SEEING RED: The President was in Kansas last night on a campaign tour of red states trying to convince them to stay red in the midterm elections. Kansas has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1932 but Republican Roger Marshall is polling in a dead heat with Democrat Adam Hamilton.

  Also campaigning on his social media, Trump made another effort to buy votes, announcing $8 billion in fuel relief for farmers squeezed by the price of diesel. He wrote, “When Republicans win, we will pass even more funding for our Great Farmers, and Fuel prices will come tumbling down as soon as the Iran War is over, which will happen very quickly!” The war has no end in sight.

  In Kansas, Trump turned up his anti-immigrant rhetoric, blaming immigrants for the violent riots in France over the weekend. “We’re not going to let that happen to this country,” he told his Kansas audience. “When you see burning steeples and ⁠raging fires in France, just remember that is what the radical Dumocrats want to do to America.”

  He’s going to South Carolina, which only recently became competitive, Florida, Iowa, and Georgia. Trump plans to campaign in five House districts he won in 2024 by more than 20 points. 

 The President is staying away  from Maine and New Hampshire where Republican candidates have distanced themselves from the president and an appearance by him might hurt their chances of winning moderate voters.

THE WAR ROOM: President Trump looks more and more like he is taking Russia’s side in its war against Ukraine, telling reporters yesterday, “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much.”

  Russia occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine and continues to fight for more. Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky told Bloomberg News.  “I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” he said.

  Zelensky was referring to the US withholding intelligence about Russian missile and drone attacks while also slowing the data feed from billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system. Ukraine depends on a military division of Starlink to guide it’s drones at the front … and it’s a war of drones.  

  The Ukrainian president said Trump has an affinity for autocrats while Trump urged Ukrainians to vote Zelensky out of office. Trump on his social media said 

 Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

TEED OFF: A federal judge in Washington grilled government lawyers yesterday about whether she had been lied to regarding plans to completely re-make the popular East Potomac Golf Links in DC into a professional grade golf course.

  Judge Ana Reyes called on a squad of officials to tell her whether the government has been secretly plotting the renovation even while swearing in court that no decisions had been made. The government already ordered the cutting of 430 trees on the property and Reyes was trying to get to the truth about who’s calling the shots.

 On Sunday, even though he had long signaled plans to overhaul the golf course, President Trump announced that he had hired a professional course designer to do the job. That may have come long after the fact. A photo of Trump at his desk with his short-term Press Secretary Katie Zacahria last week showed a plan of the new golf course electronically blurred.

  The matter of the golf course has become a test of presidential power vs. the courts. A preservation group has sued to block the project and Reyes ordered that she be notified of any major work and then the trees were cut anyway.

  Reyes dismissed the government claims that the tree removals was just part of routine maintenance. “There is no universe in which all of this just coincidentally happened at the same time,” she told the lawyers. “There just isn’t.”

FRENCH TOAST: Troubled areas of France are still under curfew following weekend rioting that left behind charred rubble and wreckage. Curfews have been extended through tonight in parts of cities like Paris, Marseille, and Lille.

  In rioting that began Saturday government buildings were attacked and as many as 3,000 shops were looted.

HOME PLATE: The Tampa Bay Rays beat Cleveland in the American League Championships to set up a match with the Milwaukee Brewers for the World Series. Neither team has ever won the Series.

  Game one is on Friday.  

THE SPIN RACK: CNN’s veteran foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour, a fixture on the network, announced that she’s leaving. “After many months of thought and a few sleepless nights, I have decided to separate from CNN, my partner of 43 fantastic years!” she said in a statement. — The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that will decide whether the federal ban on brewing whiskey at home is constitutional. You can have an assault rifle but you can’t make your own bourbon. — Forty-one year old LeBron James makes his debut with the Philadelphia 76ers tonight. He played eight seasons with the Lakers.

BELOW THE FOLD: The brief measurement of time that some members of the Trump administration have served has come to be called “a Scaramucci,” the 11 days that Anthony Scaramucci was director of White House Communications in Donald Trump’s first term.

  The measurement’s mathematical notation is “Sc.”

  The recently departed Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, for instance, served 53.09 Sc. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, 38.3. Kristi Noem survived for 39.1 Sc at the Department of Homeland Security and Dan Bongino at the FBI for 26.5. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Greek vacation lasted 31.2 Sc.

  Therefore, by the now standard measure of the Scaramucci, the recently arrived and departed press secretary Katie Zacharia served .45 Sc … or, one Zch.

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