2 shot dead and 1 injured in Kenosha during protests; police looking for man armed with a long gun  —  Kenosha Police said early Wednesday morning that two people had been shot and killed and a third injured during protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake; authorities were looking for a man armed with a long gun.

CDC was pressured ‘from the top down’ to change coronavirus testing guidance, official says  —  (CNN)A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN.

Coronavirus concerns fall and Trump approval ticks higher in swing states, CNBC/Change Research poll finds  — Serious concerns about the coronavirus fell in six 2020 swing states, while approval of President Donald Trump's handling of Covid-19 rose, according to a new CNBC/Change Research poll.

POLITICO Playbook: ‘This is absolutely not how it works’  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  OK, SORRY ... WE KNOW the convention was Tuesday night, but this was too good to bury.  THE USPS is looking for a VP of government affairs and public policy.  It might be smart to poke around …

RNC Speaker Cancelled After Boosting QAnon Conspiracy Theory About Jewish Plot to Enslave the World  —  Mary Ann Mendoza, an “angel mom,” was set to speak on Tuesday night.  But then she took to Twitter to encourage followers to read a thread about the Rothschilds.

How Trump could pull off another upset  —  It feels like August of 2016 all over again.  Polls show Donald Trump losing big.  Pundits proclaim he can't win.  Reporters sneer at Trump voters on Twitter and cable.  —  Why it matters: There are several signs that should give the Trump-is-toast self-assured pause.

Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld Has Been Suspended for Sexual Harassment  —  On Monday morning, members of the Yale Law School faculty received a terse message from their provost informing them that Professor Jed Rubenfeld “will leave his position as a member of the YLS faculty for a two-year period …

Lewd cheerleader videos, sexist rules: Ex-employees decry Washington's NFL team workplace  —  In “Beauties on the Beach,” the official video chronicling the making of the Washington NFL team's 2008 cheerleader swimsuit calendar, the women frolic in the sand, rave about their custom bikinis …

The RNC Has Made a Compelling Case for America's Imminent Collapse  —  America has never been greater than it is today — or at greater risk of collapsing tomorrow.  —  This is the central message of the Republican National Convention through its first two nights.

They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism.  He ignored them.  —  Elizabeth Neumann spent March 13 and 14 of 2019 at a conference in the picturesque Spanish port city of Málaga.  The topic: terrorism.  Western leaders were deeply worried about the dangers foreign …

U.S. service members injured in Syria after skirmish with Russian forces  —  U.S. service members were injured after an altercation with Russian forces in northeast Syria this week, according to a draft military statement and a person familiar with the matter.

‘I Moved on Her Very Heavily’: Part 1  —  In her 2019 memoir, What Do We Need Men For?, E. Jean Carroll accused Donald Trump of rape, in a Bergdorf's dressing room in the mid-1990s.  After the president denied ever meeting her and dismissed her story as a Democratic plot, she sued him for defamation.

Kellyanne Conway undermined the truth like no other Trump official.  And journalists enabled her.  —  Among the many appalling scenes in the many tell-all books written from an inside-the-Trump-administration perspective, one in particular spoke volumes about how Kellyanne Conway operates:

Is The Electoral Map Changing?  —  We looked at how 16 battleground states have voted in the last five presidential elections to see how they might go in 2020  —  From one presidential election to the next, the battleground states that make — or break — the election remain largely the same.

Border Officials Weighed Deploying Migrant ‘Heat Ray’ Ahead of Midterms  —  Even as the Republican convention tries to soften President Trump's image, he has made it clear that the extreme immigration policies of his first four years will be central to his re-election pitch.