Tm Miller: “If you, like me, had been compartmentalizing a Trump 2024 run for mental-health purposes, I’m sorry to break it to you, but he looks like a man who is definitely running for president in 2024. His CPAC speech this weekend was a rude awakening as to both his intentions and the strength he would bring to that campaign.”

“His hands may be tiny and soft, but his grip on the party is pretty tight.”

Bloomberg: “The bumper-sticker version of what we found: The 2022 vote should be fine. The most far-reaching attempts by Republicans to overhaul election laws have so far stalled as Americans head into November’s midterm elections to decide governors in 36 states and control of the US Congress. So even though it’s a safe bet that at least a handful of candidates will follow Trump’s lead and claim their opponent cheated if they lose, it won’t be any easier than it was two years ago for them to overturn the results.”

“But the picture two years from now is shaping up to be much darker.”

“Trump and his loyalists are supporting people who deny the results of the 2020 election for governor in five key states this fall, more than enough to tilt a close 2024 presidential race away from the duly elected winner. Tight races this November in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, and a possible Republican win in Pennsylvania, will determine who is in charge of making election decisions in states where the White House is won or lost. In all five of these states, Trump and his backers tried to overturn the results.”

“All of the pieces are falling into place for Georgia to decide control of the Senate again. And just like in 2020, it might take extra weeks of campaigning to do it,” Politico reports.

“Public polling data shows the race between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Republican Herschel Walker is close, with Warnock building small leads in most surveys. The national environment is better for the GOP, but Warnock is better liked by voters.”

“But critically, there’s another candidate on the ballot in November, Libertarian Chase Oliver, pulling in a few points of support in some surveys. While Warnock is leading in a number of polls, he’s not clearing 50 percent in many. And in Georgia, if no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two proceed to a head-to-head Dec. 6 runoff — the same circumstances that saw the state’s voters tip control of the Senate to Democrats last year.”

New York Times: “Ms. Kleefisch’s predicament illustrates how Mr. Trump’s supporters have turned fury over his 2020 election loss and the misguided belief that its results can be nullified into central campaign issues in the Republican primary for governor in Wisconsin, a battleground state won by razor-thin margins in the last two presidential elections. G.O.P. candidates have been left choosing whether to tell voters they are wrong or to engage in the fiction that something can be done to reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat.”

“Dozens of Republican voters and activists interviewed across the state in the last week said they wanted to see lawmakers decertify the state’s election results and claw back its 10 electoral votes, something that cannot legally be done. Nearly all of them pointed to a July decision from the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court, which ruled that drop boxes used to collect ballots during the pandemic were illegal under state law, as evidence that hundreds of thousands of 2020 votes should be thrown out.”

“Congressional Republicans tout former President Donald Trump’s success in cutting taxes and transforming the Supreme Court, and cheer his America First approach to foreign affairs and ability to motivate Republican voters,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“But as Mr. Trump weighs a new campaign for the White House in 2024, many GOP lawmakers aren’t ready to throw their support behind him. In interviews with nearly three dozen Republican lawmakers who were asked whether Mr. Trump should run, many deflected the question, saying that Mr. Trump’s decision is up to him without endorsing the idea…”