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Former President Donald Trump is holding a rally in Texas two days before early voting starts for the November election.

The rally will be Saturday in Robstown, outside Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast. Republicans are targeting districts in the area as they try to take over South Texas congressional seats.

The rally will start at 7 p.m. at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds, according to a media advisory. Trump's team announced Tuesday that additional speakers would include Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Gov. Greg Abbott said he would not be able to attend due to an out-of-state fundraising trip.

The advisory said Trump would speak in support of his unprecedented effort to advance the MAGA agenda by energizing voters and highlighting the slate of 33-0 Trump Endorsed America First candidates in the Great State of Texas. The 33-0 figure refers to his endorsement record in the Texas primaries and runoff earlier this year, which included some incumbents who faced nominal or no opposition.

Among Trumps endorsees is Abbott who is fighting against Democrat Beto ORourke for a third term.

"I welcome President Trump back to Texas, though I wont be able to welcome him personally since I will be out-of-state for a pre-planned fundraising trip to Florida," Abbott said in a statement.

Trump carried Texas twice, but he is not particularly popular these days. The latest poll from the University of Texas at Austin found that 41% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of Trump, while 50% had an unfavorable opinion.

But Trump remains popular with the GOP base, though, and his endorsement was highly sought-after during the primaries. His last rally in Texas was ahead of the March primary, and it was held in the Houston suburbs. Abbott spoke at that rally.

In addition to Patrick and Paxton, the Saturday rally's speakers will include U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria; Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump; and Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

The speaking list did not include any candidates from the South Texas races that Republicans are targeting. Among them, Trump has endorsed Monica De La Cruz, a Republican running for an open seat that runs from the Rio Grande Valley up to outside San Antonio.

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Trump to hold rally in South Texas two days before early voting - The Texas Tribune

Billed by Axios as the book Donald Trump fears most, Maggie HabermansConfidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America debutedlastweek asNo. 1best-seller on Amazon and the New York Times. At 508 pages, its a challenge. But its worth the slog: the best book yet on the mystery man whostill remains, two years after being rejected for a second term, the most dominant force in American politics.

The most striking thing about the book is its title. Consider: For the New York Times, Haberman covered Donald Trump full-time for six years. During his four years in the White House, she averaged more than one Trump story a day. She was the Timess most-read reporter. Shes interviewed Trump dozens of times. Hescalled her a third-rate reporter,but he gave her three interviews for this book alonethefirst onerequestedby himbefore she even asked.

Haberman knows Trump better than any other reporter. Yet, after all that access and all that time, what words did she choose to describe Trump? TheConfidence Man,which is hardly a compliment.Merriam-Webster defines a confidence man as a person who tricks other people in order to get their money. And that, my friends, as Haberman skillfully and exhaustively relates, is Donald Trumpin a nutshell.

Habermansgreat insight, and her bookscentral premise,is that you cant understand Trump unless you track him from the beginning of his professional career, when he, somewhat reluctantly,joined his fathers real estate firm. (He originally wanted to become an actor.)Fromthat point on, she argues, hes frozen in time.Recounting countless episodes from his New York developer days, she concludes: He was interested primarily in money, dominance, power, bullying and himself. He treated rules and regulations as unnecessary obstacles rather than constraints on his behavior He sought anendless stream of praise His thirst for fame seemed to grow each time he tasted more of it.

Donald Trump the developer was Donald Trump the president. HisM.O. never changed.

Filing countless, worthless lawsuits? It didnt start in the White House, it started in Queens, when he sued every reporter, contractor ordeveloper who wouldnt accede to his demands. Notbecause he expected to winjust to intimidate them. Or, as he admitted after suing his biographer, Tim OBrien, just to make his life miserable.

Telling lies? It didnt start with the size of the crowd at his Inauguration. As a developer, he allegedlylied aboutmany things, according to Habermans and others reporting:his net worth, the value of properties, his ties to the mafia, his prowess with women.

Haberman opens her book with a string of lies an 18-year-old Donald Trump apparentlytoldabout the dedication of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which he attended with this father.

Haberman reminds us that, essentially, Donald Trump believes in nothing but hisown greatness. Everything about him is transactional.He was a Republican before joining the Reform Party before becoming a Democrat before becominga Republican again. Hesupported abortion rightsbefore he was anti-abortion. He was for universal health care beforetrying to killObamaCare. According to Haberman, he wasnt even convincedabout building a wallasapolitical issueuntil he saw the enthusiastic responseitgenerated at campaign rallies.

Trumpisnot the first confidence man weve encountered. As chronicled by Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Thomas Mann and others, theyre a peculiarly American phenomenon. The only difference is, to our eternal regret, we elected this confidence manpresident of the United States.

Pressis host of TheBillPressPod. He is the author of From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.

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Press: Donald Trump, Confidence Man, then and now - The Hill

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) A jury on Tuesday acquitted a think tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.

The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by Special Counsel John Durham as part of his probe into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Thefirst two cases ended in an acquittal and a guilty pleawith a sentence of probation.

Danchenko betrayed no emotion as the verdict was read. His wife wiped away tears after the clerk read the final not guilty to the four counts he faced.

WATCH: Brooks and Capehart on the Jan. 6 subpoena of Trump and whats at stake in the midterms

Danchenko didnt comment after the hearing, but his lawyer, Stuart Sears, spoke briefly to reporters, saying, Weve known all along that Mr. Danchenko is innocent. Were happy now that the American public knows that as well.

The jury reached its verdict after roughly nine hours of deliberations over two days. One juror, Joel Greene of Vienna, Virginia, said there were no real disputes among the jury and that jurors just wanted to be thorough in reviewing the four counts.

The acquittal marked a significant setback for Durham. Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, the three-year investigation failed to produce evidence that met those expectations. The sole conviction an FBI lawyer admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump aide was for conduct uncovered not by Durham but by the Justice Departments inspector general, and the two cases that Durham took to trials ended in full acquittals.

Durham declined comment after the hearing, but he said in a statement issued through the Justice Department: While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jurys decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case.

He issued an identical statement after the first trial ended in acquittal.

The Danchenko case was the first of the three to delve deeply into the origins of the Steele dossier, a compendium of allegations that Trumps 2016 presidential campaign was colluding with the Kremlin.

WATCH: Jan. 6 committee votes unanimously to subpoena Trump

Most famously, it alleged that the Russians could have blackmail material on Trump for his supposed interactions with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Trump derided the dossier as fake news and a political witch hunt when it became public in 2017.

Danchenko, by his own admission, was responsible for 80 percent of the raw intelligence in the dossier and half of the accompanying analysis, though trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation.

Prosecutors said that if Danchenko had been more honest about his sources, the FBI might not have treated the dossier so credulously. As it turned out, the FBI used material from the dossier to support applications for warrantless surveillance of a Trump campaign official, Carter Page, even though the FBI never was able to corroborate a single allegation in the dossier.

Prosecutors said Danchenko lied about the identity of his own sources for the material he gave to Steele. The specific charges against Danchenko allege that he essentially fabricated one of his sources when the FBI interviewed him to determine how he derived the material he provided for the dossier.

Danchenko told the FBI that some of the material came when he received an anonymous call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

Prosecutors said Danchenkos story made no sense. They said that phone records show no evidence of a call, and that Danchenko had no reason to believe Millian, a Trump supporter hed never met, was suddenly going to be willing to provide disparaging information about Trump to a stranger.

WATCH: How the anti-Trump dossier came to be

Danchenkos lawyers, as a starting point, maintain that Danchenko never said he talked with Millian. He only guessed that Millian might have been the caller when the FBI asked him to speculate. And they said he shouldnt be convicted of a crime for making a guess at the FBIs invitation.

That said, Danchenkos lawyers say, he had good reason to believe the caller may well have been Millian. The call came just a few days after Danchenko had reached out to Millian over email after a mutual acquaintance brokered a connection over email.

And Danchenkos lawyers say its irrelevant that his phone records dont show a call because Danchenko told the FBI from the start that the call might have taken place over a secure mobile app for which he had no records.

The jury began deliberations Monday afternoon after hearing closing arguments on four counts. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trengathrew out a fifth count, saying prosecutors had failed to prove it as a matter of law.

Trenga nearly threw out all of the charges before the trial began, citing the legal strength of Danchenkos defense, but allowed the case to proceed in what he described as an extremely close call.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

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Think tank analyst acquitted in trial over discredited Donald Trump dossier - PBS NewsHour

Supreme Court lawyers often build their arguments around points to which they think the justices will be most receptive. If a lawyer thinks that the justices will be friendly to their caseif they represent, say, a religious person with a Free Exercise Clause claim or a state trying to carry out an executionthen they may be more inclined to swing for the fences. If, on the other hand, they think that the Supreme Court might be divided on the issue based on past rulings or on intuitive understandings of each justice, they might make a narrower argument that could appeal to more skeptical members of the court.

Trumps lawyers, for reasons known only to them, made claims that most of the justices could not stomach. One of them, Jay Sekulow, argued in Vance that any criminal process that touched the president was unconstitutional, a point that even the Justice Department arguing on behalf of the Trump administration did not make. That argument was resoundingly rejected by all nine justices, including the two justices who dissented from the courts decision in Vances favor on narrower grounds. Trump did score a partial victory in the Mazars case, where the justices laid out a balancing test for congressional subpoenas of a presidents personal information, but he only succeeded in running out the clock until his term ended.

On policy issues, the Supreme Court also rejected some of the Trump administrations major initiatives when the process that led to them was sloppy or deceptive. Some of these defeats were narrower than others. The court rejected the Trump administrations bid to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census only when Chief Justice John Roberts broke ranks with his fellow conservatives, citing evidence that the Justice Departments stated rationale for adding the question was a lie. Roberts also joined with the courts four liberals at the time to defeat Trumps bid to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because the administration had not properly followed the Administrative Procedures Act.

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Donald Trump Keeps Getting Rejected by the Supreme Court - The New Republic

No president has done more for Israel than I have, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US. Trump also claimed that he was so popular he could be elected prime minister of Israel and said, US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel Before it is too late!

Once pictures of Trumps post were shared on more popular social media platforms such as Twitter it went viral. His words were condemned by prominent American Jewish groups, including those that regularly assert that anti-Zionism (which Trump appeared to be at least gesturing at) and anti-Semitism are one and the same. Many of these establishment, mainstream Jewish organisations were criticised during Trumps presidency by those who felt that they supported his administration in an attempt to bolster their own ties with Israel and appear bipartisan rather than calling out anti-Semitism and defending human rights.

We dont need the former president, who curries favour with extremists and anti-Semites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship. It is not about a quid pro quo; it rests on shared values and security interests. This Jewsplaining is insulting and disgusting, tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish NGO dedicated to stopping defamation of the Jewish people and one of the groups that was criticised during Trumps presidency.

Support for the Jewish state never gives one license to lecture American Jews, nor does it ever give the right to draw baseless judgements about the ties between US Jews and Israel. And to be clear, those ties are strong and enduring, read a tweet from the American Jewish Committee, a prominent advocacy group that was similarly criticised.

Though Trumps post drew a lot of anger, it is hardly the first time hes said something like this. In an interview with the news website Axios last year he said roughly the same thing. People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel, he said. Ill tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country The Jewish people in the United States either dont like Israel or dont care about Israel When you look at the New York Times, the New York Times hates Israel, hates them, and theyre Jewish people that run the New York Times I mean the Sulzberger family.

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He also made similar comments in 2019 while still in office. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, he said: In my opinion, if you vote for a Democrat, youre being very disloyal to Jewish people and youre being very disloyal to Israel. And only weak people would say anything other than that. The day before he had said: I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.

[Podcast: What does it mean to be a Bad Jew? With Emily Tamkin]

Most American Jews do indeed vote for Democrats and most are not voting based on a candidates given position on Israel. In fact a 2020 poll by the Ruderman Foundation found that only 4 per cent of American Jews believe that Israel is the most important issue. Most American Jews do indeed profess an attachment to Israel: six in ten say they are very or somewhat emotionally attached, though less than half have actually been there, according to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Centre. But according to the same study, younger American Jews both feel less attached to and are more critical of the country. These are facts of American life. It is not up to the former president or anyone else to say that that makes American Jews disloyal, or to demand our political support.

Another fact of American political life is that many Republican candidates traffic in anti-Semitic tropes and then defend themselves against charges of bigotry by touting their support for Israel. And another fact of American life is that Republicans often do this with cover from like-minded Jewish people: Trump is set to receive an honour from the right-wing Zionist Organization of America next month for such achievements as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and cutting funding to Palestinians.

All of this is to say that one of our two major political parties regularly treats Israel and American Jews as though they should be interchangeable, and Trump regularly chastises us for the fact that we dont see things the same way. All of this is happening at a time when most American Jews feel that anti-Semitism on the rise. This is the state of American Jewish politics and Trump is but one of the loudest voices sharing the Republican Party line.

[See also: Everything you should know about the 2022 US midterm elections]

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Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican chastising American Jews - The New Statesman