targeting suburban Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – holding a series of conversations with Republican Liz Cheney that will be moderated by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes.

Trump has three North Carolina stops on Monday, including a visit to see storm damage in Asheville. He beat Biden in the state by 1.3% in 2020, but the polls this year are extremely tight, giving the Democrats a rare chance of winning the state.