Government & Politics

• House to pass spending bill without electoral reform: It’s become a campaign staple for the Democrats, a hardy perennial almost as predictable and reliable as a baseless charge of racism. We’re speaking of the government shutdown — the threat of which invariably favors the Democrats and thus causes Republicans to quake in their boots. The latest example of this came just yesterday when House Republicans moved ahead with a “clean” stopgap spending bill to fund our bloated federal government at current levels until mid-December. The wafer-thin Republican majority has dropped its insistence that a proof-of-citizenship voting measure be part of this funding. For some reason, Democrats also remain intractably opposed to the no-longer-attached SAVE Act, which established a commonsense bar for election integrity. So much for honest elections. And so much for ensuring that only American citizens vote in our federal elections. After all, we’ve got a debt-ridden government to fund.

• Noncitizens added to voter rolls via DMV: Some number of noncitizens have been added to the voter rolls in several states via the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Thanks to the law, when people are getting a driver’s license, they are pushed to register to vote. This has resulted in noncitizens being registered to vote in states such as Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, and Texas. According to J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), “We’ve collected over the years of the data on how non-citizens get in, and it’s largely by not telling the truth in the motor voter process. And it includes people here on green cards, people here legally.” Adams noted, “Most of the people who get registered to vote, according to the data we’ve collected, are actual, legal residents, like 90% of them, 95%. And so they get sucked into the system, through motor voter, through DMV, and they get registered to vote that way, and it’s a big problem.” This is yet another reason why election integrity measures are needed.

• Is a second debate on the horizon? “I will gladly accept a second presidential debate on October 23.” So said cowardly Kamala Harris, who conveniently failed to mention that she only participates in rigged debates, like the one ABC orchestrated on her behalf 13 days ago. Trump, understandably, doesn’t see a benefit in doing another three-on-one debate, saying of ABC and its moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, “I think she had the questions. And I think that the anchors … were a disgrace to American journalism.” But that refusal has the Democrats on the offensive. “The American people deserve another opportunity to see [Trump and Harris] debate before they cast their ballots,” said Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon. “It would be unprecedented in modern history for there to just be one general election debate.” Were we advising the former president, we’d agree to a debate on Fox News, and we’d challenge Harris to appear before a pair of moderators who aren’t in the tank for her. Then we’d see just how “gladly” accepting she is of another debate.

• The first debate had no major effect on battleground state polling (More)

• Kamala Harris to skip Al Smith dinner, a traditional event for major presidential candidates (More)

• Is Jill Biden really running the country? Any day now, we expect to see Joe Biden’s cognitively addled mug on the back of a milk carton. Think about it: Where has he been since that swan song speech of his at the Democratic National Convention more than a month ago? And does anyone care? Certainly not the mainstream media, which has all but ceased reporting on the daily activities of the president and commander-in-chief. As the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reports: “This week’s White House Report Card focuses on the latest evidence that first lady Jill Biden is, and long has been, the power in the West Wing. On Friday, the White House wasn’t hiding it. At a rare Cabinet meeting, the president handed over the leadership to the first lady, sitting at the head of the table, her prepared notes in front of her.” As surreal as it seems, we’re living through a modern-day version of the last days of the Woodrow Wilson presidency, when the stroke-addled president’s wife was running the country in his absence.

• Hamtramck’s Muslim mayor endorses Trump: Politics, it’s been said, makes strange bedfellows, and none could be stranger than the most pro-Israel president in American history, Donald Trump, and the Muslim mayor of a Muslim-majority enclave in the middle of Detroit. As Fox News reports: “Amer Ghalib, mayor of the Detroit-area suburb [sic] Hamtramck, announced his endorsement of Trump in a Facebook post Sunday. While admitting he and Trump didn’t ‘agree on everything,’ he said he regarded the former commander-in-chief as ‘a man of principles.’” Hamtramck isn’t a suburb; it’s an enclave entirely within the city of Detroit. It was once the home of Detroit’s large Polish population, but the Poles have long since abandoned the city, and the Muslims have moved in. Ghalib calls Trump “the right choice for this critical time,” and it makes some sense, given the naturally socially conservative nature of Arabs and Muslims generally. But it’s puzzling in light of Democrats playing both sides in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. It’ll be interesting to see what this endorsement does in the swing state of Michigan come November 5.

• Georgia hand counts: The Georgia Election Board ruled 3-2 that all ballots must be hand-counted at local precincts in addition to the machine count. The decision didn’t sit well with many local election officials, who argued that the change would add cost and time to the vote-tabulating processes. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr argued that these late rule changes “would not withstand a legal challenge.” Raffensperger contended, “Georgia voters can be confident that the reforms we’ve enacted since 2020 and have defended in court from frivolous attacks by Stacey Abrams will ensure only American citizens vote in our elections. Our reforms have made Georgia elections the safest in the nation and I work every day to keep it that way.” Janelle King, one of the board members voting in favor of the rule change, said she was more concerned about accuracy over speed: “I can guarantee you as a voter I would rather wait another hour to ensure … that the count is accurate than to get a count or get a number within that hour, and then to find out at the close of an election, after certifications, that we have people suing because the count was not accurate.”

• “Probably should not have said that”: Harris tells Oprah anyone breaking into her home is “getting shot” (More) | Just a “joke,” campaign adviser says (More)

• Bipartisan House group urges Biden to stop controversial EU deforestation ban (More)

• Judicial training in climate science raises concerns about creating bias against oil, gas companies (More)

Security

• Secret Service blames “complacency” for security gaps in Butler: In a press conference on Friday, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe blamed the gaps in security in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, on “complacency” among some USSS members. “While some members of the advance team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols with respect to accountability,” Rowe explained. He added, “These employees will be held accountable, and this agency has among the most robust table of penalties in the entirety of the federal government.” Rowe noted that the agency “is nearing its completion” of its internal investigation, and he promises accountability. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors revealed that the man behind the second assassination attempt against Trump left a handwritten note behind in case he failed. The note reads, “Dear World, This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I am so sorry I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It’s up to you to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”

• Israel kills another Hezbollah leader: On Friday, Israel’s military announced that it had killed Ibrahim Aqil, a Hezbollah leader who was behind a string of bombings in the 1980s that killed over 250 Americans. Aquil, who was known as “Tahsin,” was a member of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council, and was described by the IDF as the “principal leader” of the group responsible for carrying out the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, and the October 23, 1983, bombing of the Marine Corp barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. troops. The IDF noted that Aquil and other Hezbollah commanders were developing plans to “kidnap and murder innocent civilians in a similar manner to the October 7 Massacre” when they were taken out by the targeted airstrike. Meanwhile, Israel has ratcheted up its airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which borders Israel, hitting some 300 terrorist targets.

• Chicago gangbangers rage against newly arrived Venezuelan migrants as Tren de Aragua moves in (More)

Misc.

• Infamous Three Mile Island is back — and Microsoft wants its nuclear power to fuel AI ambitions (More)

• Black & Decker nukes entire corporate “diversity” effort (More) | Caterpillar makes policy changes in yet another corporate DEI rollback (More)

• Humor: 15 seconds into Kamala Harris interview, Oprah decides to endorse Trump (More)

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