Free Republic

<p>Donald Trump’s campaign and top Republican Party officials plan what one person called a “come to Jesus” meeting on Friday in Orlando to discuss the Republican nominee’s struggling campaign, according to multiple sources familiar with the scheduled sit-down.</p> <p>Though a campaign source dismissed it as a "typical" gathering, others described it as a more serious meeting, with one calling it an "emergency meeting." It comes at a time of mounting tension between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, which is facing pressure to pull the plug on Trump’s campaign and redirect party funds down ballot to protect congressional majorities endangered by Trump’s candidacy.</p>

At least two senior Donald Trump aides were fired by the campaign Monday in what three sources described as a shakeup. Both aides — Ed Brookover and Jimmy Stracner — had worked for the presidential campaign of former Trump rival Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump after dropping out of the race. Brookover, a longtime GOP strategist, had been working as a political adviser. He played a role in helping to organize this month's GOP convention. Stracner, had been working as the Trump campaign’s western regional political director.

The furor over the cyberattacks injecting turmoil into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign obscures a more pervasive danger to the U.S. political process: Much of it has only lax security against hackers, with few if any federal cops on the beat. No one regulator is responsible for requiring campaigns, political operations and state and local agencies to protect the sanctity of the voter rolls, voters’ personal data, donors’ financial information or even the election outcomes themselves. And as the Democrats saw in Philadelphia this past week, the result can be chaos.