I’m still trying to understand the precise details of this. But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) just announced that he will introduce a national abortion ban bill in the Senate tomorrow. The news just surfaced a short time ago. And I’m still seeing conflicting reports as to whether his bill is a ban at 15 weeks or 20 weeks. The first report was from TPM alum Alice Ollstein.

Over the last couple weeks we’ve seen write-ups pointing to the possibility or probability that polls in 2022 will underestimate Republican strength just as they did in 2020. Now Nate Cohn has one in The New York Times. Cohn’s analysis is particularly interesting to me since he’s been a fairly consistent skeptic of polls in recent cycles in terms of their ability to accurately gauge the strength of the Trump coalition. G. Elliott Morris had a similar write-up in The Economist last week. Philip Bump kicked the tires on Morris’s claims in the Post. While they break down the numbers, the gist is pretty straight-forward: If you take the polling error from 2016 and 2020 and plug it into our current polls you go from Dems being in a strong position for holding and even expanding their senate majority to more like a 50-50 odds of holding the chamber at all. On the House, a GOP majority and maybe a significant one is basically a given.

Rumors have percolating in recent days among right-wing pundits that dozens of Trump allies had been subpoenaed by the DOJ — but it’s been hard to get a clear picture what’s true and what’s not.

Now the New York Times has some details, reporting that 40 people were subpoenaed in recent days as part of the DOJ’s Jan. 6 investigation, including some who helped on the fake electors scheme. Names on the list overlap with those subpoenaed by the congressional Jan. 6 Committee. Story here.

We’ll have more on this, too, in the next few days.

A friend of mine pointed out to me this tweet from the head of Leonard Leo’s new “Honest Elections” outfit, the one that was recently given more than a billion dollars. He’s referring to the “independent legislature theory” the right is now trying to push in a case before the Supreme Court.

I have noted a number of times over the last 18 months that we are in the midst of a vast contest and drama which includes not only multiple events unfolding in the United States but abroad as well. I’m usually talking about a broad struggle between civic democracies and nationalist authoritarianism. There’s another dimension of this unfolding now in Ukraine, where there has been a series of rapid battlefield advances by the Ukrainian army, of which you’ve no doubt seen news.

I’m still trying to understand whether we’re likely to see new fronts stabilize after Ukraine reconquered land over the last week, or whether the Ukrainian army has built up such momentum that it can continue this run of battlefield victories, reclaiming large amounts of territory. Regardless, we’re now heading toward winter, which will not only change the nature of the conflict on the ground but bring the energy part of the equation to the fore.