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Schundler is an urban pioneer Republican, cerebral and experimental. He will square off in November against Jim McGreevey, an energetic and traditional Democrat who nearly beat former Gov. Christie Whitman four years ago and has been running for the job ever since. The winner may decide who controls the U.S. Senate. If Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli is indicted later this year, as some gabby prosecutors are hinting, the party affiliation of the next governor becomes critical....

Campaign calculations tend to be crude, but that doesn’t stop political operatives from making them. So does the assassination of Benazir Bhutto push foreign affairs—and an unstable world—back to the top of voters’ minds just a week before the Iowa caucuses? And if so, who benefits? In public, all the candidates issued comments condemning Bhutto’s killers and praising the former Pakistani prime minister’s commitment to democracy. Clinton added a personal touch, telling how she had met Bhutto in and out of office....

Neither Bilawal nor Zardari, however, is expected to be named as the prime ministerial candidate of the PPP, the friend said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. That honor will go to a senior official, although it is not believed to be Amin Fahim, the vice chairman of the party who served as interim leader during Bhutto’s eight-year exile. Bilawal, who enrolled as a student at Oxford University only this year, is scheduled to read the will himself at a party gathering on Sunday....

Former Vice President Joe Biden and independent Senator Bernie Sanders, both currently competing for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, would trounce Trump by eight points in the popular vote, according to the poll. Biden and Sanders earned the support of 50 percent of U.S. registered voters, SurveyUSA found, while Trump lagged behind at 42-percent support. The poll was conducted over the first five days of August, just after the Democratic Party’s second presidential debates in Detroit, Michigan....

The two officials will meet Wednesday in Zurich on the heels of Monday’s criticisms from the White House over what the international community has decried as sustained military harassment by China against autonomous Taiwan. White House National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement that the talks are a follow-up on President Joe Biden’s phone call with President Xi Jinping last month. The administration wants to continue “to seek to responsibly manage the competition” with China....

Gallup’s latest polling conducted from October 1 to 19 shows the president’s approval rating among voters who don’t identify with either major political party has plummeted by double digits since June. Only about a third (34 percent) of independents said they approve of Biden—a drop of 21 percentage points since the same survey was carried out four months back. Furthermore, Biden’s approval among independents has dropped 9 points since August....

But the most appropriate way to measure the Biden plan is in terms of the human suffering it would produce. Nearly $5.5 trillion would be diverted from the private sector to new government spending over the next 10 years, according to one analysis. Americans would be obliged to pay for all of this spending through higher tax rates on their work, savings and investments. The drag on the U.S. economy could mean a $3 trillion loss in economic output over the next decade, during which time workers’ paychecks would drop $1....

For $10, you too could have been the lucky owner of a blue fly swatter that reads “Truth Over Flies” on the handle, with the Biden-Harris 2020 logo towards the end of it. The purchase would act as a donation to the Biden Victory Fund, and the package would ship in 14 days, the Biden Store website noted. Alas, the swatters are all sold out at the moment. The buzzy items just became available last night, so people clearly didn’t waste any time moving on the merch....

Biden issued a mandate on Thursday requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated in the coming months or risk possibly losing their jobs. His administration will also require federal contractors to ensure their employees are vaccinated. The mandate affects some 100 million Americans, according to the Associated Press. The move was a reversal of the administration’s previous stance. Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked in July whether the federal government should step in and issue vaccine mandates....

The new poll by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, which surveyed 2,546 voters between March 11 and March 23 with an estimated 2.78 percent margin of error, shows 60 percent of likely voters between the ages of 18 and 29 said they would vote for Biden if the election were held at that time, compared with 30 percent who said they would vote for Trump. The poll asked participants the same question about Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who was then still running for the top spot on the Democratic ticket....

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi met Monday in Luxembourg for a four-and-half-hour session of discussion that a senior Biden administration official described as “candid, in-depth, substantive and productive” during a press call later that same day. A readout issued by the White House offered few details of the meeting, simply saying that the two men discussed “a number of regional and global security issues, as well as key issues in U....

Last Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to broad student loan forgiveness at a town hall event in Miami: “I’m going to eliminate your student debt.” If your family made less than $125,000 per year, as ours did, then Biden will forgive any debt incurred at public universities. He promised that others will also benefit: “Everyone gets $10,000 knocked off of their student debt.” Also, he pledged to give young people $15,000 toward down payments on their first homes....

Speaking to reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, the president said the rebate cards are “part of what we’re considering, that’s part of the whole operation,” according to CNN. Biden also mentioned the possibility of temporarily suspending the federal gasoline tax. “I hope to have a decision based on the data I’m looking for by the end [of] the week,” Biden said, referring to the potential gas tax holiday. The Biden administration has been facing heavy pressure to help alleviate Americans’ pain at the pump amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and surging inflation, which hit a 40-year high in May....

Psaki previously served in President Barack Obama’s administration as a press spokesperson. She also was the spokesperson for the State Department between 2013 and 2015. Her first press conference as Biden’s press secretary was a stark contrast to those held under former President Donald Trump’s administration, during which members of his press team would often spar with the media. Psaki calmly fielded questions from the reporters present. “I have deep respect for the role of a free and independent press in our democracy and for the role all of you play,” Psaki said....

Biden made the comments after delivering remarks on Tuesday about the DISCLOSE Act, an election transparency bill. Last week, nearly 50 migrants were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, under a program sponsored by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. A plane that was involved in flying those migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is now listing as its destination an airport about a 40-minute drive from Rehoboth Beach, near where Biden has a vacation home....

Fifty-two percent of respondents said they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 43 percent said they disapproved, The Hill reported. These numbers showed a slip in his approval rating from June, when 59 percent of respondents said they approved of his performance, compared to 34 percent who disapproved, according to the previous poll. His approval rating peaked in May at 61 percent. The poll also showed Congress remains unpopular. Forty-five percent of respondents said they approve of Congress’ work, while 55 percent did not approve, according to The Hill....

The White House will require most federal employees to get the shot and remove the alternative option to undergo regular testing. Employers with 100 or more workers must require either the vaccine or weekly testing. In total, the plan will affect about two-thirds of all U.S. workers. The new strategy marks the administration’s most aggressive step yet toward increasing vaccination rates. Earlier this year, Biden expressed hesitancy at implementing a federal vaccine mandate....

While the American media has been largely muted on the story, in Beijing, it is being trumpeted as a major propaganda coup and, more importantly, a sign of Biden administration weakness inviting still more aggression. The sellout concerns Huawei—not only the quintessential representative of China’s grand strategy to become the predominant global hegemon, but arguably its linchpin as the would-be peerless provider of the 5G telecommunications infrastructure over which much of the world’s information is poised to travel....

Polling by Gallup released Monday shows that Biden’s favorability now stands at 55 percent in the wake of his victory over Trump in the presidential election. Trump’s favorability currently stands at just 42 percent, and the president’s highest favorability during his nearly four years in office was 49 percent—or 6 percent lower than where the Democrat president-elect’s favorability currently sits. Trump’s favorability peaked in April of this year. Comparatively, Biden’s favorability is also double-digits above where Trump’s stood after he won the 2016 presidential election....

“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said from the White House’s East Room. “A collective suffering. A collective sacrifice. A year filled with the loss of life—and the loss of living for all of us. But, in the loss, we saw how much there was to gain in appreciation, respect and gratitude.” Fewer than 18 million people watched Trump’s first prime-time presidential address, which was about the war in Afghanistan, in August 2017....