Trump slams McConnell over lack of funding for Masters in Arizona

Former President Trump criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday for supporting funds for GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (Alaska) reelection bid against a fellow Republican rather than directing that money to Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters’s (R) race against a Democrat.

“The Old Broken Crow, Mitchell McConnell, is authorizing $9 Million Dollars to be spent in order to beat a great Republican, Kelly, instead of $9 Million Dollars that could be used for Blake Masters, and other Republicans, that with this money would beat their Democrat opponent,” wrote Trump in a statement, referring to Kelly Tshibaka, who will face off against Murkowski in November.

Trump has endorsed both Masters and Tshibaka and called Murkowski, one of only seven GOP senators who voted to convict him in his second impeachment, “horrendously bad” and “barely” a Republican in his statement.

Murkowski is one of the more moderate Republicans in the Senate, specifically in her support of abortion rights.

A report by the Anchorage Daily News published on Thursday found that the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican PAC with ties to McConnell, funded television, radio and internet ads in Alaska slamming Tshibaka in support of Murkowski.

McConnell has endorsed the incumbent in the race, rejecting the further-right Tshibaka, who is more in line with Trump.

Trump has ramped up his criticism of McConnell in recent months, including drawing vehement pushback for saying in a recent statement that the Kentucky Republican has a "death wish," which critics said amounted to a tacit call for violence.

Support from women boosts Biden to another year-high approval rating: poll

President Biden's approval rating has hit a year-high in the third poll this week, driven largely by an increase in support from female voters.

An Emerson College poll released Friday found 45 percent of voters said they approve of Biden's performance, a 3-point increase since last month, while 49 percent disapprove, a two-point decrease.

“Biden’s increase in approval appears to be driven by women voters. Since July, women voters’ approval of the President has jumped 10 points, from 39% to 49%,” Executive Director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball said.

His approval rating in the Emerson poll has been increasing steadily since April, when it sat at 41 percent, but remains underwater in a difficult political climate.

Still, Biden has seen a series of positive polls this week. A Politico-Morning Consult survey, published on Wednesday, found that 46 percent of all respondents approve of the job Biden is doing as president, the highest level since December in that poll. And his approval hit 45 percent in an NBC News poll, the highest since October.

Responses to the generic congressional ballot remained largely unchanged since last month, with 45 percent of voters saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate and 45 percent saying they'd vote for a Republican.

“Women voters support the Democratic congressional candidate over the Republican candidate by 10 points, while men break for the Republican candidate by 12,” Kimball said.

A large swath of respondents (39 percent) ranked the economy as the most important factor in their vote, followed by threats to democracy (15 percent) and abortion access (10 percent).

There is also tight competition on whether voters would support Biden or former President Trump if they became the presidential nominees in 2024, with 45 percent opting for Biden and 44 percent for Trump. That difference of 1 percentage point is within the poll’s margin of error.

Six percent of those polled said they would vote for neither Biden nor Trump in the hypothetical contest, while 5 percent said that they are undecided.