Cartoon: Sustainable Keystone Xl

"There's no doubt that Russia and China want to affect the outcome of the U. S. election," says former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke. So administrations try to game out what adversaries might do, "and how you would react to that kind of surprise so that you have a script in advance."

To a viewer tweet suggesting "We're at an inflection point where both parties are going to evolve after this election," Smerconish responds,"I hope that's the case. I don't know.. I look at it as the latest incarnation of a lot of the same sentiments that we saw in the Tea Party movement."

A new Pew Research poll finds 25% of Americans hold unfavorable views of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — the highest share of “double haters” at this stage in any of the last 10 elections. Axios: “The closely watched bloc has nearly doubled in size since 2020, making this fall’s Trump vs.

Punchbowl News: “Trump disparaged Milwaukee, the city where he’ll formally accept the GOP presidential nomination next month. He also told a bizarre story involving an imagined relationship with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And he suggested a new tariff idea.” “It was vintage Trump, treating the gathering like a campaign rally. The following few hours were dominated by GOP lawmakers and Trump campaign officials haranguing reporters for the portrayal of his comments about Milwaukee.” “Trump called Milwaukee a ‘horrible city,’ then some House Republicans claimed he never said it, and then they admitted he said it but that he didn’t mean it.” “It felt like we were back in the ‘clean-up on aisle Trump’ news cycles of 2017 all over again.”

“Candidates and voters alike are wondering whether they can trust the polls ahead of November’s elections,” Axios reports. “The 2016 and 2020 elections rocked public confidence in polling after many underestimated the amount of support for former President Trump. Meanwhile, pollsters are having to adapt their methods, with fewer respondents answering the phone.”

Washington Post: “It’s been 15 years since members of the House and Senate allowed their federally mandated cost-of-living adjustment (often referred to as COLA) to take effect. Since then, their pay has been set at $174,000.” “Out of political fear from voters in both their primary and general elections, lawmakers have repeatedly inserted language into government funding bills that prohibits their COLA from taking effect, as happened again late Thursday night in the House Appropriations Committee.”