Morning Report — Harris, Trump seek debate boost, Pennsylvania votes

Who has a better tax plan for the middle-class, a cure for school shootings, experience to end world conflicts? 

Vice President Harris warned Wednesday during a campaign event in New Hampshire that fiscal ideas promoted by former President Trump would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt. 

The Boston Globe: “The campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state,” a former Trump campaign vice chair in Massachusetts said this week.

The former president, appearing in Pennsylvania hours later during a town hall hosted by Fox News, criticized Harris as “dangerous” because she has reversed her 2019 opposition to extracting oil and gas using fracking, a technique important to Pennsylvania’s economy but criticized by environmentalists.

“She wants no fracking. And she said it 100 times, ‘There will be no fracking,’” Trump said, repeating critiques he deploys during campaign rallies. 

“Look, this is, this is a woman who is dangerous. I don’t think too smart, but let’s see,” he added.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), who campaigned for Republican Nikki Haley during the GOP presidential primary and backs Trump in the general election, criticized the vice president, saying Harris’s message to voters is, “‘Hey, I’m not Joe Biden.’” 

“That’s literally all Kamala Harris has right now. That’s not enough to cross the finish line in these swing states come Nov. 5,” Sununu said during a Bloomberg TV and radio interview Wednesday.

Harris will be in Pittsburgh today and will hover in the state as she prepares for Tuesday’s much anticipated debate with Trump, moderated by ABC News. The two will meet for the first time in Philadelphia for the event. The former president, who prefers improvisation to debate rehearsals, today will address a luncheon audience of executives and financial experts at the Economic Club of New York. The audience wants to hear in greater detail about the tax, spending and tariff proposals Trump has in mind, if elected. 

Ahead of next week’s faceoff, the two candidates are wielding attack ads, deploying social media, unveiling competing policy proposals and plotting strategies to try to inspire voter turnout.  

Harris went off script in New Hampshire, where her planned topic was a proposed capital gains tax rate and business incentives for entrepreneurs (see reporting, below), to respond to a school shooting Wednesday. A mass shooting near Athens, Ga., left two students and two teachers dead and a 14-year-old male in custody and charged with murder as an adult. Law enforcement had previously interviewed the suspect a year ago after receiving reports of threatening posts, but did not have enough evidence to take further action (WJBF and The Washington Post). 

“It does not have to be this way,” the vice president said. 

President Biden, in a written statement, repeated his call to Congress to approve pending “common-sense gun safety legislation.”

Trump, reacting to the Georgia news, promised to “heal” the world. 

“It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better,” he said. “We’re going to heal our world. We’re going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence.”

The New York Times: Trump questioned the fairness of his upcoming debate with Harris. “I’m going to let her talk,” he added.

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LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS & CAMPAIGNS

Democrats have won Pennsylvania in every presidential election since 1988, save one. The exception was 2016.

The Hill: Pennsylvania is shaping up as a critical challenge for Harris.

In the hunt for 19 electoral votes, Harris and Trump are camped out in Pennsylvania because victory depends on what voters there decide. The nominees are scheduled to hold their much anticipated (and perhaps only) debate Tuesday night in Philadelphia.

The Hill: Muted microphones are in store at next week’s debate when it’s not a candidate’s turn to speak.

The two nominees are tied in Pennsylvania, according to a new CNN poll. President Biden, who was born in Scranton, Pa., defeated the former president there in 2020 by 80,555 votes. Hillary Clinton narrowly lost to Trump in the Keystone State in 2016. Analysts believe Harris will have to assemble a cushion in the state by November if she hopes to surpass Trump’s support, which has been undercounted in past polls.

Harris stands at 84 percent approval among Black voters in Pennsylvania, according to the CNN survey. But just 56 percent of Black voters there said they are deeply motivated to vote compared with 72 percent of white voters.

MIDDLE EAST POLITICS are playing a major role in the election, as Harris faces pressure from the left and pro-Palestinian voters, The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes in The Memo. So far, Harris has used rhetoric that is a notch or two more cognizant of the suffering in Gaza than Biden, but she hasn’t suggested any change in policy. Meanwhile, Trump is alleging that the overall situation in the region is symptomatic of Biden-Harris “weakness.” 

Some activists are holding out hope that Harris could take a harder line on Israel once potentially in the White House, reports The Hill’s Alex Gangitano, and they are ready to treat her candidacy the same as Biden’s — with protests at campaign stops and, for some, efforts to get progressives to vote against her in November.

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ZOOM IN

ADMINISTRATION

STEEL MERGER? Biden is preparing to announce that he will formally block Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel on national security grounds. Without the sale, U.S. Steel warns that thousands of jobs are at risk. The acquisition has been under investigation by the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for potential national security implications. 

The deal, announced in December, has attracted criticism from lawmakers across the political spectrum. Biden said U.S. Steel should remain American-owned, and Trump also said he would block the sale. Harris agreed with both Monday. The United Steelworkers union has opposed the deal, seen as a pivotal issue in Pennsylvania, a key swing state where U.S. Steel is headquartered (The Washington Post and Bloomberg News).

Meanwhile, Nippon Steel said Wednesday that U.S. citizens would make up the majority of the board of directors if the deal goes through. The company said three of the board’s independent directors would be U.S. citizens, as would “core senior management members” (NBC News).

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) objected Wednesday to U.S. Steel’s warnings that blocking a sale risked a loss of jobs in Pittsburgh. “I’m calling bull—- on U.S. Steel executives,” the senator said in a press release while backing members of the United Steelworkers union. 

RUSSIAN MISINFORMATION: The Biden administration condemned Russian efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. election Wednesday, and the Justice Department announced it seized 32 web domains the country has used for its covert campaigns. The departments of Justice, State and Treasury announced joint charges against two employees of the Russian-backed media network RT accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Russia vowed, “There will be a response.” 

Dubbed “Doppelganger,” the Russian effort employed a mix of creating sites with slightly different web addresses that mimic U.S. news outlets, including one appearing to be The Washington Post, and are plastered with pro-Russian narratives. It also created other media brands to funnel Russian content (The Hill).

“As of noon today, we’ve seized those sites, rendered them inoperable, and made clear to the world what they are: Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

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ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

SENIOR OFFICIALS from the U.S. and Israel held a virtual meeting Tuesday to discuss how to ease tensions with Lebanon and prevent war between Israel and Hezbollah, Axios reports. The meeting, initiated by the Biden administration, came 10 days after Israel and Hezbollah engaged in the most extensive exchange of fire since the group attacked Israel in October.

Meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper reports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively torpedoed a draft hostage and cease-fire deal in July by introducing several new, 11th-hour demands. The report supports charges often leveled at the prime minister of purposefully prolonging the war for political benefit. Far-right members of the governing coalition have pledged to bring down the government should Netanyahu end the war.

UKRAINE’S ADVANCE into Russia’s Kursk region has so far failed to achieve one of its main objectives: diverting Russian troops from the front lines of eastern Ukraine in a bid to reshape the battlefield. But the surprise August incursion has dealt a blow to Russia’s image of strength, writes The Hill’s Brad Dress, destroying military assets and taking territory and prisoners for negotiations. But the failure of the more crucial goal to divert troops has opened the door to criticism of Kyiv’s military decisions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to speak before the United Nations General Assembly in New York later this month, where he is expected to press allies for more military assistance. 

Bloomberg News: Zelensky is set to nominate Andrii Sybiha, a senior diplomat and former ambassador to Turkey, to become foreign minister as part of the biggest Cabinet reshuffle since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

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THE CLOSER

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