Two More Editorial Writers At The La Times Quit Over Blocked Endorsement

Semafor: “There’s less incentive to get involved thanks to a more sophisticated polling audience and greater costs of failure.” “We’re now well over a decade into the era of the star election forecaster, led by Nate Silver and his rivals and proteges. His biggest influence may be teaching most news junkies to turn to curated averages of polls rather than fret over each one.” “This has created a bit of a Heisenberg effect, in which observing something — in this case, that the best analysis comes from mixing together lots of polls with a sophisticated model —might actually change it.

“Chinese hackers who are believed to have burrowed deep into American communications networks targeted data from phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J. D. Vance,” the New York Times reports. “The type of information on phones used by a presidential candidate and his running mate could be a gold mine for an intelligence agency: Who they called and texted, how often they communicated with certain people, and how long they talked to those people could be highly valuable to an adversary like China.” “That sort of communications data could be even more useful if hackers could observe it in real time.”

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Jeff Bezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” — Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, on X, on the newspaper’s decision to not endorse in the election

Washington Post: “Trump’s recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic, coarse and often confusing, even for a politician with a history of ad-libbing in three consecutive presidential runs.” “His speeches have gotten longer and more repetitive compared with those of past campaigns. He promotes falsehoods and theories that are so far removed from reality or appear wholly made up that they are often baffling to anyone not steeped in MAGA media or internet memes.” “He jumps more abruptly between subjects and from his script to improvising, sometimes offering what sound like non-sequiturs.

Donald Trump said Jack Smith should be “thrown out of the country” in a radio interview, escalating his comments against the special counsel leading the federal government’s two criminal cases against him, Politico reports. Said Trump: “You have to let people in, but they have to come in legally. And you have to get the killers, the murderers, and mentally deranged, you have to get them out.” He added: “And we should throw Jack Smith out with them, the mentally deranged people.”

“A new Republican super PAC is invoking the name of the deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an audacious attempt to defuse the volatile issue of abortion as a liability for Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports. “The group, which is called RBG PAC and came into existence only days ago, began to spend $20 million on Friday in support of Mr.