Anger over Donald Trump’s leadership has created an opening for progressives to flip formerly solid-red states such as Georgia—and reclaim the identity of so-called values voters.

ATLANTA—In late July, Democratic political giants filed into the towering sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church to mourn the death of an era, and to declare a new one to come. This is the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, and where Representative John Lewis, the civil-rights icon, was now being laid to rest. Lewis’s pastor, Raphael Warnock, stood before the congregation in a black pulpit robe with Kente-cloth panels and lamented the cynicism of this time in American politics. “In a moment when there are some in high office who are much better at division than vision, who cannot lead us so they seek to divide us,” he said, “here lies a true American patriot.” As former President Barack Obama took the lectern, he turned to Warnock, locked eyes, and pointed.

This was not just a funeral for Lewis and the civil-rights movement. It was a rally for a different America, one where health-care coverage is universal, police officers are traded for social workers, and bail has gone the way of the horse and buggy. Democrats intend for November’s elections to be the first step toward building that America.

Warnock wants to help Democrats remake the country. The pastor is hoping his association with King and other civil-rights leaders will come in handy during his campaign for one of Georgia’s two United States Senate seats on the ballot in November. Polling experts consider Warnock’s race competitive, and if he wins, he could be the first Democratic senator elected from Georgia in two decades, and the first Black senator from Georgia ever. His pitch, modeled after his close ally Stacey Abrams’s 2018 gubernatorial bid, is based on math, motivation, and morality. Georgia’s voter base has transformed in recent years, with a surge in registrations among young people and racial minorities. Democrats are betting on high turnout, driven by anger about racist violence, outrage over Trump, and frustration with how the state has handled COVID-19. And Warnock’s supporters believe his identity as a progressive pastor and activist will help him win in Georgia, a state where three-quarters of the population attend religious services at least somewhat regularly.

In July, Chuck Grassley said he would not process a nomination to the Supreme Court in 2020 if he were still chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

“That’ll be up to his decision because he’s chairman now, but I would have to tell him that I wouldn’t have a hearing,” Grassley said. Even if Graham would hold a hearing on a Trump nominee this year, there’s no guarantee it would come to the floor before the election, Grassley added.

LINDSEY GRAHAM on March 10, 2016:

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

[Oct 2018] Sen. Lindsey Graham justifies his treatment of Merrick Garland: "If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term, and the primary process has started, we'll wait to the next election"

The conventional wisdom is that voting machines aren’t connected online. For years, federal and state elections officials have offered reassurances that this is the case. Yet, recent investigations show a more complicated reality. A team of 10 leading independent cybersecurity experts recently found dozens of jurisdictions with at least some voting systems connected to the Internet.

While voting machines themselves are not supposed to be online, the broader systems for scanning and recording ballots often end up connected and vulnerable. That’s why a dozen organizations representing different sides of the political spectrum wrote to the governor and the secretary of state to remove all Internet connections from the tabulation systems.

The nation’s three largest voting machine manufacturing vendors — Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic — have all publicly acknowledged that they place modems in some of their vote tabulators and scanners. They claim that this is at the request of election administrators, including in Florida, who want to be able to get unofficial results to the public as quickly as possible on election night.

But here’s what this means in effect: prioritizing speed and convenience over security and accuracy.

Rohrabacher’s ties to Russia are well-documented. A former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who was first elected to represent southern California in 1988, he began his career as zealous cold warrior. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and an early-90s drunken arm-wrestling contest with Putin, Rohrabacher became a leading congressional advocate for closer ties to Russia, gaining the moniker, “Putin’s favorite congressman.” The FBI reportedly warned Rohrabacher in 2012 that Russian spies were trying to recruit him.

In June 2016, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told colleagues: “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” McCarthy, who reportedly said “Swear to God” when lawmakers laughed at that assertion, has claimed he was joking.

During his time in the West Wing, Kushner had become hardened to a degree that was sometimes shocking. The days of selling the notion that he and Ivanka were moderating forces were long gone—combat was everything. A New York business executive recalled a meeting with Kushner at the White House last fall. “I told Jared that if Trump won a second term, he wouldn’t have to worry about running again and you can really help people. Jared just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care about any of that.’” The executive came away shaken. “I wanted to tell Jared you don’t say that part out loud, even in private,” he later said.

From 2010-2019, most cases of EEE have been reported in Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, New York, and North Carolina. EEEV transmission is most common in and around freshwater hardwood swamps in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast states and the Great Lakes region.

responding to growing concern among rank-and-file lawmakers over the prospect of returning home to face voters without doing so