“A group of lawyers with deep ties to the Republican Party scrambled over the weekend to rescue an effort to get independent presidential candidate Cornel West on the Arizona ballot, offering one of the clearest examples yet of the GOP’s extensive involvement in furthering the left-wing academic’s long-shot bid,” the AP reports.

“Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump in five of seven battleground states,” according to new polling shared first with Semafor.

“Harris leads Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nevada when third parties are factored in, according to the new polling from British firm Focaldata… In some cases, her lead is extremely slim, well within the margin of error; in Pennsylvania, for instance, Harris has a single percentage-point advantage (she leads Trump 48% to 47%).”

“Meanwhile, Trump leads Harris 46% to 45% in Arizona and 49% to 45% in Georgia — both states that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.”

“From the moment Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the surprise Democratic presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump began arguing that she was anointed through a ‘coup’ rather than chosen by primary voters,” the Washington Post reports.

“After barely mentioning election integrity at the Republican convention in July, Trump is now casting the upcoming election as ‘rigged’ against him and baselessly labeling any hurdle in his path as election interference.”

Said Trump: “This was an overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow.”

He later added: “They deposed a president. It was a coup of a president. This was a coup.”

“Democrats this week will enshrine one of the most audacious power plays in modern political history as they gather for a convention that was hastily reconfigured to try to vault Kamala Harris to a historic presidency,” CNN reports.

Wall Street Journal: “Democratic donors have gone wild for Harris’ whirlwind bid for the presidency despite her tepid polling for years, invigorated by what they think is an Obama-esque opportunity to create generational change in the Democratic Party—and elect the first female president. While Biden’s fundraising efforts sagged for weeks amid questions about his age and fitness for office, his decision to leave the race jolted Democratic donors big and small into action; Harris later reported she had raised more than $200 million in her first week.”

“Many big-money supporters will be piling into suites at the United Center and in Chicago’s luxury hotels this week as Harris accepts her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.”

“For the past few election cycles, the messaging app WhatsApp has been a major source of news and connection — and misinformation — for Latinos in the United States, a forum where they could swap memes, jokes and emojis with one another across the nation and Latin America,” the New York Times reports.

“Now, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, are joining the platform.”

“Anyone who doubts that the road to the White House runs through this blue-collar city can just ask Donald Trump. His weekend visit marked the fifth rally he has held since 2016 in the spacious Mohegan Sun Arena, drawing big audiences to Wilkes-Barre, a former industrial powerhouse that over the decades has lost about half its population,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The repeated visits are a clear sign that Trump believes the key to winning Pennsylvania, the nation’s largest battleground state, is to boost support among the working-class voters in deindustrialized and rural areas. Those voters swung heavily behind him in 2016 and again in 2020, turning many formerly Democratic counties, such as the one that includes Wilkes-Barre, into GOP strongholds.”

“Kamala Harris, if elected, would make history as the first woman president. And she’s letting that fact speak for itself,” Politico reports.

“Harris — already the first Black and South Asian person to lead a major party ticket — is not, so far, heavily promoting the history-making elements of her campaign in TV ads or in her stump speech, focusing instead on her middle-class upbringing and prosecutorial track record.”

“It’s a marked departure from Hillary Clinton, the first female Democratic presidential nominee, who highlighted her gender throughout her 2016 run, immortalized in white pantsuits, the Javits Center glass ceiling and the slogan: ‘I’m With Her.’”

Politico: “Democrats arrive here, a city that’s played host to so many drama-filled political conventions, as a party lacking in drama. They are disciplined, orderly and united around Vice President Kamala Harris and, more to the point, thwarting former President Donald Trump’s restoration.”

“This new era of good feelings for Democrats is a far cry from last month, when they faced their most existential crisis since Trump’s initial election, their leaders staring one another down in a sort of political version of nuclear brinksmanship. And it differs from so many previous conventions when there was often intra-party tension over policy, politics, personnel, or all three, looming above the proceedings.”

Playbook: “We’re told this is not a farewell speech. The man has five months and one day left in his presidency, and — following Barack Obama’s model — he is likely to deliver a true valedictory address in January. But this is almost certainly the biggest audience Biden will face for the rest of his term, if not his five-decade political career, so expect it to feel like a swan song nonetheless.”

“In true Biden form, the speech is still being hammered out, but you can expect Biden to hand the party’s reins to Harris by highlighting their accomplishments together.“

Wall Street Journal: Biden to pass the torch to Harris as convention begins.