Morning Report — Harris, Biden unite; Trump defends his attacks

by Alexis Simendinger - 08/16/24 6:36 AM ET

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Vice President Harris today will campaign in battleground North Carolina as the presidential candidate who wants to enact a federal ban on food and grocery “price gouging.”

That proposal has no imminent chance of becoming law, but it’s among the economic details she’s gradually unveiling to commiserate with voters about their wallet worries without distancing herself from the administration’s record on everything from medical costs to affordable housing for first-time buyers to price tags for tuition and day care.

The New York Times: Here’s what economists say about grocery “price gouging.”

Harris’s basic themes, to be repeated at next week’s Chicago nominating convention, are “security, stability and dignity.”

Former President Trump, who held a rally Wednesday in North Carolina and has lamented that Americans confront high prices for ham sandwiches and bacon, added Cheerios to his mix during remarks with reporters Thursday at his New Jersey golf club.

He blamed Harris and President Biden for inflated prices while adding some of his own economic goals — including lower taxes, higher trade tariffs, less deficit spending and more oil and gas drilling — to his usual improvisational stump speech.

For the next 80-something days, both candidates will rotate through the same handful of states, honing their pledges to steer the country to a better future.

Harris reunited with Biden in Maryland on Thursday for their preconvention baton handoff to tout the administration’s success in negotiating with drug companies to get lower Medicare prescription drugs prices under law.

More on those details, below.

Biden’s endorsement of the vice president as the party’s new nominee appeared both genuine (“She’s going to make one hell of a president”) and replete with references to his many years of governing and legislating (“This time we finally beat Big Pharma”).

He also made his antipathy for Trump clear.

“What’s his name?” he asked a sign-waving audience that chanted “Thank you, Joe!”

“Donald Dump!” Biden added. “We’re just getting started.”

The Hill’s Niall Stanage in The Memo adds his takeaways from the dueling events featuring the vice president, president and former president.

Trump, speaking in New Jersey, was flanked by tables filled with groceries, including cereal, coffee and condiments, to illustrate his planned message that the price of basic goods is too high for many Americans.

“As far as the personal attacks, I’m very angry at [Harris] because of what she’s done to the country,” Trump said.

“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president. And I think it’s very important that we win,” he continued.

“And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird.”

It was only after speaking for roughly 45 minutes that Trump finally turned around and acknowledged the groceries on a table behind him.

“Cheerios, I haven’t seen Cheerios in a long time,” Trump said.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ 🌖 The first of four 2024 supermoons rises next week, providing tantalizing views. Here’s how to watch the lunar spectacles.

▪ ⛓️ Reminder: Americans remain imprisoned abroad, including schoolteacher Marc Fogel, serving a 14-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on a drug charge. He is devastated he was not included in the recent prisoner swap that freed three Americans. Los Angeles hairdresser Ksenia Karelina, a dual citizen, was sentenced Thursday in Russia to 12 years for treason for a donation of about $50 she made to a group supporting Ukraine’s war effort. Journalist Austin Tice, a former Marine, disappeared 12 years ago in Syria. Biden demanded his release Wednesday.

▪ ☕ Steaming coffee: Newly hired Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, whose base annual salary will be $1.6 million, does not have to relocate from his Newport Beach, Calif., home, to run the company, Starbucks says.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Ed Zurga | In February in Kansas City, Mo., abortion rights advocates pushed to get abortion rights on the state ballot in November. This week, Florida and Missouri approved pro-abortion rights ballot initiatives.

CAMPAIGN POLITICS

The growing number of abortion initiatives on state ballots will help Democratic candidates to victory in November, according to House Democrats (The Hill). The issue of reproductive freedom will take center stage next week at Democrats’ four-day nominating convention in Chicago.

Arizona and Missouri this week approved abortion rights supporters’ ballot initiatives and a handful of similar efforts are pending across the country. Voters in all seven states that have had abortion questions before voters since 2022 — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont — have sided with backers of abortion rights.

The furor over restrictive state abortion laws encouraged voters to participate in the 2022 midterm elections in reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Harris and Democratic candidates are running on and advertising about “reproductive freedom” issues and what they describe as GOP threats to families’ decisionmaking and women’s health. Trump, who has held varied positions on abortion over the years and believes the debate has cost conservative candidates, says he favors states’ power to make their own legislative decisions and personally backs exemptions in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother. He has not endorsed proposals for a federal abortion ban.

📉 Lots could happen before November, according to optimists, realists and the superstitious among them. There’s a fierce urgency among Democrats about not being overconfident.

“Every presidential campaign in modern history has had to go through an unanticipated scandal, crisis, or world event and at some point, that political law is going to happen to Kamala Harris’s campaign,” Fernand Amandi, a veteran strategist who served as an adviser on the Obama campaign, told The Hill’s Amie Parnes. “And until she passes that stress test, and I’m confident she will, this election is still wide open. Anyone who is measuring the drapes at the White House needs a serious reality check,” Amandi added.

👉 The Hill: GOP leaders push House members to raise more cash to combat voters’ Harris enthusiasm.

2024 Roundup

▪ Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) agreed Thursday to an Oct. 1 debate hosted by CBS News in New York City with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). Walz announced his commitment Wednesday. The Harris campaign has committed to debate Trump Sept. 10 with ABC News as the host and suggested a second presidential debate, details to be determined. Trump has proposed three debates, envisioning two in swing state Pennsylvania.

▪ A Senate seat to be vacated Aug. 20 by convicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) will be filled for five months by George Helmy as an appointment by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D). Helmy previously served as Murphy’s chief of staff and for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D). Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) is running against Republican hotelier Curtis Bashaw for the Senate seat. Kim is widely expected to win in November.

▪ The Secret Service deployed more security and agents to protect Trump, temporarily pulling personnel from Biden’s protective contingent.

▪ Trump and his lawyers, in a letter released Thursday, sought to delay New York sentencing from September until after the election for 34 criminal convictions handed down in May, arguing that beyond “naked election-interference objectives” there’s no need “to rush.”

▪ There have been more pro-Trump political ads bombarding the public on TV than pro-Harris ads, although her campaign and supporters are spending more money, according to a report this week from the nonpartisan Wesleyan Media Project. Since mid-July, the Trump campaign has heavily ramped up advertising. The predominant issues mentioned in pro-Trump ads are immigration, public safety, prescription drugs and opioids. The pro-Harris ads touch on health care, affordable housing, abortion and prescription drugs, according to the report.

▪ Pro-Palestinian groups say tens of thousands of people from nearby states will travel by bus to Illinois to demonstrate in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention next week.

▪ In a letter, two Democratic lawmakers this week wrote to the Pentagon seeking to ensure that the military is not swept up in the election and politics.

▪ Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to reach both Harris and Trump to try to leverage a Cabinet post if either is elected, according to multiple news accounts. Political analysts currently see Kennedy’s third-party candidacy as potentially drawing more votes from Trump than the Democratic ticket.

▪ Will Lina Khan, commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, remain in that role if Harris is elected president? Some major Democratic donors would like to see a replacement but such a move would risk turmoil with progressives, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports.

WHERE AND WHEN

Morning Report’s Kristina Karisch is off this week.

The House and Senate are out until after Labor Day.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. Biden will meet in the Oval Office at 11:15 a.m. with civil rights leaders, community members and elected officials to sign a proclamation designating the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument in Illinois. The president will depart the White House at 2 p.m. for Camp David, Md., and arrive a half hour later.

The vice president will campaign in Raleigh, N.C., at 2:45 p.m. and return to Washington early this evening.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Seth Perlman | Medicare beneficiaries by 2026 will realize savings announced Thursday for 10 common medications. The lower prices were negotiated by the Biden administration under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

ADMINISTRATION

💊 Some Medicare drug prices will be cheaper in 2026: The administration Thursday announced lower prices for 10 common or costly drugs under Medicare, which were selected for price negotiation between the government and pharmaceutical companies under the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022.

Estimated first-year federal savings: $6 billion. One note: Biden said the estimated federal savings could be spent in the future on child care, health care or education, “or it could simply reduce the deficit.”

Lower prices for the first tranche of medications are expected to save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs in 2026 for Medicare beneficiaries, with additional help for many other patients, according to the Health and Human Services Department. The list of the 10 drugs is HERE and HERE.

Additional drugs are to be selected annually as part of Medicare’s negotiation program: Up to 15 additional drugs covered under Part D will be negotiated in each of 2025 and 2026, followed by up to 20 additional medications annually in 2027 and beyond.

The Hill’s health care reporting team unpacks how the negotiations worked and why drug companies came to the table and didn’t walk away. Reluctant throughout the process, pharmaceutical companies now say price agreements won’t impair their bottom lines.

The industry quickly criticized the new prices Thursday, saying they would not help patients. Bristol Myers Squibb, the maker of the blood thinner Eliquis, one of the drugs subject to negotiations, said the drug’s new price “does not reflect the substantial clinical and economic value of this essential medicine,” The New York Times reported.

ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

STILL TALKING: The Biden administration, eager to keep Israel-Hamas cease-fire talks going while the Middle East braces at the same time for a threatened revenge attack by Iran against Israel, put a positive note Thursday on the tenor of discussions in Qatar. Negotiations continue today, although Hamas is not in attendance.

Following Thursday’s discussions, Basem Naim, a spokesperson and former health minister of Hamas, told Newsweek that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately blocking a ceasefire deal and is instead seeking to expand the conflict across the region.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby described a “promising start,” although the effort has gone on for months between warring parties still at a standoff in Gaza. Local health authorities say the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 40,000. The goals remain to secure a lasting ceasefire, free hostages and get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza safely.

Public furor about the death toll will be evident next week during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where busloads of pro-Palestinian demonstrators say they will protest against Israel’s war strategy and the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s killing of civilians to get to Hamas.

“The remaining obstacles can be overcome and we must bring this process to a close,” Kirby repeated.

Israel’s military today reported the continuation of its air strikes in Gaza amid the discussions in Qatar, with attacks on 30 targets over the course of the day.

CIA Director William Burns and White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk are in Doha for the U.S., along with officials from Qatar and Egypt and an Israeli negotiating team led by Mossad chief David Barnea. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Washington today.

OPINION

■ How the Biden-Harris economy left most Americans behind, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.

■ Congress must recognize Russia’s genocide in Ukraine, by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), opinion contributors, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Natacha Pisarenko | Actor Tom Cruise leaped from Stade de France in Paris during the closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics Sunday as a handoff to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

And finally … 👏👏👏 Bravo to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz! We asked readers to puzzle over what went up and down in recent news headlines.

Readers who vaulted into the winner’s circle with four correct answers: Darryl Hartley-Leonard, Blair Marasco, Casey Teeters, Richard E. Baznick, Gary Kalian, Benedict P. Kuehne, Mary Anne McEnery, Lynn Gardner, Andre Larroque, Tim Burrack, Kenneth W. Zell, Randall S. Patrick, Pam Manges, Kelly Colmer, Tom Chabot, Ted Tio, Larry Anderson, Joe Atchue, Nicholas Genimatas, Janice Croasmun, Stan Wasser, Don Swanson, Jeremy R. Serwer, Paul Quillen, Stewart Baker, Linda Field, Darin Crisp, Sharon Banitt, Penny Groux, Mark Roeddiger, Colin McKee, David Tapley, Carmine Petracca, Frank Garza, Elizabeth Prystas, William Chitam, Steve James, Carol B. Webster and Jack Barshay.

With a dramatic stunt conceived to hand off the 2024 Summer Olympics to the 2028 games in Los Angeles, actor Tom Cruise pulled off a controlled fall from a great height Sunday in Paris.

Investors and economic analysts pounced Wednesday on the consumer price index, which moderated enough in the past year to stoke optimism that the Federal Reserve will soon lower interest rates.

Voters gave Vice President Harris higher marks than former President Trump in honesty among quiz options drawn from poll results published Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Two astronauts who ventured to the International Space Station in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner for what was to be eight days might be able to return to Earth in February, maybe. NASA said this week their return date is unclear. The duo remains stuck in space because of technical problems.

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger (asimendinger@digital-staging.thehill.com) and Kristina Karisch (kkarisch@digital-staging.thehill.com). Follow us on social media platform X: (@asimendinger and @kristinakarisch) and suggest this newsletter to friends!