God save the Queen, long live the King. The second Elizabethan age has come to an end and the royal family will now regroup around a new monarch for the next era in British history.

What will change for each of the royals?

The moment Elizabeth II died, her eldest child, Charles, automatically became monarch. As sovereign, he has chosen to take the name King Charles III.

All rights and responsibilities of the Crown now rest with King Charles III.

He becomes head of state not just in the UK but in 14 other Commonwealth realms including Australia and Canada. He will become head of the 56-member Commonwealth, although that is not a hereditary position, after his succession to the role was agreed by Commonwealth leaders at a meeting in London in 2018.

The Justice Department and former President Donald Trump’s lawyers face a Friday midnight deadline for submitting proposals for how the special master review of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago — including classified documents — should work.

They’ll be filing the briefs even as the Justice Department appeals the order requiring the review, in which a third-party attorney will sift through the materials from Trump’s Florida home and segregate out the privileged documents that should be withheld from federal investigators.

While the appeal plays out, prosecutors are also asking that its review of classified documents be allowed to continue separate from the special master review. The parties have been instructed by US District Judge Aileen Cannon to weigh in on the department’s arguments about the documents in the filing due Friday.

Queen Elizabeth II, who has died age 96 after the longest reign in British history, will be mourned around the globe as one of the last monarchs born to a classic age of European royalty, when kings and queens wielded genuine political power.

Elizabeth’s death comes seven months after she marked the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne, yet another milestone achievement in the remarkable life of a queen who, though reluctantly thrust into the spotlight at a young age, won almost universal praise for her steadfast dedication to duty.

Her long reign saw Britain transformed from a war-weary declining imperial power into a modern multi-cultural state that rarely looked to its monarch for leadership, but still held her in high esteem.
And while it witnessed its fair share of joy — not least the 2011 marriage of the Queen’s grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton, and the birth of their three children — Elizabeth’s rule also weathered many storms, both public and personal, as the monarchy tried to keep pace with changing times.

In recent days, President Joe Biden has sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump and the so-called MAGA Republicans for posing a threat to democracy. He’s likened the philosophy undergirding the dominant strain of the modern-day GOP to “semi-fascism.”

And Democrats are taking notice.

The gloves-off, no-holds-barred approach from Biden as of late has emboldened Democrats across the country, rallying the party faithful ahead of the November elections even as his harshest rhetoric makes some vulnerable incumbents visibly uncomfortable.

Biden’s increasingly stark warnings about Trump-fueled elements of the Republican Party are making up the core part of his midterm message, combined with repeated reminders to voters about recent Democratic accomplishments and a promise that democracy can still produce results for the American people. But it’s the blistering statements from Biden about his predecessor and adherents of the “Make America Great Again” philosophy that have given many Democrats a bolt of fresh energy as they campaign to keep control of Congress.

The number of online donors to the Republican Party unexpectedly dropped in the first half of 2022, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data — one in a series of setbacks that have tempered expectations of a red wave in November.

Online fundraising usually ramps up dramatically and predictably over the course of an election cycle. But campaign finance data show that in the first half of this year, the number of people giving federal contributions to Republican candidates and committees through WinRed — the GOP’s widely used donation processing platform — fell to around 913,000 down from roughly 956,000 contributors during the six months prior.

The surprising dip illustrates broader fundraising difficulties that have plagued GOP candidates in key races across the country this summer, even amid hopes that the party could retake control of Congress. It reflects the party’s long-standing challenges in building donor lists to power its campaigns.

The inquiry that led to the August search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club is only one of more than a dozen investigations and lawsuits against the former President and his orbit.

There is a complicated web of ongoing investigations, civil suits and countersuits. While he has not been accused of any crime by a government, state or city attorney, Trump is under scrutiny from all three. He denies wrongdoing in all these matters.

His efforts to overturn the 2020 election are on the radar of federal and Georgia prosecutors. His finances, which he long tried to hide from investigators, are under the microscope in New York. He’s been sued for defamation, wrongful termination and for cutting a relative out of a will. The lawsuits and investigations included here do not encompass the multiple investigations of Trump underway by the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, but would end if Republicans take control after elections in November.

Ex-Attorney General William Barr’s scathing critique of a major court victory for Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents drama is escalating the scrutiny of the judge who put the brakes on the investigation.

Barr was once seen as a facilitator of the then-President’s penchant for tearing at the limits of presidential power. But since Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat to President Joe Biden in 2020, Barr has emerged as one of his most acerbic and significant critics. He, for instance, infuriated Trump by publicly declaring there was no significant electoral fraud. And his video testimony has emerged as one of the key weapons in the televised hearings run by the House select committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection.

On Tuesday, Barr took aim at a decision by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon to grant Trump’s request for a “special master” to vet for executive and legal privilege issues the material taken from his home in last month’s FBI search.

A lot can change in a couple of months. Democrats now face a midterm environment that looks decidedly brighter than it was in the middle of the summer.
There were glimmers of optimism back in July for the party trying to hold on to its narrow Senate majority, in the immediate aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ruling appeared to energize the Democratic base — something the party had been struggling with given President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings.

Strong performances by Democrats in special House elections and a defeated anti-abortion ballot initiative in deep-red Kansas have given them more confidence that running on abortion, especially when framed in terms of rights and liberties, can be effective.

On top of that, Democrats have enacted a sweeping health care, tax and climate law, gas prices have come down and former President Donald Trump has thrust himself back in the headlines by revealing the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home, offering a foil for Biden and the party in power.

Liz Truss to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister, inheriting a country in crisis

Liz Truss will be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom after winning most votes in the Conservative Party leadership contest, succeeding Boris Johnson who resigned in July after a series of scandals.

Truss defeated rival Rishi Sunak with 81,326 votes to 60,399 among party members and will take over as leader on Tuesday, as Britons face mounting economic and social crisis.

She pledged action to tackle the crisis in a short victory speech at a conference center in London on Monday. Without offering details, Truss promised a “bold plan” to cut taxes and build economic growth, and “deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”

Local election officials are trying to share voting information with the public on social media but may be missing some key platforms – and the voters who use them.

In early July 2022, for instance, young voters in Boone County, Missouri, complained that they had missed the registration deadline to vote in the county’s Aug. 2 primary election. They claimed no one “spread the word on social media.” The local election office in that county actually has a social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. But its accounts don’t have many followers and aren’t as active as, say, celebrity or teenage accounts are. As a result, election officials’ messages may never reach their audience.

The Boone County example raises important questions about how prospective voters can get informed about elections, starting with whether or not local election officials are active on social media and whether they use these platforms effectively to “spread the word.”

In our research as scholars of voter participation and electoral processes, we find that when local election officials not only have social media accounts but use them to distribute information about voting, voters of all ages – but particularly young voters – are more likely to register to vote, to cast ballots and to have their ballots counted.

For example, during the 2020 election, Florida voters who lived in counties where the county supervisor of elections shared information about how to register to vote on Facebook, and included a link to Florida’s online voter registration system, were more likely to complete the voter registration process and use online voter registration.

In North Carolina, we found that voters whose county board of elections used Facebook to share clear information about voting by mail were more likely to have their mailed ballots accepted than mail voters whose county boards did not share instructions on social media.

Young people face distinct voting challenges

Voter participation among young voters, those between the ages of 18 and 24, has increased in recent elections, but still lags behind that of older voters. One reason is that younger voters have not yet established a habit of voting.

Even when they do try to vote, young voters face more barriers to participation than more experienced voters. They are more likely than older people to make errors or omissions on their voter registration applications and therefore not be successfully registered.

When they do successfully complete the registration process, they have more trouble casting a vote that will count, especially when it comes to following all the steps required for voting by mail. When they try to vote in person, evidence from recent elections shows high provisional voting rates in college towns, suggesting college students may also experience trouble in casting a regular ballot owing to confusion about finding their polling place, or because they are not registered to vote because their voter registration application was not successfully processed.

Some of these problems exist because voters, especially young ones, don’t know what they need to do to meet the voter eligibility requirements set by state election laws. Those laws often require registering weeks or months in advance of Election Day, or changing their registration information even if they move within a community.

Social media as a tool to ‘spread the word’

Social media can be a way to get this important information out to a wider audience, including to the young voters who are more likely to need it.

Younger people use social media more than older voters, with a strong preference for platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.

News outlets and political campaigns use social media heavily. But our analysis finds that the vast majority of local election officials don’t even have social media accounts beyond Facebook. And, when they do, it is likely that they are not effectively reaching their audience.

Gaps in how local election officials use social media

We have found that during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, 33% of county election offices had Facebook accounts. Facebook is the most commonly used social media platform among Americans of all ages. But two-thirds of county election offices didn’t even have a Facebook account.

Just 9% of county election offices had Twitter accounts, and fewer than 2% had accounts on Instagram or TikTok, which are more popular with young voters than Twitter or Faceboook.

Using social media for voter education

Local election officials are charged with sharing information about the voting process – including the mechanics of registering and voting, as well as official lists of candidates and ballot questions.

Their default method of making this information available is often to share it on their own government websites. But young voters’ regular use of social media presents an opportunity for officials to be more active and engaged on those sites.

While many election officials around the country face budget and staffing pressures, as well as threats to their safety, our research confirms that when officials do get involved on social media, young voters benefit – as does democracy itself.