Erika D. Smith

With its ancient sequoias, towering waterfalls and glacier-carved granite cliffs, California’s Yosemite National Park has long been one of the most visited destinations in the national park system, helping to inspire its very creation. The vistas, which span more than 1,100 square miles along the Sierra Nevada mountain range, are inspiring to say the least. Yet the stories out of Yosemite this year — particularly this month, the official start of the busy season for national parks — are anything

Elections have consequences — and so do votes in Congress. Just ask Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

In his much-hyped prime-time address last week, President Donald Trump — once again — fell far short of proving that he won the 2020 election, that any ballots were altered or that any voting machines were compromised. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to stop millions of Americans from believing that election fraud is real anyway.

In the little more than two weeks since Graham Platner was forced to halt his Senate campaign in Maine, his career in tatters after a rape allegation, the Democratic Party has been trying to move on and forget about the oysterman’s problematic candidacy.

A year ago this month, an exuberant President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, praising Republicans for having the supposed political foresight to vote for it and mocking Democrats for refusing to join them. “They didn’t vote for tax cuts,” he said during an Oval Office ceremony. “They didn’t vote for taking care of people.”

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Max Miller, the Republican congressman from Ohio at the center of an ugly, he-said, she-said, he-said family feud that has roiled Capitol Hill this week.

At a time when left-wing candidates are racking up a dizzying number of wins in primaries across America, most recently in the swing state of Michigan, the Democratic Party seems more divided than ever over whether to double down on establishment politics or embrace the insurgency of progressivism.

With the worst approval rating of any modern US president ahead of a midterm election, Donald Trump doesn’t get much praise these days. The one exception to that is on border security. A recent Marquette Law School poll found that 52% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of illegal crossings from Mexico. Apprehensions in June were 94% below the monthly average under the Biden administration.

In late July, as Americans were preparing for another round of high-stakes midterm primaries, top elections officials were on a webinar, warning about the dangers of prediction markets — specifically how both Kalshi and Polymarket are ripe for manipulation by bad actors looking to influence public opinion to turn a profit.

When Angie Nixon, a newbie member of the Democratic Socialists of America, pulled off a double-digit victory this past week to become the Democratic Party’s US Senate nominee in Florida, it was surprising. But not half as surprising as the types of voters who supported the longtime union organizer over her establishment-backed opponent, Alex Vindman.