While vowing his undying allegiance to the “pro-life” movement, Turning Point USA founder and far-right provocateur Charlie Kirk could barely contain his ire with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) this week as he sweatily yelled at the senator for his abortion ban legislation. Kirk described the introduction of a bill that would ban abortion federally at 15-weeks just weeks out from the midterms as synonymous with “election interference.”

I made the point yesterday that the language Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is using to clean up his past marriage equality remarks — earlier this summer he said he had no reason to “oppose” codifying same-sex marriage into federal law — is an obvious cave to the Christian right. In frantic messaging in recent days, Johnson has flip-flopped on his previous position as he struggles with the impossible task of casting himself as a reasonable guy to Wisconsin voters and a reliable ally to Christian conservatives.

As one of, if not the most vulnerable, senator seeking reelection this midterm cycle, Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) been staking out his policy positions on a number of issues rather publicly in recent weeks — after mid-August polling from Marquette Law School found that the incumbent was trailing behind his Democratic rival. Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has a 7-percentage point lead over Johnson with 51 percent of the vote compared to his 44 percent.

And his latest remarks — clarifying where he stands on a same-sex marriage bill that could soon come before members of the upper chamber — include a few too many references to “religious liberty” to not be read as a scrambling effort to satisfy the religious right after initially appearing to be open to the bill.

Some top Senate Democrats are reportedly considering weaving same-sex marriage legislation into a coming spending bill that would keep the government open past the end of the month.

In a primetime speech from Pennsylvania, President Biden plans to deliver a national address that has all the makings of a pre-midterms campaign speech.

In other Trump investigation-adjacent news today, election steal scheming attorney John Eastman’s lawyers think that he is “probably a target” of the Fulton County probe led by District Attorney Fani Willis, who is looking into Trump team efforts to overturn the election results in her state of Georgia.

As my colleague Kaila Philo reported earlier today, Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato retired from the agency this week, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in his wake. The DHS inspector general’s office had reportedly been trying to get him to sit for an interview about matters related to the missing texts scandal; it’s unclear, now, whether that will happen.

There are two layers to recent intrigue surrounding Ornato. His role in whatever tf was going on with the missing Secret Service texts is, of course, one. But secondly, Ornato’s standing as a character of interest to the Jan. 6 committee increased 10-fold after Cassidy Hutchinson gave astonishing public testimony earlier this summer.

He was several days late to the party, but the former president appears to have finally gotten wind of some remarks that Mark Zuckerberg made during a Joe Rogan podcast that had conservatives up in arms last week.