The fast-ending premiership of the comical Liz Truss appears to be on the verge of finally concluding. Reports have gone out that she will resign imminently and a lectern is being wheeled out in front of Number 10.

Late Update: And it’s official, she resigned. Immediate resignation as head of the Tory Party. New party election within the next week, at the conclusion of which she will resign as PM.

Back during the 2020 Senate election in Georgia, the campaigns of the two soon-to-be-defeated GOP senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were both accused of digitally altering images of their Democratic opponents in negative campaign ads in racist and antisemitic ways.

We’re really getting down to the wire on the midterms and in ways that aren’t necessarily inspiring if you’re a Democrat. The conventional wisdom now has it that after a summer of Dobbs backlash that buoyed Democrats, inflation and the economy have now reclaimed center stage putting Republicans back in the ascendent. Is this true? Is there evidence to support this?

There’s definitely some.

If Donald Trump runs again and wins in 2024, he’s reportedly already decided that the QAnon congresswoman who kicks teen activists and thinks that wildfires are started by secret space lasers will be part of his administration.

While it’s unclear whether he sees Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as a good fit for a Cabinet position, department appointment or some type of White House role, Trump has reportedly told at least two people close to him that Greene would be “great” and he wants her “very close in a second term,” according to a new report from Rolling Stone. One of the sources told Rolling Stone that Trump specifically floated giving Greene a role in the Justice Department.

Russia’s military situation in Ukraine has become so dire in recent weeks that, as you know, there’s been increasing discussion of whether President Putin might resort to the use of nuclear weapons to stabilize it or overawe Ukraine’s western allies into discontinuing aid. We think, rightly, about how terrifying this prospect is. But we shouldn’t forget that it is also a gauge of just how bad Russia is doing in conventional terms. But Putin may get relief if he’s able to hold on until January when a Republican House would block any more military aid to Ukraine.

That is what Kevin McCarthy is now signaling.

It’s quite late in the game. But the White House at least is upping its Roe and Reform promise. If Democrats gain seats, Biden says, he’ll sign a bill restoring Roe. That’s good. But it’s not going to be enough. To really break through this late in the election cycle, it’s going to take pledges for congressional leaders, specific senators seen as conceivable hold outs on the filibuster and more. Specificity remains critical. Being specific makes the pledge credible, tangible. Saying “if more are elected” makes you wonder how many more. 10 more, 2 more. The point is to make it concrete enough that Georgia voters know it’s in their hand in the Warnock-Walker Senate race. That it’s in the hands of voters in Virginia’s 7th district in the Spanberger/Vega race. There’s time to make a difference but it needs to be a full court press and it needs to be specific — specific number of wins, a specific time frame in which Democrats will pass such a law.

We’ve already written a lot in recent months about the near certainty that a Republican House will threaten a national debt default next year to force Joe Biden to essentially undo the legislative agenda he passed in his first two years in office. I didn’t realize that they are apparently focused on major cuts to Social Security and Medicare, or as they are calling it “structural changes” to the two programs. I take this from this morning’s PunchBowl newsletter.

Punchbowl cites this BGov piece and apparently their own reporting. But I’m reminded that our Kate Riga was on this aspect of the story on Friday, indeed citing the same BGov piece.

A member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents has asked if the university system’s Morris campus has become “too diverse.”

Steve Sviggum, a former GOP Speaker of the House, asked the school’s acting Chancellor Janet Schrunk if the school, which had 58% white enrollment pre-pandemic and 54% now, had become too diverse “from a marketing standpoint.”

The Associated Press has a new piece out today as part of an investigative series it’s producing with PBS’ “Frontline” focused on former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his ongoing descent into extremism and Christian nationalism. The investigative series will roll out alongside a documentary tomorrow night called “Michael Flynn’s Holy War.”

The new AP piece is a fascinating look at The Hollow, a bunker-like, Christian nationalist, far-right community site in Sarasota County, Florida that has become a MAGAworld meeting center and incubator for some of Flynn’s efforts to weave Trump grievances into politics at a hyper-local level. The Hollow has all the markings of a militia-community — even though the founder maintains it’s anything but that — that hosts events sponsored by Proud Boys family members, offers “Biblical citizenship” classes and is home to a gun range that offers classes to children as young as six. Flynn reportedly has visited the site multiple times this past year and financially supports the organization.

The Miami Herald has another richly reported article on the migrant bamboozling operation Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ran in San Antonio, Texas — the one that left 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard and spawned an on-going criminal investigation in Bexar County, Texas. The article is paywalled. So if you’re a subscriber give it a read. If not I want to summarize a few key new pieces of information, drawn mainly from public documents the DeSantis administration has been compelled to divulged under Florida’s sunshine law as well as on-the-ground reporting from the Herald.