During his closed-door testimony to House impeachment investigators last week, David Holmes, a counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, said hearing U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland call President Trump from the middle of a Kyiv restaurant was "an extremely distinctive experience in my foreign service career."

The House released the Holmes transcript Monday night, and he is expected to attend a public impeachment hearing on Thursday. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor first discussed the overheard Trump-Sondland call during his public testimony last week.

The call took place July 26, one day after Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and requested he launch investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a baseless conspiracy theory about Ukraine meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Holmes said Sondland placed the call to Trump through a switchboard, and he overheard Trump ask if the Ukrainians were going to "do the investigation." Sondland responded, "He's gonna do it."

Holmes testified that he was shocked by Sondland's brazenness. "I've never seen anything like this, someone calling the president from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language," he said. "There's just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly." Holmes said most of the local mobile networks are "owned by Russian companies, or have significant stakes in those. We generally assume that mobile communications in Ukraine are being monitored."

Click here to read the entire transcript. Catherine Garcia

Should President Trump lose re-election, could Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) leadership position be in danger?

A new report in The Washington Post describes how "discontent" with the Republican minority leader is "on the rise" in the House of Representatives, and a "small group of members is discussing whether someone should challenge him for minority leader if Trump is defeated," as Republicans prepare for a potential "intraparty war."

While the report notes that the anti-McCarthy sentiment in the House is certainly "far from unanimous," it describes how some Republicans feel he's too close to Trump and has given the president "too much of a pass," with one House Republican saying McCarthy "does nothing but lick Trump's boots." It isn't clear who could actually challenge McCarthy, though the report says House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has been eyed.

Billie Eilish and more stars are headed (virtually) to this year's Democratic convention.

Organizers of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Friday announced that the event scheduled to begin next week will feature performances from Leon Bridges, The Chicks, Common, Billie Eilish, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Billy Porter, Maggie Rogers, Prince Royce, and Stephen Stills.

While the Democratic convention was originally set to take place entirely in person in Wisconsin, it has since been revamped into a primarily virtual event, with even former Vice President Joe Biden himself set to accept the party's nomination for president from Delaware. These artists, too, are expected to deliver their performances remotely, People reports.

As CBS notes, Legend and Hudson previously performed at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Most recently, the 2016 convention featured performances from artists including Alicia Keys and Katy Perry. Stephanie Cutter, program executive for the DNC, in a statement said that the stars set to perform this year are "committed to engaging with, registering and mobilizing voters to get us over the finish line in November." The convention is set to begin on Aug. 17. Brendan Morrow

The United States Postal Service has warned that in Pennsylvania, some mail-in ballots may not be delivered in time to be counted this November.

In a July letter to Pennsylvania State Secretary Kathy Boockvar, USPS general counsel Thomas Marshall described the "risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them," NBC News reports.

The USPS also described Pennsylvania's current deadlines as "incongruous with the Postal Service's delivery standards," per Axios. Voters in the swing state can request a mail-in ballot up to Oct. 27, and they have to be received by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, according to The Hill.

But officials in the state are looking to extend the deadline to receive mail-in ballots three days, with Boockvar raising concern in a court filing that "voters who apply for mail-in ballots in the last week of the application period and return their completed ballot by mail will, through no fault of their own, likely be disenfranchised," CNN reports.

The warning in Pennsylvania came just after President Trump in an interview cited his desire to prevent universal mail-in voting this November, noting that if the Postal Service doesn't get the funding that Democrats are seeking, "that means you can't have universal mail-in voting, because they're not equipped to have it." Brendan Morrow

Newly installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy met with President Trump in the Oval Office last week, before a contentious meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about his controversial new policies at the U.S. Postal Service, The Washington Post reports. A few days later, DeJoy removed several top USPS officials, including two that oversaw day-to-day operations, and postal employees are now warning about the unexplained removal of vote-sorting machines.

Trump spokesman Judd Deere told the Post the Oval Office meeting was "congratulatory," because DeJoy took over the post on June 15, though "he declined to offer any other details." The measures enacted by DeJoy, a billionaire donor to Trump and other Republicans with significant financial interests in USPS competitors and contractors, have slowed mail delivery — a temporary "unintended consequences" of his cost-cutting measures, he told postal workers in a letter Thursday. DeJoy is also "in frequent contact with top Republican Party officials," the Post reports.

The reliability of the USPS is now an overtly political issue after Trump directly tied funding for the independent agency to his opposition to mail-in voting during the 2020 election. Democrats, who have insisted at least $10 billion be given to the USPS as part of a COVID-19 deal, "need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump told Fox Business on Thursday morning. "If they don't get those two items, that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not equipped to have it." Trump later suggested he was using USPS funding as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Pelosi and Schumer.

USPS officials have repeatedly said the post office can handle the expected surge in mail-in ballots, The New York Times notes.

Trump has claimed baselessly and frequently that widespread mail-in voting will lead to significant fraud, and the Republican National Committee and conservative groups are spending tens of millions of dollars to fight mail-in voting expansion, before and after the election, the Post reports. "The president is afraid of the American people," Pelosi argued. "He's been afraid for a while, he knows that on the legit, it'd be hard for him to win, so he wants to put obstacles of participation." Peter Weber

With just a few weeks before people start mailing in their ballots in the 2020 presidential election — probably — Democrat Joe Biden maintains his steady lead over President Trump. A Fox News poll released Thursday had Biden up 7 percentage points, 49 percent to 42 percent, more or less even with his 8 point lead in the July Fox News poll, though down from Biden's 12 point chasm in June. Pew Research Center registered an 8 point advantage for Biden in its own survey Thursday, 53 percent to 45 percent — and Biden's main selling point, it seems, is that he isn't Trump.

While 56 percent of Biden supporters said his main asset is that he isn't Trump, only 19 percent of Trump supporters said they were primarily voting against Biden. "This is very different from the 2016 presidential campaign, when opposition to the other candidate was among the top reasons given by supporters of both Trump and Hillary Clinton for their voting decisions," Pew notes.

Biden is viewed much more favorably than Trump in the Fox News poll: While Trump is 12 points underwater — 55 percent unfavorable, 43 percent favorable — Biden's favorability rating is 53 percent versus 43 percent unfavorable. In both polls, Trump holds a narrow lead on the economy but lags Biden on all other issues.

The Fox News poll found 54 percent of voters saying the federal government failed to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak seriously enough and 85 percent are concerned about its spread. "But inside the White House, Trump's top political aides are increasingly assured about their response — feeling like they're finally getting a handle on how to fight the disease," Politico reports. "As the crippling crisis turns toward heading into a third season, an alternate reality is taking shape inside the White House even in the face of spiking case counts, long lags in test processing, and a COVID-19 death toll that regularly tops 1,000 Americans a day."

Both polls are in line with other national surveys of the race: RealClearPolitics shows Biden with an average 7.4-point lead, while FiveThirtyEight has him beating Trump by 8.1 points. The Fox News poll was conducted Aug. 9-12 among 1,000 registered voters nationwide contacted by phone. Its margin of sampling error is ± 3 percentage points. Pew surveyed 9,114 registered voters July 27 to Aug. 2, and its margin of sampling error is ± 1.5 points. Peter Weber

Stephen Colbert was tickled by Michael Cohen's surprise bombshell about working for President Trump, especially the part about the "golden showers in a sex club in Vegas," he said on Thursday's Late Show. "I'm sure Donald Trump would rather talk about his love life in the splash zone than how badly he has shanked the global pandemic," but he spent most of Wednesday evening's "coronavirus press briefing laser-focused on the pandemic threatening America: mail-in voting."

"Trump despises mail-in voting — and just regular voting, too — because he's way behind in the polls and he knows that, due to the pandemic, tens of millions of us will have to vote by mail," Colbert said. "So after three years spent damaging everything from international relationships to ethical norms to the Department of Justice, Trump's coming after something people actually care about: He's destroying the Post Office." Trump admitted as much, and confirmed his self-serving motive, in a Fox Business interview Thursday morning, he added. "You're not supposed to say the cheating part out loud!"

"I've never seen a villain give away a plan like that without seeing James Bond tied to a chair in front of him," Trevor Noah agreed on The Daily Show. "This is insane. Trump got impeached for trying to secretly rig the election, and his response" is to rig it out in the open? "If Trump gets his way, they're going to have to change all the 'I Voted' stickers to end in a question mark," he joked darkly. "I Voted?"

Yes, "he just admitted that he's not agreeing to a deal to fund the Postal Service because he doesn't want mail-in voting to be possible for the election," Jimmy Fallon recapped at The Tonight Show. "Trump's like one of those movie villains who spends so much time explaining his plan out loud that the good guy manages to shimmy out of his handcuffs." He actually spent most of his Fox Business interview "attacking different women," he added. "'Mad woman,' 'not smart,' and 'stone-cold crazy.' ... At this point, our best shot at getting Trump attacking COVID is someone telling him the virus ovulates."

"He called Kamala Harris a 'mad woman'?" James Corden asked on The Late Late Show. "In Trump's defense, it's probably hard for him to tell when women are really mad, given that this is how his wife smiles." Watch below. Peter Weber