Good Wednesday morning, I'm Anna Palmer. And welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing, sponsored by Morgan Stanley.

And I'm Jake Sherman. President Donald Trump is taking another massive whack at public institutions, this time the American electoral system.

He told evangelical leaders this week that Democrats will, quote, overturn everything that we've done, and they'll do it quickly and violently if they take over the House.

Change of power in this country isn't violent, and chances that Democrats would launch a violent

revolution are slim to none. The peaceful transition of power is one of the important pillars of democracy.

Combine that with the president's insistence that Google is rigging search engine results against him,

and the Justice Department is filled with Democrats looking to bring him down, and it's been quite a stretch of Trump trying to erode trust in public entities.

We've drawn up an August scorecard for you. Washington is about to enter the extraordinarily

consequential month of September, during which government funding expires. The Senate will begin

considering the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, and the

battle for control of the House will get further settled. But first, let's check in on where

people stand going into the fall. First, Chuck Schumer. The Senate Minority Leader was quickly

able to split Republicans this week when he suggested the Senate named the Russell Building

after the

recently deceased John McCain instead of Georgia's Richard Russell, an avowed segregationist.

But Schumer has a tough month ahead. The Supreme Court battle could have several of his Democratic

colleagues voting to approve Brett Kavanaugh, and he could also have a government funding

fight in the offing. Then there's Nancy Pelosi. Even Donald Trump in his own way says the Democrats might take back the House in November, and if that happens, Pelosi is still the odds-on favor to be the next Speaker. Yes, we understand that dozens of Democrats have said they won't back her. We've seen her in power before. She's persuasive, and one could totally see her making the argument that this is not the time to ditch the woman who brought Democrats back to the majority.

Think you can't be swayed by Pelosi?

Just wait until she lines up every party stalwart imaginable to tell House Democrats that it was Pelosi who got you Obamacare and some of the most progressive policies of the last two decades.

The Senate judiciary hearings start next week, and Democrats have not really been able to lay a glove

on Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's second nominee for the Supreme Court.

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