President Joe Biden, during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reiterated on Tuesday the United States’ support for Ukraine amid Russia’s attempted annexation of its territory.

“President Biden also affirmed the continued readiness of the United States to impose severe costs on any individual, entity, or country that provides support to Russia’s purported annexation,” the White House said in a readout of the call, which Vice President Kamala Harris also participated in.

The phone call between the leaders comes just a few days after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest escalation of the war in Ukraine, when he announced four Ukrainian provinces would become Russian territory based on government-held sham referendums. Biden strongly condemned Putin’s move on Friday, just hours after the announcement, while also unveiling new sanctions on individuals and entities both inside and outside of Russia who provide political or economic support to the annexation attempt.

The Treasury, State and Commerce departments on Friday unleashed a raft of new sanctions to block the American assets of top Russian officials following Putin’s announcement. The measures join the slew of sanctions that the U.S. has already levied on Russia since it invaded Ukraine in an attempt to stymie its funding of the war.

Months before news broke alleging that Herschel Walker paid for an abortion, top Republicans in the state — including those advising his team — warned him that the story could torpedo his campaign.

Four people with knowledge of those preliminary discussions said that the abortion issue was well known within the state, even before reporters began inquiring about it.

It was brought to the attention of those working on Walker’s behalf, in part as a means of discouraging him from running. His team downplayed the potential disruption it would cause. But, according to one of those people, they did not outright deny it.

“It was, ‘Eh, it’s not going to come out, you’re being hyperbolic,’” said one top Georgia GOP operative, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “The reaction was not, ‘They’re not going to say that because it never happened.’ It was like everything else, ‘Eh, people aren’t going to find out.’”

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/04/walker-campaign-abortion-midterm-election-00060312

Liz Truss’s government is in chaos after the chancellor refused to confirm he would bring forward his budget to calm the markets and the home secretary accused fellow MPs of a coup against the prime minister.

Cabinet discipline also appeared to have broken down on Tuesday, as two ministers, Robert Buckland and Penny Mordaunt, suggested they did not back the idea of cutting benefits – an idea floated by those close to No 10.

Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng embarked on a round of media interviews intended to convey a message that they were getting a grip after the damaging 45p U-turn. However, they caused more confusion as both said their medium-term fiscal plan would still happen on 23 November, despite government sources having briefed that it would be brought forward to try to reassure the markets.

Adding to the sense of open warfare in the party, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, accused Tory MPs of having “staged a coup and undermined the PM in an unprofessional way” to force the reversal of the abolition of the 45p rate.

At the outset of this gubernatorial cycle, we fully expected perpetual swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan to be in the Toss Up column all the way until Election Day. With Democrats facing national headwinds, Republicans had a real chance to flip the open seat in the Keystone State and be optimistic about defeating Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

No two states on the map have seen a larger drop in their fortunes than these in the Rust Belt. And while, yes, the environment has significantly improved for Democrats, the further slide of both contests down the GOP's competitive ladder is due to weak candidates who are barely running even semi-functional campaigns. As such, we are shifting both Michigan and Pennsylvania gubernatorial contests from Lean Democratic to Likely Democratic.

To be clear, we certainly do not expect either race to be a double-digit rout, and we are skeptical of any recent public polling that shows such a blowout. The simple math in both states means that any Republican — even a very weak one — still has a floor,

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/governors/governors-overview/four-governor-ratings-shift-pennsylvania-michigan-oklahoma

When we shifted our Pennsylvania Senate rating to Lean Democrat about six weeks ago, we included this key caveat — Republican spending against Democratic nominee John Fetterman had yet to ramp up, and that while Republican Mehmet Oz still has a hefty problem with his own favorables, that "it's not out of the question that this could move back [to Toss Up] as the election nears."

Now, with five weeks until Election Day, that's exactly where we find this race. In conversations with several GOP strategists and lawmakers — who a month and a half ago had begun to put the Keystone State in the loss column — this has emerged as a margin-of-error race that they once again see winnable. Republicans and Democrats alike admit the race has tightened and that Pennsylvania could be the tipping point state for the Senate majority.

As of Monday evening, the current FiveThirtyEight average shows Fetterman ahead by 6 points, while RealClearPolitics puts the Democrat with a 4.1 point advantage. But recent polls have shown the margin clearly closing between the two

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/senate/pennsylvania-senate/pennsylvania-senate-moves-back-toss

In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors.

But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones’s contract.

The midterm elections are a month away, and already there are a few Republicans grumbling that Democrats might try to steal certain elections. While voter fraud does occur, in the vast majority of cases candidate quality is the primary factor in deciding who wins. And you can see it by the split in several recent Republican election polls.

Proponents of the 2020 stolen-election narrative claimed that voting machines in several states transferred votes from President Trump to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. But apparently the machines only transferred Trump votes, because Republicans did very well in the congressional and state elections that year.

No one has yet been able to provide any evidence to support the stolen-election claim — at least, no evidence that would hold up in court. Fortunately, pre-election polling doesn’t rely on voting machines. And while the polling industry has been going through something of an existential crisis over how to better predict election outcomes, polls rely on voter responses, not voting machines. And several states are seeing a gap between certain Republicans running statewide in the same state.

Consider the recent polling in key states that have been at the center of the stolen-election narrative. Let’s start with Arizona. According to the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of polls, Republican newcomer gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was up an average of 2.2 points (between 9/14-9/26) over her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs.

By contrast, RCP has incumbent Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly up by 4 points over his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, for the same time period. That’s a 6.2 point spread between two Republicans running in the same state for statewide office.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3673307-bad-candidates-and-split-tickets-not-voter-fraud-could-lose-key-elections-for-gop/

Former President Trump’s penchant for violent language has bubbled to the fore again in his feud with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Trump’s latest salvo was the ominous assertion that McConnell must have a “DEATH WISH” merely for supporting some legislation that was backed by Democrats.

The remark, posted on the Truth Social platform Friday, has drawn some degree of condemnation beyond the ranks of liberals and Democrats.

The comment will also deepen the toxicity of a political atmosphere in which many lawmakers are already taking security measures in response to increased threats of violence.

The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, which are reliably conservative, condemned the “DEATH WISH” comment as “ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3672713-the-memo-trumps-death-wish-attack-on-mcconnell-sets-alarm-bells-ringing/