Trump's illuminating defense of Kyle Rittenhouse  —  At the start of and throughout his news conference Monday evening, President Trump attacked Joe Biden for condemning violence but not specifically the left-wing perpetrators of it.  —  By the end of the news conference …

Journalist Quits Kenosha Paper in Protest of Its Jacob Blake Rally Coverage  —  Daniel Thompson, an editor at The Kenosha News, resigned over a headline that highlighted a speaker who made a threat during a peaceful protest.  —  A journalist resigned on Saturday from his job at The Kenosha News …

Trump urges keeping tax returns away from Manhattan's top prosecutor  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday urged a federal appeals court on Monday not to let Manhattan's top prosecutor get eight years of his tax returns, saying the handover would cause him irreparable harm.

Arizona Stands Out From a Mostly Static Presidential Race in Battleground States  —  State-level polling trends reveal little recent change in 2020 contest, but Biden now leads by 10 in Arizona  — Amid unrest in Kenosha, Wis., Biden leads Trump by 9 points, 52% to 43%.

It Has Come to This: Ignore the C.D.C.  —  The agency's new guidelines are wrong, so states have to step up on their own to suppress the coronavirus.  —  Harold Varmus is a former director of the National Institutes of Health.  Rajiv Shah is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Pence was on standby to ‘take over’ during Trump's unannounced Walter Reed visit, new book reports  —  Washington (CNN)Vice President Mike Pence was put on standby to temporarily assume the powers of the presidency during President Donald Trump's unannounced visit to Walter Reed hospital in November 2019 …

Liberty Will Investigate University's Operations Under Jerry Falwell Jr.  —  The board of trustees said an independent forensic firm would look into all facets of Liberty's operations, including “financial, real estate and legal matters,” while Mr. Falwell was president.

HHS bids $250 million contract meant to ‘defeat despair and inspire hope’ on coronavirus  —  As the presidential election fast approaches, the Department of Health and Human Services is bidding out a more than $250 million contract to a communications firm as it seeks to “defeat despair and inspire hope” …

Trump administration rolls back Obama-era rule aimed at limiting toxic wastewater from coal plants  —  Power plant discharge ranks as the largest source of toxic water pollution in the United States  —  The Trump administration on Monday weakened a 2015 regulation that would have forced coal plants …

How Has Donald Trump Survived?  —  DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES  —  Inside the Struggle to Stop a President  —  When a Republican-led Senate committee issued a nearly 1,000-page report in mid-August that detailed the prodigious extent of the contacts between Russian officials and members …

Trump boasts about a great economic record.  Too bad it's Obama's.  —  In recent days, President Trump and allies have offered a fulsome defense of a presidential economic record.  —  Alas, the presidential record they're describing isn't Trump's.  It belongs to his predecessor, Barack Obama.

DHS Chief Tells Tucker the Feds Are ‘Working On’ Conspiracy Charges Against BLM Leaders  —  “Well, this is something that I have talked to [Attorney General William Barr] personally about,” Wolf said.  “I know that they are working on it.”  —  For months now, Fox News host Tucker Carlson …

New York City Gambles Big on Reopening Schools: ‘We Are on a Tightrope’  —  Four million masks, 80,000 containers of wipes, a million-plus students: How New York is seeking to become the lone big city to reopen its public schools.  —  Mayor Bill de Blasio walked briskly out the back door …

Julia Reed, journalist and author who chronicled Southern foodways, dies at 59  —  Julia Reed, a Mississippi native who wrote about presidential politics and fashion for Vogue before emerging as an irreverent and stylish chronicler of Southern life and food, died Aug. 28 at a hospital in Newport, R.I. She was 59.

How Trump Brought Nazis Into Republican Politics  —  Yesterday, President Trump retweeted a video of a man on a New York subway platform shoving and injuring a white woman.  In normal times, it would have been unfathomable to determine why the president of the United States would take an interest in this case.

The director of national intelligence is providing cover for Putin  —  AFTER THE intelligence community briefed members of Congress in late July about threats to the upcoming election, Democrats expressed alarm about what they had learned — and about the fact that the information had not been shared with the American public.

No, Wisconsin won't make Democrats lose  —  Stuart Stevens is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project and author of “It Was All A Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”  —  Open your window and you can hear the nervous chatter of Democrats across the country worried that the images …

Barr's removal of career national security official, weeks before election, raises concerns  —  A little-known office in the Justice Department has lost its long-time chief.  —  Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr's recent decision …

Exclusive: Bloomberg group warns Trump will appear to win big on election night  —  A top Democratic data and analytics firm told “Axios on HBO” it's highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted.

From students to our coach, one last huge hug for Big John Thompson  —  From the front row of the Seattle Kingdome on April 2, 1984, Georgetown students felt like we too were being hugged by John Thompson Jr.  —  First, the huge coach hugged Fred Brown, the hug that brought a great story full circle.

The Media Fails Its Biggest Trump 2020 Test  —  The national press corps' disastrous obsession with Hillary Clinton's email practices has drawn criticism in the years since the 2016 election, but it was an obvious failure of journalism in real time, too, reflecting professional habits in media …

Was Kyle Rittenhouse's possession of a gun protected by the Second Amendment? … One item really sticks out on the list of charges against Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old from Illinois arrested after two people were shot and killed during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Axios-Ipsos poll: Most expect quick election results  —  One in three Americans thinks we'll know who won the presidential election on the night of Nov. 3, and six in 10 expect the winner to be announced within a couple of days, our new poll finds.  —  Why it matters: The gap between public expectations …

The Finger in the Dike Election  —  The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return  —  On September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93's passengers defied armed hijackers and fought to take over the cockpit regardless of danger or odds because they realized that certain death was the alternative.

Man under investigation in fatal shooting of right-wing demonstrator in Portland was outside mayor's condo night before with daughter  —  Michael Reinoehl in front of Ted Wheelers residence, August 28, 2020  —  Michael Forest Reinoehl, the 48-year-old man under investigation …

An unlikely state tightens up  —  Minnesota, which once looked like a vanity project for Donald Trump, is suddenly emerging as a critical test of his effort to turn his campaign around.  —  Interviews with more than a dozen officials and strategists from both parties in recent days depict …

A 26-year-old film editor's descent into coronavirus vaccine conspiracy theories  —  It began as a freelance job.  Micah Conrad would wake up midmorning, check his email and begin downloading videos that had arrived while he slept.  He would brew coffee, drinking it on the narrow patio …

Federal workers will have taxes deferred under Trump's order, sparking outcry they're being treated as a ‘guinea pig’  —  Few businesses so far have shown interest in adopting Trump's payroll tax deferral  —  The U.S. government will implement an across-the-board payroll tax deferral …

Hawaii Businesswoman Pleads Guilty to Facilitating Back-channel Lobbying Campaign to Drop 1MDB Investigation and Remove a Foreign National to China  —  An American businesswoman with international ties pleaded guilty today for her role in facilitating an unregistered lobbying campaign …