© AP Photo/Alex Brandon/Morry Gash |
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Former President Trump and Vice President Harris held competing events Wednesday aimed at attracting the working-class voters who will play a big role in determining the outcome of the election in critical Midwest and Rust Belt battleground states. Voters without a college degree made up 63 percent of the electorate in 2016 and 2020. Blue collar workers were a key part of Trump’s coalition in 2016, helping him to become the first GOP candidate in decades to carry Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
In that election, Trump’s promises to negotiate better trade deals and bring manufacturing back to the U.S. resonated with working class whites in particular, many of whom had voted for former President Obama.
President Biden rebuilt the Democratic “blue wall,” propelling him to a narrow election victory over Trump in 2020. But his margins among voters without a college degree were similar to Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton.
Harris’s issues with this group were underscored by the Teamsters decision to not endorse either candidate after releasing internal polling showing most of their members favor Trump.
However, recent polls have shown Harris closing the gap on who is most trusted on the economy, which is by far the most important issue for voters.
The 2024 election may hinge on which candidate presents the most compelling case to everyday workers. Trump on Wednesday spoke from a manufacturing plant in Mint Hill, N.C. - Trump blasted Harris for making campaign promises to manufacturers while she’s in the White House.
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“Today, Kamala Harris is supposedly announcing her so-called plans to support manufacturing and wealth creation. Why didn’t she do it three-and-a-half years ago? They’ve done nothing…she’s been there almost four years and she didn’t do it. She didn’t create wealth. She destroyed almost 22 percent of the value of every dollar in your pocket and…families are suffering now, so if she has a plan, she should stop grandstanding and just do it.”
- Trump maintained his promise to slap massive tariffs on companies that take their manufacturing overseas. Economists — and many Republicans — oppose Trump’s tariffs, but he argues that it’s the best leverage to incentivize domestic manufacturing.
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Trump is campaigning in North Carolina, where polls are tight. The Tarheel State has only gone for the Democratic candidate once since 1980, but Trump carried it by the narrowest of margins over Biden in 2020. If Trump were to lose North Carolina, his path to the White House would become extremely narrow. Trump leads by 0.8 percent, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average.
Harris, meanwhile, revealed her manufacturing agenda at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh. - Harris blasted Trump, accusing him of being out of touch with ordinary Americans.
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“He has no intention of growing the middle class. He’s only interested in making life better for himself and people like himself…for Donald Trump our economy works best for those who own the big sky scrapers, not those who actually build them. Not those who wire them. Not those who mop the floors. I have a very different vision for our economy.”
Harris promised to cut taxes for middle class families and said she’d give thousands of dollars to new parents. She promised to lower costs on everything from groceries to caregiving for children and the elderly.
Harris promised to lower the cost of housing by increasing the supply. She said she’d “cut the red tape” that stops homes from being built and take on landlords who are hiking rental prices. She promised to give a $25,000 down payment to first-time homebuyers.
Harris proposed a federal ban on corporate price gouging. She said she’d raise the tax deduction for starting a new business by tenfold and provide zero-interest loans to small companies looking to expand.
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Pennsylvania is lining up to potentially be the most important swing state for both campaigns. The polls are all over the place, with many showing the race is tied, but others finding Harris opening up a 4 or 5 point lead. Harris leads by 1.1 percent in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average.
Perspectives:
Read more:
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Welcome to Evening Report! I’m Jonathan Easley, catching you up from the afternoon and what’s coming tomorrow. Not on the list? Subscribe here. |
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© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images |
Senate report blasts Secret Service |
The Senate released a scathing report Wednesday detailing widespread failures by the Secret Service that led to former President Trump being shot at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pa.
The bipartisan assessment from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is the first public report detailing the security failures around the first assassination attempt against Trump.
The Hill’s Alexander Bolton writes: “The report found agents had multiple opportunities to prevent the shooting that killed one person and injured several others, including Trump. The failures that put Trump’s life at risk were “foreseeable” and “preventable” and grew out of a breakdown in communication and coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement, the committee said.”
Trump’s campaign announced that he’d return to Butler on Oct. 5 to finish the rally where he was shot.
Among the new details from the Senate report: - The Secret Service was notified that gunman Matthew Thomas Crooks had a range finder near the building he climbed to shoot Trump about 27 minutes before he opened fire.
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Agents failed to notify key personnel about the suspicious person, even though Secret Service officials knew he was on the roof of a nearby building two minutes before he shot at Trump.
- A counter-sniper saw local law enforcement running toward the building with guns drawn but said it “did not cross [his] mind” to notify Trump’s security detail about possibly evacuating him.
- The Secret Service special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office didn’t have a radio with him because he’d given it to another agent whose radio was malfunctioning.
- Two days before the rally, local law enforcement alerted the Secret Service about the building the gunman eventually got on being a possible security threat they could not secure.
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A Secret Service agent requested additional equipment and personnel for the event, but those requests were denied. Trump’s Secret Service detail also requested additional assets but were denied.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service said the agency has implemented changes based on its review:
“The U.S. Secret Service has implemented changes to our protective operations including elevating the protective posture of our protectees and bolstering our protective details as appropriate in order to ensure the highest levels of safety and security for those we protect.” However, the Senate committee said the Secret Service had “declined to acknowledge individual areas of responsibility for planning or security as having contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting that day.” In addition, Senate investigators said they received a lot of “heavily redacted” documents from agencies and that they’re still waiting on “key requests” from the FBI; Department of Homeland Security; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and Secret Service. Trump on Wednesday railed against the FBI, accusing them of slow-walking the investigations. “They used to capture people before it even happened…at the upper echelons of the FBI it’s all talk.”
There is bipartisan outrage over the security failures.
“Every single one of those failures was preventable and the consequences of those failures were dire,” Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) told Politico. Read more: |
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Congress poised to avert shutdown
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The House on Wednesday passed a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government at current levels through Dec. 20.
The 341-82 vote included support from 209 Democrats and 132 Republicans. All 82 no votes came from Republicans. Former President Trump made a last-minute push for Republicans to include voting provisions in the spending bill, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declined. The Senate is expected to take up the CR this evening, likely averting a government shutdown only a few weeks out from Election Day. The short-term CR is a blow to Johnson, who was caught between bickering conservative factions and the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government. Republicans worried they’d be blamed for a shutdown if a deal wasn’t reached. -
Johnson tried to pass a six-month stopgap paired with a bill requiring voters show proof of citizenship at the polls. Trump supported the measure, but it failed on the House floor when too many Republicans voted against it. The election security measure was a nonstarter in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but a united GOP might have been able to extract some concessions if the bill had passed.
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Johnson was forced to change the rules just to bring the short-term CR with no election security measure up for a vote because hard-line conservatives threatened to block a procedural vote.
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The suspension of rules means the CR will require a two-thirds vote in the House, so Johnson will need Democratic support for it to pass. That strips Republicans of any negotiating leverage they might have had with Senate Democrats.
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Johnson has promised the House will not approve a single, massive bill to fund the entire government in December, likely setting up another fight over a stopgap funding bill. That breaks with precedent but should appease conservatives, who worried Democrats would load the bill with their own priorities during President Biden’s lame-duck period.
The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell capture the dynamic:
“Wednesday’s vote will be the final legislative action in the House before the election, and it will be symbolic of the disputes that have dogged the House GOP conference over the past 21 months. It has contributed to a pair of Speaker fights, multiple embarrassing failed votes on the floor and infighting that has spilled into the public view.” Read more: |
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“The war that would not end,” by Franklin Foer for The Atlantic. “Republicans and Democrats are living in 2 different Americas,” by Derek Hunter for The Hill. “How to make the federal bureaucracy work better,” by Mick Mulvaney for The Hill. |
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6 days until the vice-presidential debate.
41 days until the 2024 general election.
117 days until Inauguration Day 2025. |
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Wednesday -
MSNBC will air Stephanie Ruhle’s interview with Harris at 7 p.m.
Thursday - Biden and Harris meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
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