Tara Palmeri: “We’re less than a week from Election Day, and the mood inside the Trump campaign has undergone yet another transformation. Last week, I reported on the preemptive but undeniably palpable sense of euphoria washing over Mar-a-Lago as data rolled in depicting early-voting surges in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.”

“But now, as the early results from Pennsylvania reveal an influx of first-time female voters who will likely break for Harris, a newfound anxiety is taking hold. While Trump continues to claim he has a massive lead, setting the stage to contest any unfavorable result, some in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was two weeks premature.”

“It’s been eight years since leaked audio from a conversation between Donald Trump and TV host Billy Bush made waves for the former president’s descriptions of kissing and grabbing women without their consent,” the Washington Post reports.

“Now, young people are encountering the tape for the first time on TikTok, where users are sharing videos of their reactions and, in some cases, reaching large audiences.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) suggested in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan that aired Thursday that White upper- and middle-class children are incentivized to identify as transgender to gain admission to elite colleges, CNN reports.

Said Vance: “Think about the incentives. If you are a, you know, middle-class or upper middle-class White parent and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle-class kids, but the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s going on where, if you become trans, that is the way to reject your White privilege.”

He added: “That’s the social signifier. The only one that’s available in the hyper-woke mindset is if you become gender nonbinary.”

“If you live in a presidential battleground state, and you feel like there is a lot of negativity on your television screen, there is data to back that up,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Roughly 38% of all broadcast TV ads run in those seven states by the presidential campaigns and their allies were negative in tone in October, according to ratings assigned by AdImpact. Republicans were more likely to be negative than Democrats, 46% to 31%. Less than 2% of GOP-aligned ads were positive in tone, compared with 19% for Democrats. The rest of the spots were rated as contrast ads, which are a sort of mix of negative and positive.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to have significant control over health and food safety in a potential Trump administration, with discussions about some Cabinet and agency officials reporting to him,” the Washington Post reports.

“Kennedy has been privately meeting with Trump transition officials to help draw up an agenda for a new administration, which could involve the longtime anti-vaccine activist taking a role as a White House czar rather than attempting to win Senate confirmation to lead an agency.”

“Kennedy and his advisers have also been drafting 30-, 60- and 90-day plans for what they would like to accomplish after Trump is inaugurated.”

NBC News: RFK Jr. could be set to lead a Trump administration’s efforts to battle “childhood chronic disease.”

“Democrats in Congress for years have labeled Donald Trump an ‘insurrectionist,’ impeached him for stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and suggested he is constitutionally prohibited from returning to the White House,” Politico reports.

“But even as those lawmakers continue to doubt Trump’s eligibility for the presidency, they also say that if he wins at the polls, they don’t expect efforts to deny him his presidential electors on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress meets to finalize the results.”

Delaware Gov. John Carney “is about to do something that no other governor in modern American history has done — step down as a state’s leader and immediately take office as a mayor,” the New York Times reports.

“In his campaign for mayor of Wilmington, a city of 71,000, he and his staff knocked on more than 11,000 doors and have been met, at times, with confusion by voters.”

Said Carney: “The main thing they would say is, ‘Isn’t this a step down?’ And I would say, ‘Well, I don’t think so.’”

Donald Trump is suing CBS News over a “60 Minutes” interview it broadcast with Vice President Harris earlier this month that he and his allies have claimed was edited to cast her in a positive light, The Hill reports.

“A new internal memo by Tony Fabrizio, chief pollster for all three of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, tells the former president he’s in a radically better position than he was right before the 2020 election,” Axios reports.

“The memo reflects the exuberance that Trump staffers and allies exude in interviews and behind-the-scenes conversations. The optimistic framing could make it even more difficult for Trump followers to accept a loss as legitimate.”

Of course, this “private memo” was also sent to reporters so it’s obviously spin.

Democrats have roughly doubled their national ad spending advantage against Republicans over the last month or so, Axios reports.

Charlie Cook: “As we find ourselves in yet another cliffhanger of an election, the negative partisanship that has developed over the last three decades should not be underestimated. The high floors under each party and the low ceilings over each now mean that all national wins are on the margins.”

“Between 1900 and 1984, 14 of the 22 presidential elections were landslides, with margins of 10 points or more. Since 1988, there have been no landslides…”

“Just how close is this election? As of midday Monday, no candidate had more than 49% nor less than 48% in any of the seven swing states in the New York Times average of polls.”