GROWING UNREST: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis hit the streets in protest against their own government yesterday following the discovery of six dead hostages in Gaza. Demonstrators in multiple cities demanded for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal with Hamas militants to release the remaining hostages taken last October.

  Grief and anger broke out across the country after the recovery in a tunnel of the six bodies of hostages who had been “brutally murdered” by Hamas just days before they were found. The bodies of four men and two women ages 23 to 40 were found in a tunnel close to where a live hostage was found last week.

  Among the dead was Hersh Goldberg Polin, 23, an Israeli-American born in California whose parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention calling for the release of the hostages.

  Protesters across Israel blocked roads and highways. The cousin of one of the dead posted on Twitter/X, “Take to the streets — stop the abandonment, bring the state to a halt, get a deal.”

  Protesters blame Netanyahu for valuing his political survival over the lives of the hostages. Hostage families in Tel Aviv backed by a crowd of supporters carried six empty coffins in a march through the city, blocked the main highway and swarmed in front of the Israeli military headquarters. In Jerusalem, the police used water cannons to spray a noxious liquid on sitting protesters and forcefully detained people rallying in front of the city’s main entrance.

THE WAR ZONE: As Ukraine takes the war to the enemy, Russia shot down 158 drones overnight yesterday, including 11 over Moscow in what appears to have been Ukraine’s largest drone attack so far.

  The Ukrainians targeted power plants and oil refineries, causing several fires, including in Moscow. The Russians said dozens of the drones were shot down over the Kursk region, where Ukraine has taken Russian territory.

BY THE NUMBERS: President Biden is set to appear in Pittsburgh with Kamala Harris today in their first joint campaign appearance since the President dropped out of the race.

  The newest election polls show Harris widening a lead over Donald Trump nationally but trailing in the battleground states that could determine the election. Remember that Trump lost the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton and won the presidency in the Electoral College.

  ABC News has Harris leading Trump nationally 46 to 40 percent. But other polls have Trump leading in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia. 

  The Trafalgar Group has Trump and Harris tied at 47 in Michigan. 
KSTP/SurveyUSA has Harris leading Trump 48-43 in Minnesota.

  Harris is crushing it with women. ABC News polling shows that women prefer Harris over Trump by a margin of 54 to 41 percent.

SAY ANYTHING: Donald Trump was backtracking and blaming over the weekend for his politicized visit to Arlington National Cemetery. The Trump campaign distributed a video of the visit and a “thumbs up” photo of the former president grinning while standing with the family of a dead soldier over her grave.

  Trump’s people had been told that photos and videos in the cemetery are illegal, but he told an NBC reporter, “I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it. And it could have been them. It could have been the parents. It could have been somebody else.” Dodging blame, Trump said, 

“I really don’t know anything about it,” and, “All I do is I stood there and I said, if you’d like to have a picture, we can have a picture if somebody did.” He went on to suggest that maybe “this was a set up by the people in the administration that, oh, Trump is coming to Arlington, that looks so bad for us.” 

  Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the Trump visit to Arlington, saying “It is not a place for politics,” and “the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt.” 

  Eight families had invited Trump to attend in recognition of the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan in which 13 soldiers were killed. Some family members condemned Harris for what they said was her lack of sympathy.

EVERY RIGHT: On another topic, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that had “every right” to interfere with the 2020 election. The full quote: “It’s so crazy that my poll numbers go up. Who ever heard, you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it. You get indicted and your poll numbers go up.   

THE SPIN RACK:  Seven people were killed and dozens injured Saturday when a bus headed for Mexico blew a tire failure and rolled over off a highway east of Vicksburg, Mississippi. — About 10,000 hotel workers from Hawaii to Boston went on strike over the Labor Day weekend. — DirectTV in a contract dispute dropped Disney owned channels from its service including ABC and ESPN. Click on ABC and you get a message that says, “We appreciate your patience …”

BELOW THE FOLD: Hidden inside a pair of pillars being dismantled at London’s National Gallery workers found a note written by the wealthy donor who paid for the pillars even though he didn’t like them.

  John Sainsbury, a member of the House of Lords whose family founded the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain in the late 19th century and also owned the Shaw’s supermarkets in the United States, had said that two ornamental columns flanking the foyer of the new museum wing were useless, and ugly. He paid for them anyway, provided that he could leave a note. 

  Sainsbury died in 2006, but his note lived. The typewritten note found inside one of the columns says, in all caps, “”LET IT BE KNOWN THAT ONE OF THE DONORS OF THIS BUILDING IS ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED THAT YOUR GENERATION HAS DECIDED TO DISPENSE WITH THESE UNNECESSARY COLUMNS.”

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