Morning Report — Harris gains toehold against Trump with two months to go

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 09/03/24 6:30 AM ET

Urgent emails, rallies in multiple battleground states per day and endless campaign ads tell the story:

“We’re in the most important stretch of this race,” Vice President Harris’s campaign reminded supporters Monday.

SIXTY-THREE DAYS TO ELECTION DAY: As September begins, it’s worth taking a minute to sort through new polling. The state of the race between Harris and former President Trump nationally remains much the same as before the Democratic Convention: extremely close. Voters in swing states will ultimately choose the next president.

So far, Trump enjoys national resilience in polls when it comes to trust to handle the economy and immigration. Harris, however, is doing better in surveys than was President Biden before he left the race in July. Voters perceive her as qualified to serve and mentally and physically fit to be president.

“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and she’s going to build on it,” Biden said at a Pittsburgh union hall while appearing with Harris for their first joint campaign event since her nomination. “I’ll be on the sidelines, but I’ll do everything I can to help.”

As the incumbent president, Biden did not present himself to voters as the underdog. Harris, on the other hand, has made that point from the start of her campaign. “In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states,” campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon wrote in a Sunday memo. “This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin.”

“BLUE WALL” FORTIFICATIONS?: Harris slammed Trump over tax cuts and overtime benefits during an event in Detroit before flying to Pennsylvania Monday to appear with Biden, a son of Scranton, Pa., who says he’s the most pro-labor president in history.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), the vice president’s running mate, warned Monday in Milwaukee that Trump and his administration would undo progress for unions, seniors and middle-class Americans. A fender bender involving part of Walz’s motorcade made news, but the governor was uninjured.

Harris will campaign in Portsmouth, N.H., Wednesday and travel to Pittsburgh Thursday. Biden will return to Wisconsin Thursday and headline an event Friday in Michigan.

Neither Trump nor GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) appeared on the campaign trail on Labor Day.

▪ The New York Times: Trump and Harris gear up for the campaign’s final stretch.

▪ Newsweek: How Harris compares with Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 ahead of a key election period.

▪ Politico: The state of the presidential race as of Labor Day.

The Hill and Decision Desk HQD election model shows Harris with a 55 percent chance of winning as of Aug. 26. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain “toss-ups,” but with Harris improving on Biden’s probabilities in each of these states, while Michigan moves from “toss-up” to “lean Democratic” and North Carolina moves from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”

The Democratic nominee is polling slightly ahead of the former president in Nevada and Georgia, but trailing Trump in Arizona, according to an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released last week.

The RealClearPolitics average has Harris ahead of Trump by 1.8 percentage points, neck and neck.

FiveThirtyEight shows Harris leading Trump by 3.2 percentage points as of Monday.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found Harris with a four-point edge over Trump nationally, 50 percent to 46 percent, among Americans who plan to vote in November, roughly consistent with a survey last month. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

UP NEXT: Harris’s campaign today plans a bus tour with Democratic surrogates beginning in Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., neighborhood to focus on reproductive rights, an issue Democrats believe will be a winner for the party in November. The former president, who has said privately that abortion restrictions have cost some candidates in his party, is campaigning on a pledge, if elected, to get insurance companies or the government to pay for in vitro fertilization treatments. He also said he opposes Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy as too restrictive, implying he supports a November ballot measure in his state that would overturn it. His efforts to find middle ground on abortion and reproductive issues to woo independent and swing voters, plus moderate Republicans, has been criticized by some conservatives.

Trump’s first event this week is expected to be a ticketed Fox News town hall taped Wednesday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg and broadcast that night. It will be moderated by Sean Hannity.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:

▪ 🚖 A robotaxi is set to be introduced Oct. 10 by Tesla, appropriately at a Hollywood studio. Other companies are betting on airborne taxis, too (Bloomberg “The Big Take” podcast).

▪ 🎓 Enrollment by Black students dropped at some elite colleges and universities. Racial diversity in the new academic year is under a microscope in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action.

▪ 🏫 Why did public satisfaction with K-12 education rise in the past year despite few systemic changes, according to a new Gallup poll? Here’s a clue: storytellers, as in politicians and the news media.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Hill / Graphic by Courtney Jones; picture by Greg Nash | Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be joined by colleagues Monday when the House and Senate returns to Washington.

CONGRESS

LAWMAKERS RETURN from the summer recess Monday for a three-week sprint, during which lawmakers will face key legislative deadlines before departing again for campaign season. But political pressure and considerations could complicate the path to addressing those must-pass items. The Hill’s Emily Brooks breaks down six key things to watch in Congress this September, from government funding to a Veterans Affairs budget shortfall.

Government funding is especially high on lawmakers’ to-do lists, as they have until Sept. 30 to pass legislation to prevent a funding lapse. While the election could make the chances of a shutdown less likely, The Hill’s Aris Folley reports leaders in both chambers have their work cut out for them amid deep divides on spending.

When it comes to funding, the Department of Veterans Affairs has a big problem: Look for GOP-led hearings to probe a potentially huge $3 billion budget shortfall at the Veterans Affairs Department, which could impact disability benefits this fall. Lawmakers have written to the administration alleging mismanagement and failure to come clean with Congress before July. (Roll Call).

DOJ SPYING: Beginning in 2017 under Trump, Justice Department (DOJ) officials secretly collected the phone and email records of roughly a dozen people connected to Congress, including lawmakers and aides who routinely deal with anonymous whistle-blowers. In an effort to see who might be coming forward with confidential information, the Trump White House sought to identify people inside the government who were sharing details of the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia in 2016. Some of the aides learned only recently that their communications were collected. Now, whistleblower advocacy groups are trying to pry more information out of the DOJ, in the hopes of shaming the agency into ending the practice of secretly collecting congressional communications records (The New York Times).

Roll Call: Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) is likely to fill an open seat on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee.

WHERE AND WHEN

The House and Senate return to Washington Monday.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 11 a.m. in the Oval Office. Biden will speak at 2 p.m. from the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about investing in America.

The vice president is in Washington and has no public events.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2:30 p.m. and will include Tom Perez, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Julie Carr Smyth | Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), pictured as he kicked off his reelection campaign, remains in a close contest.

MORE IN CAMPAIGNS

Harris and Trump, competing for Pennsylvania votes, are thinking about steel and industry workers. “President Trump kept his promise to strengthen America’s steel industry through tariffs that sparked new investments totaling nearly $15 billion, resulted in about 4,000 new jobs, and created or expanded more than 65 new domestic steel and aluminum projects,” the Republican National Committee said in a Labor Day statement.

Harris, during a campaign event in Pittsburgh Monday, said, “U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated, and I will always have the backs of America’s steelworkers.” Biden has opposed Nippon Steel’s December deal to purchase U.S. Steel.

HARRIS-TRUMP DEBATE IN A WEEK: The first (and perhaps only) debate agreed to by the two major presidential contenders is scheduled in Philadelphia Sept. 10 and will air on ABC News at 9 p.m. EDT. Moderators are Linsey Davis and David Muir.

REPUBLICANS HAD BEEN FAVORED this year to win the 2025 majority in the upper chamber, but Harris’s nomination scrambled the playing field for both parties. While the Senate GOP had hoped to pick up Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, plus other seats, that goal may be slipping away with 63 days remaining in the election cycle.

The Hill’s Al Weaver looks at the top five Senate seats that could flip in November.

2024 Roundup:

▪ Harris sees signs of surging enthusiasm among young voters. Her campaign wants to turn that energy into votes.

▪ Amid Harris’ policy focus on price gouging, economists acknowledge some unusual activity in the food production and grocery sectors leading to some bold proposals about how to correct it.

▪ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on ballots, even after he suspended his independent presidential campaign, poses a danger to Trump’s campaign in key states.

▪ Kennedy and Trump have formed an unlikely alliance. It followed a six-week crush of behind-the-scenes discussions, embarrassing missteps, secret meetings and private misgivings.

▪ In the fight for Congress, candidate rematches could sway the results.

▪ Way behind in polls of female voters, Trump found an audience that liked him with Moms for Liberty.

ELSEWHERE

COURTS

TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPING, SLIPPING, INTO THE FUTURE: Special Counsel Jack Smith tossed the Trump prosecution calendar to Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan Friday as within her discretion, a shift. And in New York, the former president is trying to harness the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling to delay his Sept. 18 sentencing for his May conviction in the hush money case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) took no position on Trump’s request for a sentencing delay, instead saying he would defer to the judge (The Hill and Politico).

HUNTER BIDEN’S TAX TRIAL — set to start in Los Angeles this week — may not be the political event it would have been if his father, Joe Biden, were still running for reelection, but he will still be in the spotlight as he faces multiple counts of tax fraud and tax evasion. If found guilty, the younger Biden could face up to 22 years behind bars. The embattled son is accused of withholding at least $1.4 million between 2016 to 2019, in the throes of his addiction to crack cocaine following his brother’s death from brain cancer. He has since paid the taxes owed.

Biden’s drug addiction was a focal point of his earlier trial on felony gun charges, which marked the first criminal conviction of a sitting president’s child. The sordid details of that time in Biden’s life are expected to play a similarly significant role in his tax trial. He’s pleaded not guilty (The Hill).

© The Associated Press / Ohad Zwigenberg | Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv during the weekend urged release of hostages held in Gaza and seek a ceasefire.

INTERNATIONAL

NO CEASE-FIRE: Biden said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal. The U.S. is ramping up pressure on the Israeli leader to reach a cease-fire agreement after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza over the weekend (The Hill).

Netanyahu underscored his refusal to agree to a truce that would involve Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza or lead to a permanent halt to the fighting (The New York Times).

“What message would it send Hamas,” to cede under pressure following the deaths of more hostages, the prime minister asked rhetorically Monday. “Slay hostages and you’ll get concessions?”

Virginia is flying its flags at half-staff today, in honor of U.S. citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of six hostages held in Gaza who were killed in recent days. Biden called Goldberg-Polin’s parents, who addressed the Democratic convention last month, to offer condolences. Speaking Sunday to families of U.S. hostages, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden is considering presenting Israel and Hamas a final proposal for a deal later this week, Axios reports. Meanwhile in Israel, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets Sunday night to demand Netanyahu agree to a cease-fire (The Hill).

▪ The Washington Post: The United Kingdom is suspending some arms exports to Israel, citing “a clear risk” that the arms might be used in “serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

▪ ABC News: Some 160,000 Gaza children received their first vaccination for polio on Sunday and Monday.

▪ NPR: Voters in two states in eastern Germany Sunday delivered a far-right party its best result since World War II. Here’s what the election results mean for the country’s political future.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Antiestablishment populism is on the rise in Europe, fueled not just by migration and economic and security fears, but by a deeper trend: Eroding confidence in government.

▪ The Hill: Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and missiles at Kyiv as children in Ukraine prepared to return to school.

▪ The Hill: A Venezuelan judge reportedly ordered the arrest of opposition candidate Edmundo González Monday amid ongoing controversy over the country’s election. Although the U.S. has argued there’s “overwhelming evidence” that he won, the ruling party’s Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner.

OPINION

■ Trump’s marijuana misstep, by Charles Fain Lehman, opinion contributor, The Wall Street Journal.

■ The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is poverty pay. It’s time to raise it, by The Los Angeles Times editorial board.

■ America’s luck on unemployment may soon run out, by Peter Coy, opinion writer, The New York Times.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Jorgen Ree Wiig, Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries | A friendly, world renowned white beluga whale known as Hvaldimir, which first appeared in Norway in April 2019 wearing a harness, was found dead Saturday in a Norwegian harbor and will be autopsied.

And finally … 🌊 Norwegians were not the only ones charmed by a 2,700-lb. Beluga whale who enjoyed people, responded to hand signals, might have been an escaped Russian spy and made the country’s fish-farm neighborhoods his home since 2019. The celebrity whale was found dead off the coast of Norway Saturday by a marine biologist who tracked the creature known as Hvaldimir for ocean-advocacy group Marine Mind.

“He meant more than I can put into words, to me, to the team, and to thousands of people whose lives he had profoundly impacted,” said scientist and Marine Mind CEO and founder Sebastian Strand, adding that Hvaldimir was known to be alive as recently as Friday. An autopsy was performed Monday.

“No matter what now, a beloved friend of many is gone,” Strand said.

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