Trump speech fails to deliver smoking gun on voting improprieties

President Donald Trump’s prime time speech on supposed shortcomings in the nation’s election systems failed to deliver any significantly new evidence and didn’t cast doubt on his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

The 25-minute address to the nation from the White House was billed as exposing “shocking vulnerabilities in our election system,” but Trump didn’t reveal any smoking gun and dramatically underperformed expectations from supporters and critics alike.

None of the newly released declassified documents or claims about voting machines and undocumented immigrants suggests that any votes were improperly changed or that any alleged irregularities affected the results of the presidential or other elections.

Even right-wing pundit John Solomon, a Trump ally who has promoted voting conspiracy theories, conceded: “The intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped — that a foreign power flipped — a vote in 2020, ‘22 or ’24,” Solomon said.

—New York Daily News

A new piece of Democrats' midterm strategy: Being 'practical'

WASHINGTON — Democrats are making a growing effort to adopt a pragmatic focus as they campaign on affordability in the midterms, as some within the party push for moving away from ideological arguments.

Across the country, Democratic candidates are trying to win over voters by talking about real-life scenarios, framing other platform issues in economic terms and, strategists say, aiming to shift a perception that Democrats deal in the abstract.

They see an opening created by voters' focus on the economy and their ability as the party not in power to leverage affordability as the key midterms issue as Trump's economic approval remains low. Trump has dismissed the issue, calling affordability a "hoax" by Democrats while also promising economic improvements.

"There has been a learning process in being able to take what Trump and the Republicans are doing and make sure that (candidates) are coming back to the real-world economic implications of whatever that might be," Democratic strategist Alex Jacquez, who served in the Biden White House. "That's where maybe (Democrats) haven't always, in the recent past, made the full connection all the way through."

—Los Angeles Times

‘Chilling effect’: Kansas professors alarmed by new Regents definitions of CRT, DEI

Definitions of critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, recently approved by the Kansas Board of Regents, worry some Kansas professors and academic freedom advocates who say they could create a chilling effect in classrooms.

Kansas lawmakers this year passed a provision attached to a large budget bill that prohibits state universities from requiring students to enroll in a “DEI-CRT” course. That means state universities must remove such classes from their required courses before the 2028-29 school year.

But the Legislature chose not to define what a “DEI-CRT” course is, instead leaving that task to the Kansas Board of Regents, the governing body that oversees the state’s public universities.

The board of regents approved the definitions last month. It defined DEI as classroom material that “intentionally establishes and promotes the preferential treatment of groups based on race, color, gender, ethnicity or national origin.”

—The Kansas City Star

Burnham says he’ll be a pro-business PM in London speech

LONDON — Andy Burnham said he’ll be a pro-business prime minister, in his first speech since formally winning an uncontested race to lead the governing Labour Party.

“Make no mistake, everybody, I will be a pro-business leader of the Labour Party, as I was a pro-business mayor of Greater Manchester,” he said, pointing to small local businesses like pubs and shops, rather than large firms.

The omission of big business and banks is unlikely to surprise many in the City of London given they are expecting Burnham’s team to be less assiduous courting finance than Keir Starmer was, according to people familiar with the matter.

The industry is in wait-and-see mode as it looks for clarity on what changes — if any — Burnham may choose on hot button topics like regulation and bank taxes, and as well as confirmation of who his chancellor will be.

—Bloomberg News