News

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he will support the bipartisan bill that would reform and modernize the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Why it matters: McConnell’s endorsement of the bill, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), bolsters the measure’s chances of clearing the Senate.

Driving the news: “I strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after literally months of detailed discussions,” McConnell said Tuesday.

Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said at The Texas Tribune Festival Saturday that if former President Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 2024, she will not remain a Republican.

“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee. And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican,” Cheney said.

Cheney also said she will campaign for Democrats to ensure that Republican candidates who promote election lies do not get elected.

The Republican justices who overruled Roe v. Wade are only getting started.

The headline of this piece is likely to turn a few heads. The Supreme Court’s last term, after all, was an orgy of conservative excess unlike any since the Court’s Great Depression-era attacks on the New Deal. And it culminated in the demise of Roe v. Wade, arguably the most closely watched Supreme Court decision since the justices declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954.

But this term, a potentially even more consequential issue than the right to an abortion is on the Court’s docket: democracy itself. A single case, Moore v. Harper, threatens to fundamentally rewrite the rules governing federal elections, potentially giving state legislatures (some of which are highly gerrymandered themselves) nearly limitless power to skew those elections.

A second case in the Court’s new term — which officially opens on Monday, October 3 — also places free and fair elections in the United States in grave peril. That case, Merrill v. Milligan, could usher in a new era of racial gerrymandering where states have more freedom to undercut Black and brown political power than they’ve had since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 — a law that the Roberts Court has spent the last decade dismantling piece by piece.

Democrats seem to be doing better than expected with voters. But if the polls are wrong, they could be disappointed in November — again.

Pollsters know they have a problem. But they aren’t sure they’ve fixed it in time for the November election.

Since Donald Trump’s unexpected 2016 victory, pre-election polls have consistently understated support for Republican candidates, compared to the votes ultimately cast.

Once again, polls over the past two months are showing Democrats running stronger than once expected in a number of critical midterm races. It’s left some wondering whether the rosy results are setting the stage for another potential polling failure that dashes Democratic hopes of retaining control of Congress— and vindicates the GOP’s assertion that the polls are unfairly biased against them.