Security

• Multiple Secret Service agents put on leave: It’s been 41 days since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally last month in Butler, Pennsylvania, but information about the ongoing investigation has been maddeningly scarce. Late this morning, though, we learned that at least five Secret Service personnel have been placed on administrative leave due to their conduct on July 13. As Fox News reports, “One member of Trump’s personal protective team and four members of the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh Field Office, including the special agent in charge, have been placed on leave.” In a related development, Fox News is reporting that the Secret Service was made aware of the Iranian plan to assassinate Trump prior to the Butler rally, and yet the rally was allowed to go on as planned. Well over a month later, we still have more questions than answers.

• Southern Arizona man arrested after alleged threats against Trump as candidate visited border (AP)

Politics

• RFK Jr. shreds the DNC: With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soon ending his long-shot presidential bid, the former Democrat and son of Democrat royalty made his rationale for his decision clear on Wednesday. “The DNC is in Chicago talking about their commitment to voting rights, while they’re spending tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to keep me off the ballot,” he stated. After noting that a million people have signed petitions for him to be on the ballot, he asked, “Why is the Democratic Party trying to disenfranchise those people? What’s happened to the party?” Kennedy added, “I don’t think my father would recognize this party, and I don’t think my uncle would recognize this party.” Green Party candidate Jill Stein also blasted the Democrats on similar grounds, observing in an X post: “The party of ‘fairness’ and ‘democracy’ for you: hiring infiltrators, hiring an army of lawyers to throw Dr. Jill Stein off the ballot, stockpiling cash and staff to coordinate a ‘campaign to silence and sabotage 3rd parties, denying federal matching funds. The Undemocratic Party has no interest in democracy, it’s all for the cameras.”

• Humor: RNC vs. DNC: A comparison (Babylon Bee)

• Nancy Pelosi’s Paine-ful delusion: Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi took hyperbole to an entirely new level when she semi-literately said to MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell, “We have to defeat a person who is a threat to our democracy of the kind that we have not seen. At the beginning of our country, Thomas Paine said that times have found us — declare war, establish a new nation. Abraham Lincoln took up that charge to keep our country together years later, decades later, and now the times have found us to save our democracy.” Apparently, these are the Trumpian times that try men’s souls.

• Kemp and Trump clear the air: One of the most unsettling political developments in recent years has been the emergence of once-deep-red Georgia as a swing state. In the 2020 election cycle, the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes went narrowly to Joe Biden, and two crucial Senate seats went disastrously to the Democrats. Some of this failure, it’s believed, is attributable to the toxic relationship between Donald Trump and Georgia’s popular governor, Brian Kemp. But it appears that these two have recognized the enormity of this year’s electoral stakes and mended that relationship. “We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House,” said Kemp last night to Fox News’s Sean Hannity. In response to Kemp’s outreach, Trump took to Truth Social: “Thank you to Brian Kemp for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

• SCOTUS sides with voting integrity in Arizona: With Trump and Governor Kemp having made peace in Georgia, Republicans now turn their attention to Arizona, where a Supreme Court ruling yesterday saved a state law regarding voter citizenship, thereby allowing restrictions in the state’s voter registration form. The ruling “revived part of an Arizona voter law requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote, in response to a request from the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republicans,” Reuters reports. “The justices in a 5-4 ruling agreed to reinstate a provision of the law after a federal judge blocked it in response to legal challenges by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and advocacy groups.” The normally reserved GOP chairman, Michael Whatley, called it “a seismic win in the fight to stop non-citizens from voting,” adding, “more to come!”

Leftmedia

• AP’s yellow journalism: Just how biased is the mainstream media against Israel? A recent example helps answer that question. More than 80 media outlets touted the bogus claim that more than 40,000 civilians in Gaza have been killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war against Hamas following the brutal October 7 terrorist attack. The apparent initiator of the 40,000 figure was an August 18 Associated Press report. Like clockwork, that number was quickly parroted by 80 other media outlets as if it were the gospel truth. Well, the next day, the AP and those 80 other media outlets had to offer a humiliating correction after the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) observed that “not even Hamas has alleged that more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed in the war between Israel and the terror organization.” CAMERA further noted, “While the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported over 40,000 total deaths among Gaza’s residents, its data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israeli sources, meanwhile, estimate that over 17,000 of those killed are Hamas combatants.” With supposed “blunders” like this, one wonders if the AP isn’t more of a propagandist outfit for Hamas than a journalism outfit. By the way, the Associated Press shared office space with Hamas at the AP’s Gaza bureau.

Good News

• Pro-abortion ballot initiative tossed: Yesterday, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state regarding its rejection of a pro-abortion ballot initiative. The group behind the initiative was the rather deceptively named Arkansans for Limited Government. The state rejected its petition due to the group’s failure to produce documentation of training certification for hired signature gatherers. By a 5-4 ruling, the Court stated, “We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification.” The pro-abortion initiative sought to allow abortion on demand up to 20 weeks gestation and beyond for instances of rape, incest, maternal mental health, and malformed preborn babies deemed unlikely to survive. Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin welcomed the ruling, stating, “This is a win for the rule of law in Arkansas and for those who have followed the rules for years to participate in the state’s ballot initiative process.”

• Pro-life center wins injunction against Letitia James: In a temporary win for pro-life pregnancy centers and their First Amendment right to freedom of speech, a federal judge issued an injunction against New York Attorney General Letitia James, preventing her from taking any legal action against National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. Two NIFLA members, Ginna’s House and Options Care Center, sued James after she initiated a civil enforcement action against them, accusing them of spreading “false and misleading” information for their promoting progesterone as an abortion-pill reversal. Pregnant women “should have the option to reconsider an abortion,” contends Alliance Defending Freedom’s Caleb Dalton, senior counsel for the centers. “Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers about using safe and effective progesterone for abortion pill reversal. But the attorney general tried to deny women the opportunity to even hear about this life-saving option.”

• Jack Daniel’s parent company ends DEI programs to prevent potential boycott (National Review)

Misc.

• Fed chair indicates interest rate cuts ahead: “The time has come for policy to adjust” (CNBC)

• Venezuelan court upholds Maduro’s disputed victory (BBC)

• Starbucks new boss under fire for 1,000-mile commute (BBC)

• Policy: How to expand the child tax credit (National Review)

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