Last night, The New York Times reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether classified government information was mishandled because of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The request comes after an assessment sent last month to the State Department and intelligence agencies that Clinton’s private email account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” More from the Times:

“It is not clear if any of the information in the emails was marked as classified by the State Department when Mrs. Clinton sent or received them. But since her use of a private email account for official State Department business was revealed in March, she has repeatedly said that she had no classified information on the account. The initial revelation has been an issue in the early stages of her presidential campaign. …

At issue are thousands of pages of State Department emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account. Mrs. Clinton has said she used the account because it was more convenient, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests. She faced sharp criticism after her use of the account became public, and subsequently said she would ask the State Department to release her emails.”

It’s now crystal clear that Clinton’s claims from months ago about emailing classified materials – claims which she and her campaign maintain to this day – were simply false.

A new nationwide poll released yesterday by USA Today & Suffolk University reveals Hillary Clinton’s support is continuing to sag.

Matched up against many Republicans, Clinton fails to reach 50% support:

Tuesday’s USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll shows a much closer race, with Clinton leading the former Florida governor by only 4 points, 46% to 42%. Clinton is struggling, and she is polling under 50% not only against Bush, but also against Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

David Paleologos, the director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center in Boston, has a few theories on Clinton’s decline in the polls:

There may be good reasons for the Clinton campaign’s unwillingness to be more accessible to national interviews. Perhaps the lingering questions about/investigations of Benghazi, the deletion of emails, or the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of funding from foreign governments while she was secretary of State would shift the conversation away from the voter engagement currently taking place. Or perhaps the campaign is saving its (and her) energy for the big show with the assumption that Clinton will sail through the Democratic primary process.

Whatever the reason, the general election race is getting dangerously close for her. And last week, the tweets and video from “Ropegate” didn’t help matters. During a July Fourth parade in New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign decided to use a rope to corral national reporters and photographers so that Clinton could engage with real voters.

The strategy backfired, however, when unflattering video and photos of national press being herded along the parade route exploded on social media. That one event ignited widespread reports reminding voters that she has not been willing to engage the national media with the same passion as she uses in courting voters.

It’s likely that these, among her other entanglements, are hurting Clinton among voters. The degree to which her numbers continue to fall will largely be based on if her team is able to come up with some justification for her involvement in these scandals.

In case you missed it, Elizabeth Warren is profiled on the cover of this week’s Time Magazine, and the lengthy story illuminates a number of the deficiencies of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, especially with her Democratic base. Most notably, Warren says it’s “too early to say” whether she will join surging Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as a surrogate on the campaign trail, and goes on to praise him for “talking about the issues people want to hear about”. 

The story goes on to describe how Sanders has picked up Warren’s mantle of populism and “volunteered to take it to the presidential stage,” which stands in stark contrast to Clinton, “whose family finances and political fortunes have long been entangled with the biggest Wall Street firms.”

It also recounts a memorable incident from Warren’s 2014 book where she describes her ultimately losing efforts in 2005 to convince then-New York Senator Clinton to take her side on a bankruptcy bill pending before Congress. Ultimately, Clinton took the opposite position of Warren.

Hillary Clinton is losing support in earlier primary states according to a Bloomberg politics poll released today. Clinton is down 7 points among Iowa voters and down 6 points in New Hampshire since May.

While the former Secretary is losing support among these earlier primary voters, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is gaining ground in both states, leading Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin to say of Sanders, “he can create a lot of trouble for her, he can extend the nomination fight, he can pull her further to the left.”

How the Clintons obtained their wealth continues to dog them in the press, with questions about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation still making headlines. This issue has only been compounded in recent days by an AP report about a secret LLC used by Bill Clinton as a shell company.

NBC’s Chuck Todd said about recent revaluations regarding the Clintons’ shell company, “It’s creating this other aspect, them and what the Clintons have succeeded in the past is caring about people like you, like me, things like that. If that goes away, that’s a problem for her.”

Read more.

A new Quinnipiac poll released this morning shows Americans do not find Hillary Clinton to be honest and trustworthy, or particularly likeable, either.

“American voters say 53 – 39 percent that Clinton is not honest and trustworthy…”

Digging into the numbers further, 47 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Clinton, while 45 percent hold favorable views. Additionally, voters are split on whether they think Clinton cares about their needs and problems.

Read more.

Since leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton’s favorability numbers have taken a sharp nose dive, indicating that her standing with the American public is much different than her campaign would like you to believe.As her candidacy has been beset by scandals over her email server and questionable donations to the Clinton Foundation, pro-Clinton forces have argued that the controversies aren’t breaking through or impacting voters’ perception of her, often citing a CBS News/New York Times poll as evidence. But unfortunately for Secretary Clinton and her team, they are glossing over a lot of serious problems in her numbers.

Read more.

The Clintons use words in ways that almost nobody else does. To make it easier, we’ve defined many of her strangely-used words below, so you know what they actually mean.

campaign finance reform

[kam-peyn fi-nans ree-fawrm]

noun.

definition: commonly stated ideal for money in politics. Usually stated as a goal, then followed by contradictory action.

At the very same time Hillary Clinton was decrying“unaccountable money” in Iowa, Clinton’s campaign chairman was raising “unaccountable money.”

charity

[char-i-tee]

noun.

definition:

1. means by which one can fund political activity without worrying about federal contribution limits;

2. means by which foreign governments and corporations can contribute to one’s political cause covertly.

See also: “Slush fund”

See the full dictionary here.