BY THE NUMBERS: Polling by The NY Times shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 50 to 47 percent in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, which could decide the election. Polls show Harris’s strength in that state is her position on abortion.

  On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal has Trump leading by a point in Pennsylvania, well within the margin for error. And the Real Clear Politics average of polls in seven battleground states has Harris leading by a hair only in Wisconsin. 

  Harris’s campaign says they plan to release a report on her health information, putting pressure on her 78-year-old opponent who has never revealed his own … or his taxes, by the way.  A senior campaign aide told The NY Times the report will show Harris has the “physical and mental resiliency” to be president.

  Not that it makes a difference, but Harris is featured on the cover of the latest edition of Vogue magazine in a shot taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. Harris is nicely dressed.

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump held a rally in Aurora, Colorado yesterday focusing on Venezuelan gangs and promising to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to “send elite squads of ICE, border patrol, and federal enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest, and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left.” 

  The Alien Enemies Act was last invoked during World War II to put Japanese Americans in internment camps. Trump has seized on a clip of doorbell camera video that showed men bearing assault rifles in the hallway of an apartment building to claim that the Venezuelan gangs have virtually taken over the city. Local officials say the gangs have a “limited” presence in the city of 400,000 mostly in a handful of run-down apartment complexes. 

  But Trump promised, “I make this vow to you: Nov. 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America — liberation day.” 

DENIAL AIN’T A RIVER: In a NY Times podcast posted today, Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance dodged five opportunities to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Using a phrase from the vice presidential debate, Vance said that he is “focused on the future.” 

  His running mate, Trump, says nearly every day that the last election was stolen. Nonetheless, “There’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020,” Vance said to interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro.“I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable.”

  Vance has said that if he’d been a senator at the time he would not have voted to certify the election. On Garcia-Navarro’s fifth attempt to get a yes-or-no answer, she pointed out that there was “no proof, legal or otherwise,” of election fraud. Vance dismissed that as “a slogan.”

THE WAR ROOM: Iran is reported to be engaged in diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East in an effort reduce the scale of Israel’s expected retaliation for Iran’s missile barrage earlier this month.  Iran would like to avoid having Israel strike Iranian nuclear sites and oil facilities … the most critical targets for a “don’t mess with us” message. 

  Israel continues its pounding of militant targets in Lebanon and Gaza. Today at least 20 people were killed in an Israeli strike. Israel has also warned the residents of 23 more towns in Lebanon to evacuate.

AFTERMATH: Several hundred people are still reported to be missing or unaccounted for in six states following the devastation of Hurricane Helene. More than 230 people were killed.

THE OBIT PAGE: Dr. Frances Conley, who made national headlines in 1991 when she resigned from her tenured position at the Stanford University School of Medicine saying she could no longer work with male colleagues who fondled her, called her “hon” in the operating room, and invited her to go to bed with them, has died at age 83. 

  Conley later said that she at first thought putting up with male behavior was just part of getting ahead as a woman in a male-dominated field. Conley, who was one of the only female neurosurgeons in the country at the time, called it quits when one of the most egregious male offenders was promoted to department head. That promotion was rescinded months later when other women came forward and Conley was invited back.

  Conley’s research focused on the immunology of brain tumors, but her impact on medicine was in breaking up the boys’ club.  

THE SPIN RACK: Boeing’s new chief executive announced layoffs of 17,000 employees in a plan to slash costs, improve production, and return the company to making a profit which it has not done since 2018. CEO Kelly Ortberg said the layoffs will affect executives, managers, and production workers. — The Centers for Disease Control says there’s been a 10 percent drop in drug overdose deaths during the 12-month period ending in April. Even so, about 101,000 people died of overdoses. Public health officials say the drop is the result of a variety of factors, including the availability of overdose reversal medication.

BELOW THE FOLD: Tony Schwartz, who was the ghost writer for Donald Trump’s bestseller, “The Art of the Deal,” wrote the following about the former president in The NY Times:

 “It’s long been deeply unsettling to me how many behaviors associated with psychopathy Mr. Trump exemplifies. There are seven characteristics associated with “antisocial personality disorder,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: deceitfulness, impulsivity, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of self or others, consistent irresponsibility and lack of remorse. I’ve observed all seven in Mr. Trump over the years and watched them get progressively worse. It’s the last one — lack of remorse — that gives him license to freely exercise the other six.”

-30-