A new survey out this morning from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has both good and bad news for Democrats.

The good: Abortion is a stronger motivator for midterm voters now than it was in July. In particular, access to the procedure is motivating Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in states where most abortions are illegal.

The bad: The Medicare provisions in the party’s health-and-climate bill are popular among Democrats and independents. But few voters are aware of the law’s specific health provisions roughly two months after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act.

Midterm elections see far fewer voters than in the presidential election years, meaning races will be won and lost by which factions turn out in November. That gives increasing importance to any issue that could drive voters to the ballot box.

Special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia is reaching a critical peak: the launch of what’s expected to be the final trial in his long-running investigation.

Durham is seeking the conviction of Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who is charged with five counts of lying to the FBI in interviews as agents investigated potential Trump-Russia collusion in the probe that became known as “Crossfire Hurricane.” Danchenko was a leading contributor to the so-called Steele dossier, a compilation of salacious and unverified allegations about Donald Trump’s relationship with the Russian government. Danchenko pleaded not guilty to the five counts against him.

The government aired the allegations during opening statements on Tuesday, accusing Danchenko of lying about his main sources for his contributions to the dossier, as well as communications he had with Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman who once did real estate work with the Trump Organization and stayed in touch with Trump associates during the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors specifically accuse Danchenko of fabricating Millian as a source, claiming he lied about speaking to the businessman over the phone.

“We are going to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant never received a call from Sergei Millian,” prosecutor Michael Kielty said.

LONDON — Try as she might, Liz Truss just can't calm the markets.

Despite reversing her plan to cut tax for the highest earners, bringing forward a more detailed budget statement by almost a month and halting the appointment of a controversial senior civil servant to oversee the Treasury, the Bank of England was again forced to step in to try to stabilize market turbulence.

Insiders pointed to the surprise appointment of James Bowler to the Treasury top job, passing over Antonia Romeo, who it was widely briefed had got the role, as a sign of No. 10's anxiety.

“The PM is panicking and reaching for almost anything that she can do to calm the situation. She was so burnt by the fallout from mini-budget that anything that seemed bold, she now wants to massively trim back,” said a senior Whitehall official.

Waiting— It’s been two weeks since deadly Hurricane Ian slammed into the Florida coast and Gov. Ron DeSantis and state election officials have yet to announce what steps — if any — will be taken ahead of the midterm elections.

The situation— Across southwest Florida, a reliably Republican region of the state, homes have been destroyed, making it impossible to deliver a vote-by-mail ballot and rendered polling places unavailable. There has been anticipation — and rumblings — that state officials could as soon as today announce a plan to set up super voting centers in the three hardest-hit counties. That would allow voters to sidestep existing state laws, including one that requires voters to cast a ballot in their assigned precinct on Election Day.

And there’s this— But any move to accommodate voters in a GOP area would require DeSantis and Secretary of State Cord Byrd to use emergency powers to waive state law — an area of contention ever since the 2020 elections and the baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. Some of those who have pushed these allegations maintained that people who were voting didn’t live at their listed address. Well, that certainly could be the case this time around given the extent of the devastation caused by Ian.

Weighing in— On Tuesday, a coalition of nine civil rights and voting rights organizations — including some that have sued the state over its voting laws — wrote Byrd and top state election officials “to express our concern about the impact of Hurricane Ian on Floridians’ ability to successfully vote in the ongoing general election. The destruction caused by Hurricane Ian has significantly disrupted election administration in affected counties.”

Republican Herschel Walker's standing with female, Black and independent voters was slipping even before damaging allegations from an ex-girlfriend, according to new polling from the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other members of the Georgia News Collaborative.

But, but, but: The Senate race was still neck-and-neck. Undecided voters and a third-party candidate could force it to a runoff, according to the findings, which were shared with Axios.

The big picture: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's (R) lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams — now 51% to 41% — widened in the survey, but Walker's previous lead over Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) did not.

Between the lines: Warnock's 46% to 43% edge over Walker is within the margin of error, too narrow to be seen as a statistical lead. Libertarian Chase Oliver was at 4%.

In March 2015, the Republican National Committee held a donor retreat in Boca Raton, Fla. The belle of the ball was a Republican governor with a penchant for owning the libs, delighting Fox News and playing bare-knuckle politics.

One speaker, a New York real estate mogul widely seen as an unserious blowhard, drew eye rolls among those present as he groused about how the R.N.C. should have held the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club just down the road.

The governor, who was polling well in Iowa, was running for president on a simple platform: Your enemies are my enemies, too. Almost universally, pundits speculated that he would be the one to beat in a G.O.P. primary that would be dominated by cultural resentment and anger over the current president’s policies.

Well, that governor, short on cash and charisma, flamed out months before any 2016 primaries were even held. His name was Scott Walker. And the real estate mogul who bored the crowd was, of course, Donald Trump.

American politics is no longer as predictable as it once was. Each day seems to violate one bit of received wisdom or another. But Walker’s rise and fall nevertheless offers a cautionary tale for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the current favorite to be the G.O.P. nominee in 2024.

Russia’s domestic intelligence service said Wednesday it arrested eight people in connection with a blast that damaged a key bridge to the annexed Crimean Peninsula, blaming Ukraine for the incident that dealt a high-profile blow to President Vladimir Putin.

The weekend explosion, which Russian investigators said killed three people and was caused by a truck bomb, temporarily halted train and car traffic over the Kerch Bridge — a structure with huge strategic and symbolic value to the Kremlin.

In a press release Wednesday, the FSB said Ukraine’s military intelligence and its chief, Kyrylo Budanov, were behind the attack. It also said five Russian citizens, as well as three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia, who were involved in the operation had been detained.

NBC News could not verify the claims, which Kyiv immediately dismissed.

WASHINGTON — Democrats pride themselves on the diversity of their voters, but the people who run their campaigns are still disproportionately white graduates of elite colleges, according to new data.

“The key staff of the Democratic Party is more racially representative than it has ever been and not nearly as racially diverse as it ought to be,” said Daniel Laurison, a sociologist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania who spent years collecting data for his new book, "Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us."

Laurison, with the help of research assistants, combed through LinkedIn and other sources to compile a database of more than 4,500 Republicans and Democrats who worked on presidential primary or general election campaigns from 2004 to 2020. They found that class and race disparities persist in both parties.

The people in those positions, Laurison said, not only advise powerful policymakers; they also craft the political messages that help shape Americans’ understanding of politics and their place in it.

The mother of one of Herschel Walker’s children had to repeatedly press the former football star who is now the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia for funds to pay for a 2009 abortion that she said he wanted her to have, according to the woman and a person she confided in at the time.

“When I talked to him, I said, 'You need to send — I can’t afford to pay for this,” the woman said in one of several interviews with The Washington Post in recent days, adding that she also told him: “We did this, too. Both of us did this. We both know how babies are made.”

The woman, who lived in the Atlanta area at the time, said she became pregnant when she was unemployed and had less than $600 in her bank account. Walker sent a $700 check via FedEx about a week after the procedure, the woman said. The Post reviewed an image of the check that was printed on an ATM slip, with Walker’s name, signature and an address associated with him at the time.

It was deposited nine days after the woman said she had an abortion. The Post has reviewed a receipt for $575 at a women’s medical center that day. She said she did not know exactly how much an abortion would cost and estimated the amount she told Walker she would need based on online searches.