IT’S POLITICAL: Vice President Kamala Harris finally separated herself from the legacy of President Joe Biden saying on Fox News that, “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

  Harris sat for a contentious interview with Fox host Bret Baier, who challenged her on the border situation, her willingness to spend taxpayer money on gender-transition for prison inmates and other issues that aligned with Trump campaign talking points.  Baier asked if Harris would apologize to the mother of a 12-year-old Texas girl believed to have been murdered by two Venezuelan migrants.

  Sometimes unhappy with the answers, Baier frequently interrupted and Harris pushed back saying at one point, “May I please finish responding?” 

  Earlier yesterday, Harris appeared in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with more than 100 Republicans who have endorsed her campaign at an event where she argued that a man who once suggested terminating the Constitution should never be president again.

  Trump appeared in a town hall on Univision last night looking to win Latino voters but dodged questions about climate change, immigration, abortion rights and other topics.

  Trump wouldn’t say whether he believes climate change is a hoax. He defended his role in overturning Roe v. Wade without declaring a position on abortion.

  In one response he denied whipping up the crowd that attacked the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021, and said, “Some of those people went down to the Capitol — I said, ‘peacefully and patriotically.’ Nothing done wrong. At all, nothing done wrong.”

  Earlier in the week responding to a question about in vitro fertilization, Trump declared that he is entirely in favor of it and, “I’m the father of IVF.” The first child conceived through IVF was born in 1978 when Trump was solely in the real estate business.

DENIAL and AFFIRMATION: After dodging the question for weeks, Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance finally gave a definitive yet still confusing answer to whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election … “No.”

 In Williamsport, Pennsylvania where he was pressed by a reporter to answer the election question, Vance replied, “I’ve answered this question directly a million times,” and, “No. I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”

  Vance had been reluctant to say it, although he was definitive back in 2020 that he thought the election was stolen from Trump. In recent days he has claimed to be “focused on the future” and charging that “large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop,” helping to sway the 2020 election. 

CONFESSION: In what appears to be the largest settlement for a Catholic diocese, the Diocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who claimed they had been sexually abused by members of the clergy. This brings the total of payouts by the Diocese of Los Angeles to $1.5 billion. 

THE WAR ROOM: Russia launched one of its largest drone attacks on Ukraine in recent months, targeting Kyiv and other cities. Ukraine says its air defenses shot down 68 of 136 drones used in the attack. Two drones were reported to have returned to Russia and 64 were unaccounted for.

  The attack took place just hours before President Volodymyr Zelensky unveiled his “victory plan,” which would include more weapons support from other countries and an invitation to join NATO.

THE BROTHERS MENENDEZ: The Los Angeles district attorney publicly released a letter he cited as “new evidence” in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez who infamously shotgunned their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. DA George Gascón is considering whether to re-open the brothers’ case because of evidence that they were sexually molested by their father.

  Erik Menendez is now 53 and Lyle is 56. 

   Proof of molestation might be considered a mitigating factor in the brothers’ life sentences. Months before the 1989 murders Erik had written to a cousin: “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. Its still happening Andy but its worse for me now.” The handwritten letter said, “I never know when its going to happen and its driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Richard Secord, a former Air Force general and CIA operative who was the logistical middleman in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration that revealed illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, died at age 92. 

  A decorated fighter pilot who flew 285 missions in Vietnam and directed the CIA’s secret air war in Laos, Secord was put on probation after pleading guilty to a felony, lying to Congress.

THE SPIN RACK: A federal judge ordered Alabama’s Republican secretary of state to reverse the purging of more than 3,000 names from the state’s voter rolls, agreeing with the Biden administration that the purge took place too close to the election. — The two member crew is missing after a Navy electronic attack aircraft went down near Washington’s Mt. Rainier. — Former President Jimmy Carter, who’s 100 years old and has been in hospice care nearly two years, cast his absentee ballot in Georgia for Kamala Harris. — Columbia University has banned from campus an outspoken pro-Israel professor saying he repeatedly harassed and intimidated school employees. Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the business school, has accused Columbia of not doing enough to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests, which he says are antisemitic and support terrorism. — Liam Payne, a star of the boy band One Direction, is dead at 31 after evidently jumping off a hotel balcony in Argentina. He was reported to have been acting erratically. Payne wrote many of the band’s hits.

BELOW THE FOLD:  No more half-hour phone calls. A new federal rule will require retailers, gyms, cable companies and other businesses to have a “click to cancel” button on their websites. We’ve always had one, but please don’t use it.

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