Politics

• Trump sentencing delayed: Donald Trump won’t be sentenced on his New York conviction until after the election. Judge Juan Merchan postponed the sentencing date to November 26, saying, “The public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion.” He also asserted that the postponement was an effort “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching Presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.” Talk about living in the land of denial. The reality is that had this been anybody else but Trump, this trial would have never happened in the first place. Merchan is gaslighting by dubiously claiming there is no lawfare at play here when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg campaigned on the promise to Get Trump™.

• Bush, Cheney, and Trump Derangement Syndrome: When people throw around the term “petulant,” they don’t usually direct it toward George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. But when the former won’t say whether he’ll vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, and the latter says that he’s actually going to vote for the “radical liberal,” well, perhaps it’s time to start calling a spade a spade. “He can never be trusted with power again,” said Cheney in a statement. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” This is, frankly, deranged behavior. Given that Trump has the support of more than 90% of Republican voters and that Harris is empirically the most radical of any major-party presidential candidate in American history, it would seem that the choice for Bush and Cheney couldn’t possibly be clearer. Apparently, though, their personal feelings toward Trump outweigh the overwhelming preferences of Republican voters nationwide.

• Humor: “Maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere,” thinks party whose candidate just got endorsed by Dick Cheney and Vladimir Putin (Babylon Bee)

• Alan Dershowtiz leaves the Democrat Party (Daily Caller)

• RFK removes himself from ballots in MI, NC: The 2024 election will be won and lost in a handful of swing states, just like the elections of 2020 and 2016 were. And Republican prospects just got a boost in two crucial swing states, Michigan and North Carolina, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has prevailed in two court cases to remove his name from the ballot and thereby eliminated the possibility of splitting a portion of the Republican vote between himself and the man he’s endorsed: Donald Trump. The anti-democratic Democrats had tried, ferociously, to keep Kennedy’s name on the ballot in these two states after having tried, ferociously, to keep his name off the ballot in these two states. And all this time, we thought Trump was the “existential threat” to “our democracy.” The Daily Wire notes, “Kennedy opted to remain on the ballots in solid blue or red states, giving his supporters room to cast a protest vote against both major party candidates.”

• Biden has spent 40.3% of his presidency on vacation: Yesterday, Joe Biden ticked off his 16th straight day on vacation, which is merely par for the course for the loafer-in-chief. According to a social media post from RNC Research, “[Biden] has spent a total of 532 days (40.3% of his presidency) on vacation. Who’s running the country?” We asked the same question last week. Back in August 2022, Biden spent a record 150 days at his Delaware home alone, more than any recent president in his first 18 months in office. And that 150 days did not include vacation days to other locations. One person responded to the RNC’s question regarding who’s running the country by answering, “Same people running it when he isn’t on vacation.” Indeed.

• Harris policies finally posted: What is Kamala Harris’s policy platform? Besides “joy” and “vibes,” what does a Harris presidency offer the nation? The Harris campaign delayed actually posting her specific policy positions for so long that she has been dubbed the TBD candidate. Well, the Harris/Walz campaign has finally released a policy page that is unsurprisingly light on specifics. Furthermore, it continues to push her campaign’s blatant lie of “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda.” Where are the “fact-checkers” calling out Harris for continuously pushing the false claim that The Heritage Foundation’s policy proposal is the same as Trump’s agenda? What’s interesting is how much Harris’s policy page avoids her historic positions on leftist views. Even left-wingers aren’t happy. Professor Anthony Zenkus, who supports Jill Stein, observed, “Kamala Harris finally puts an ‘Issues’ page on her website, 49 days later. And here’s what it has to say about minimum wage: ‘she’ll fight to raise it’, but no number. No amount. It’s been $7.25 an hour for 15 years and she can’t even say a number.” It’s almost like Harris is seeking to hide rather than reveal her actual policy positions.

• “She doesn’t support banning plastic straws”: Kamala abandons another leftist position (Daily Wire)

• Bernie Sanders says Harris is faking her flip-flopping: Speaking of Harris’s policy positions, over the weekend, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders was asked about her apparent policy flip-flopping. After noting a couple of flip-flops, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked, “Do you think Kamala is abandoning her progressive ideals?” Sanders responded, “No, I don’t think she’s abandoning her ideals. I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.” When pressed by Welker if he believed Harris to be a progressive, he rambled and added, “So, yes, her views are not mine, but I do consider her progressive.” Given Harris’s history, we agree with Sanders: Harris is a progressive/leftist who is simply attempting to avoid that label in the hopes of deceiving enough voters into casting their ballot for her.

• Harris and Trump are getting ready for Tuesday’s debate in sharply different ways (AP)

• Congress returns for busy fall session (Roll Call)

• Government shutdown looms as Congress faces funding fight (The Hill)

• Schumer rejects GOP proposal to link bill requiring voters prove citizenship with spending measure (Daily Wire)

Security

• A damning report on the Biden-Harris Afghanistan debacle: Kamala Harris has made it clear that she was “the last person in the room” with Joe Biden when he made the deadly decision to hastily yank U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. We can never forget, and we can never allow the Democrats to rewrite history. On this front, a new report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee makes a damning case against the current administration. Among the Biden/Harris failures: Leaving behind more than $57 million, a “significant amount of classified information,” and information aiding the Taliban’s hunt for hundreds of former Afghan government officials. Add to that the roughly $7 billion in American military hardware abandoned to our enemies, and the Biden/Harris surrender and retreat is a failure of colossal proportions.

• Pakistani man charged over plot to slaughter Jews in New York on October 7 anniversary (Times of Israel)

• U.S. tells allies Iran has sent ballistic missiles to Russia (WSJ)

• Policy: We need to defend America from Chinese spies with diligence and accountability, while avoiding witch hunts (City Journal)

Heartland

• LA Times hack blames GOP for Demo-dominated California woes: It’s no secret that California is an apocalyptic mess of a one-party state. But have we been dead wrong about where we’ve affixed the blame? California’s woes, according to the LA Times’s Steve Lopez, are the fault of Republicans. How so? He says that the state’s Republicans aren’t electable. As Lopez writes, the Democrats “hold every statewide elective office and dominate the Legislature in a rich state that stands as the fifth largest economy in the world. … And yet California has massive rates of poverty, cuckoo housing costs that are forcing people to flee, and a shameful number of homeless people, many suffering from addiction, mental illness or both.” So, he blames Republicans, apparently for not rescuing the state from the Democrats. We don’t see this changing anytime soon, either. As Lopez notes, California’s electorate “has grown more diverse” and “GOP voter registration has dwindled to roughly 25%.” Unfortunately for many good Californians, every people gets the government they deserve.

• Georgia school shooter reportedly was “bullied for being gay,” expressed “frustrations about the acceptance of transgender people” as reason for attack (Not the Bee)

• Gavin Newsom kills bill that would give illegal immigrants massive help to buy homes (Daily Wire)

Misc.

• Trump pulls ahead of Harris in major national poll (Daily Caller)

• Tim Walz’s China travel business was dissolved for failing to pay $26 operating tax (Washington Free Beacon)

• White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo gets tricked into paying reparations to Matt Walsh’s producer in “Am I Racist?” documentary (NY Post)

• Venezuelan opposition leader lands in Spain after fleeing homeland (BBC)

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