Photo

Good Thursday morning from Washington, where, with 12 days to go until midterm elections, Republicans are maintaining a 67 percent chance of retaking the Senate. President Obama is turning to a team of scientists for new ideas on battling Ebola, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is making yet another trip to Iowa, and the White House’s fence remains as penetrable as ever.

With faith in Washington ebbing, the two most popular government employees on Thursday morning are surely a pair of dogs.

As most government employees were heading home from work on Wednesday night, and many Americans were tuning in to the World Series, two Belgian Malinois were on the job at the White House. The reputation of the Secret Service and the credibility of its new chief, Joseph Clancy, were riding on eight paws.

The K-9s, who had spent years training as attack dogs, are part of a beefed-up guard that the Secret Service has put in place since a fence-jumper made it to the East Room last month after rushing across the North Lawn and through the unlocked North Portico doors.

The new security procedures were put to the test at 7:15 last night, when 23-year-old Dominic Adesanya, of Bel Air, Md., climbed that same Pennsylvania Avenue fence. Last time, Secret Service agents failed to release the dogs. This time, they didn’t.

Showing the sort of teamwork notably absent from the nation’s capital, the dogs stopped Mr. Adesanya from getting anywhere near the front door. But he fought back, kicking one of the dogs before being knocked down by the other. He struggled to his feet, picked up the second dog, threw it to the ground and punched it repeatedly. Officers moved in to handcuff him.

The dogs were immediately taken to a veterinarian by the Secret Service. They had gnawed Mr. Adesanya so severely that he had to be taken to the hospital.

The bad news for the Secret Service is this: The agency’s new measures failed to prevent the fence from being scaled.

Now the good news: The intruder was stopped.

— Michael S. Schmidt

Photo

For Senator Elizabeth Warren, Scott P. Brown’s run for the Senate in New Hampshire is as unlikely as Bergman walking into Bogart’s saloon in “Casablanca”: “Of all the gin joints … .”

“Never in a bazillion years did it cross my mind that Scott Brown would pack up and move to his vacation house in New Hampshire to run against our friend Jeanne,” Ms. Warren wrote in an email in support of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent.

Bogart was unnerved at the unexpected turn of events; Ms. Warren appears to be relishing it.

She has already defeated Mr. Brown once, in Massachusetts in 2012. His campaign next door in New Hampshire gives Ms. Warren a chance, as she put it, “to make sure our neighbors know as much about Scott Brown’s record as the voters of Massachusetts did when they decided to turn him out.”

She heads to New Hampshire on Saturday to campaign with Ms. Shaheen and spread the message: “We can beat him.”

The Brown campaign is counterprogramming with appearances by Republicans like Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire’s other senator, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who as a presidential candidate has enjoyed significant support from the state’s crucial independents.

— Katharine Q. Seelye

Every campaign season breaks spending records. So it’s hardly a surprise that the midterms are shaping up to be the most expensive ever — more than $4 billion spent on congressional races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

That number can be hard to fathom. So by way of comparison:

• It’s bigger than the annual economic output of 35 countries.

• You’d have to add the market value of the Boston Red Sox ($1.5 billion), San Francisco Giants ($2 billion) and Kansas City Royals ($500 million) to reach that figure.

• It’s roughly the annual budget of the Army Corps of Engineers, one of the biggest public construction operations in the world, with more than 35,000 employees.

As vicious and annoying as campaign ads can be, the billions give a jolt, however small, to the economy, providing thousands of jobs in consulting, advertising and other fields.

Besides, Americans will spend nearly twice that amount this year on Halloween costumes, decorations and candy.

— David S. Joachim

We know how much Representative Nancy Pelosi of California loves baseball. She often sports the orange and black of the San Francisco Giants during the season and has been spotted at more than a few playoff games.

But the upstart Kansas City Royals have their own Democratic superfan: Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, who is in his fifth term from Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District and who owns six of the team’s jerseys. He can recite the Royals roster and has been to countless games, including all three home games of the Royals’ last World Series, in 1985.

On Tuesday, his Twitter followers were told of a pending “important announcement.” Hours later, he posted a video of himself decked out in Royals gear and taunting the House minority leader: “Ring around the rosie, it’s time to beat Pelosi.” (The two have a friendly bet involving San Francisco chocolates and Kansas City barbecue.)

Tickets in Kansas City are so hot that Mr. Cleaver was able to snag seats only for Game 6. He said he would watch earlier games “on television and prepare to receive my candy from Nancy Pelosi.”

“I don’t want to be a good winner,” he added. “I wanna rub it in.”

— Nick Corasaniti

President Obama is bringing together his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to help come up with new ideas for combating Ebola.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is back in Iowa, giving the campaign of Joni Ernst, the Republican Senate hopeful, a push.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, a potential presidential candidate, is making two campaign stops and attending a fund-raiser for Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina.

Secretary of State John Kerry will be talking about work-life balance at an event at the State Department at 12:15 p.m.

Senator Rand Paul’s foreign policy is getting a rebranding.

Assailed by many of the Republican Party’s hawks as too soft on defense — or as an “isolationist,” a term he loathes — Mr. Paul is giving his worldview a new name: Conservative Realism.

That is the title of a speech he will give Thursday evening to the Center for the National Interest in New York, the institute founded by Richard M. Nixon. Mr. Paul will call for a robust national defense and a prudent approach to engaging overseas. He will say the American military should not be overextended and on the ground in too many places. And he will assert that Congress needs to play a larger role in shaping how the nation commits its forces.

“France doesn’t send our men and women in uniform to war,” Mr. Paul will say, according to a preview of the speech his staff provided to First Draft. “The United Nations doesn’t send our soldiers to war. Congress, and only Congress, can constitutionally initiate war.”

— Jeremy W. Peters

New York magazine says a Republican-controlled Senate could be a “shutdown nightmare.”

Bloomberg Politics profiles Vincent Harris, the 26-year-old whose digital talents helped Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, win his seat. The article calls him “the man who invented the Republican Internet.”

Michelle Nunn has gained traction in the Georgia Senate race by attacking her opponent, David Perdue, for outsourcing jobs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mia Love, who is expected to win a congressional seat from Utah, may be “the great black G.O.P. hope,” Ebony magazine says.

Pittsburgh City Paper details how, and why, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania fell so far behind in the polls.

Work has started on a movie about Dan Rather and his infamous report on George W. Bush‘s Air National Guard service, Variety reports. It will star Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett.