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In today’s issue:
- Presidential rivals woo voters where they live
- Hurricane relief turns political
- The Supreme Court weighs in on abortion
- A crash-site inspection — in space!
Vice President Harris today will appear on ABC’s “The View,” Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show and CBS’s “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” seeking to expand her support among younger, college-educated supporters.
Harris is eager to revive a diverse under-45 voting coalition that helped Democrats win the White House in 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2020. It’s why her communications are aimed at broadcast news consumers and micro targeted to audiences interested in entertainment and celebrities. She is perpetually issue-focused and also biographical, an avowed foe of former President Trump and a friend of the working class, the middle-class and fence-sitters.
Harris appeared Monday on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” where she declined to say why the administration didn’t act sooner to curb an influx of immigrants, while her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night ABC talk show on Monday. Trump will seek to woo Latino voters during a televised Univision town hall event tonight, while Harris will do the same on Thursday.
▪ The Hill’s The Memo: Harris’s media blitz won’t silence critics.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Where “60 Minutes” and “Call Her Daddy” fit into Harris’s unorthodox media strategy.
She recently ran campaign ads in South Florida near Trump’s stomping grounds, just to get in his head, while the former president will arrive in California on Saturday to skewer her in her progressive home state, but aimed at an audience far outside the Left Coast. Trump today will court voters in President Biden’s hometown: Scranton, Pa.
In the final few weeks until Election Day, Trump has turned to billionaire Elon Musk as a celebrity influencer among voters drawn to wealthy, iconoclastic entrepreneurs. Harris seeks to amp up the party’s excitement factor with former President Obama, who will appear in Pittsburgh on Thursday to help the Democratic ticket in must-win Pennsylvania.
The Obama of 2008 told Pennsylvania voters they had a choice between more of the same and change.
“Change does not come easy because the status quo does not relinquish power,” Obama said 16 years ago. “So we’re going to have to fight for it.”
This year’s theme from the former president, who selected Biden as his vice president, is a calculated twist: Change means turning the page away from Biden’s predecessor, not rejecting the administration in office. Change is synonymous with a new steward for continued policies. Obama’s theme years ago was “hope.” Harris’s is “joy.” There is a through-line.
“My opponents have said these are just pretty words,” Obama told voters in 2008. “But the reason you need hope and faith is because things are tough.”
BOB’S SMART TAKE:
Can Obama be a closer for Harris?
The Hill’s Amie Parnes wrote an insightful story that raises that important question as Democrats grow more antsy about whether Harris can win on Nov. 5. Obama is popular among Democrats and independents, and both he and Michelle Obama were the showstoppers at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer.
Obama’s record as a closer is mixed, however. At various times during the 2016 cycle, Obama said he did not believe Trump would become president. He noted that being commander in chief is “not hosting a talk show or a reality show.”
A month before the election, Obama made that same claim on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” It didn’t age well.
Eight years later, most of the Democratic establishment is not taking the former president lightly. Turnout will decide this election, and being overconfident is the kiss of death. Obama will be making the case for Harris a lot this month, and his closing argument is sure to be different than it was in 2016.
The Hill: Harris has been warning voters that a possible Trump administration poses threats to Americans’ healthcare system writ large. Her campaign focus, which goes beyond reproductive healthcare, is intended to drive voters young and old to the polls.
The popular podcast “Call Her Daddy,” with an audience that skews female and young, chatted with Harris for a 45-minute episode Sunday night that concentrated on reproductive and women’s rights. “Call her Daddy” also invited Trump to join the podcast. In one viral moment, Harris questioned GOP criticism about her lack of biological children, declaring “this is not the 1950s anymore.” Harris also called Republican vice presidential candidate Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s past remarks about “childless cat ladies” “mean and mean-spirited.”
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ Category 5 Hurricane Milton is projected to be “horrific” for the already Helene-battered Tampa Bay region of the Sunshine State beginning Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, which is not mincing words this morning: “Milton poses an extremely serious threat to Florida and residents are urged to follow the orders of local officials.” Rattled Floridians are taking evacuation orders seriously as Milton churns through the Gulf of Mexico this morning with 155 mph sustained winds. The Tampa region could see storm surge of 15 feet and at least a foot of rain in some areas as the hurricane moves across land.
▪ What steers a storm? Slight wobbles in the wind and pressure could shift Milton’s target.
▪ Biden, visiting Milwaukee today, plans to unveil a new federal rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that requires the replacement within a decade of water lines containing lead — a clean drinking water achievement Biden and Harris tout.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press | Julia Demaree Nikhinson
TRUMP’S REFUSAL to accept his 2020 election loss is back in the headlines, putting an issue that could be problematic for the former president front and center in the closing weeks of the campaign. Harris has not made the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy nearly as central to her campaign as Biden did, but Trump’s unwillingness to let go of his defeat or even acknowledge it — and the reluctance of many Republicans to break with the former president on the topic — has given Democrats an opening to appeal to voters wary of backing the GOP nominee.
“We can say with absolute certainty that Trump and his campaign do not want this to be a topic of conversation,” said Jim Kessler, a co-founder of the left-center think tank Third Way. “They do not want this in the news cycle at all and they feel it does damage. And it does damage because it’s a reminder to people of the chaos that he brings and that he denies the obvious truth.”
HURRICANE POLITICS: The intensification of Hurricane Milton will pose a serious test for the Biden-Harris administration, which has already been stretched by the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Biden on Monday signed an emergency declaration for Florida, citing more than three dozen counties that could be impacted. The stakes are high for Harris, who has a higher favorability rating than Trump but trails him on the trait of “leadership” in some battleground states.
“If there are any shortfalls in the National Guard’s or FEMA’s plans to help those states that are in the path of Milton, Trump will be viewed as someone who will say, ‘I told you so,’” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, using an abbreviation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “Trump could absolutely take advantage of that if they haven’t planned it all the way through. It’s really going to be a test. … We’re talking about trying to convince small amounts of independent voters to go one way or another.”
Trump is already trying to make the Biden administration’s response to Helene a defining issue of the final month of the campaign, and he’s getting support from some corners. But FEMA Director Deanne Criswell accused Trump of spreading false information about the federal relief effort. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Sunday said politicization of disaster relief has become a “distraction.”
▪ NBC News: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday did not commit to calling Congress back into session before the election after Biden pressed congressional leaders about potential funding shortfalls in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
▪ The New York Times: A pileup of natural disasters across the country in the past two weeks is straining the availability of FEMA staff members to respond to devastation from Hurricane Helene.
2024 ELECTION ROUNDUP:
A new national New York Times/Siena College poll finds Harris with a slim lead over Trump. Voters are more likely to see her, not Trump, as a break from the status quo.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Trump — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.
In Ohio, Bernie Moreno and Republicans are attempting to narrow the gap against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) as they try to nab one of the most contested races in the battle for the Senate majority.
Asked about gun violence in their debate last week, Vance and Walz both focused their answers on school shootings, an issue that often dominates the headlines but represents a tiny fraction of American deaths from firearms.
In California, a baby boomer paradise retirement community erupted in red-blue political strife, from dueling newspaper columns to a fitness-center fracas. The solution? A “Civility Task Force.”
Harris rarely points out the fact that she would be the first female president or the first Black or Indian woman to hold the job. Walz embraces it.
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will convene a pro forma session at 9 a.m. The Senate will hold a pro forma session at 2:30 p.m.
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will receive briefings at 10 a.m. about federal responses to Hurricane Helene and preparedness for Hurricane Milton. He will travel to Milwaukee, Wis., to discuss lead pipe replacements, the economy and jobs at 12:45 p.m. Biden will travel to the Philadelphia area for a 6:45 p.m. event supporting the reelection of Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and fly back to the White House tonight.
Candidate schedules this week: Harris today is in New York City appearing live on ABC’s The View; The Howard Stern Show; and CBS’s The Late Show. On Wednesday, Harris heads to Nevada overnight. She will hold a campaign event in Las Vegas on Thursday before traveling to Arizona. The vice president will be in Arizona Friday before returning to Washington, D.C. Trump will appear tonight on Univision for a town hall event. He will campaign Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Scranton, Pa., and in Reading, Pa., at 7 p.m. On Friday, Trump will hold a 1 p.m. rally in Aurora, Colo. On Saturday, the former president will challenge Harris in her home state with an appearance in Coachella, Calif. Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance today will be in Detroit at 2 p.m. and in Johnstown, Pa., at 1 p.m. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) today will headline three campaign receptions in Reno, Nev., and head to Sacramento, Calif., for a campaign reception and to meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Walz this week will do a series of Hispanic and local media interviews.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press | Abdel Kareem Hana
Israel on Monday held memorials against a backdrop of continued fighting on the first anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed 1,200 people. The anniversary caps a year of profound loss for both Israelis and Palestinians, amid a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that has become the deadliest in a century of conflict between Arabs and Jews.
More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s devastating counterattack, and roughly 100 hostages remain in Gaza. As Israel expands its attacks north into Lebanon, hundreds have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency — and are seeking shelter across the country.
Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday, forcing Israelis into bomb shelters. The rocket fire came hours after the Israeli military said it launched strikes in Gaza to thwart such an attack.
▪ The Hill: The Treasury Department announced Monday it would be sanctioning part of Hamas’s funding network.
▪ The New York Times: As war in the Middle East spreads, the original conflict between Israel and Hamas has persisted. This is why.
▪ The Hill: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
▪ Politico: Every administration has to readjust to respond to world events, but the Israel-Hamas conflict has been particularly disruptive to Biden’s other foreign policy efforts.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press | Mariam Zuhaib
THE SUPREME COURT decided not to hear arguments in a case that could have provided an answer about whether Texas’s abortion ban conflicts with a federal emergency care law. The decision is a significant victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and comes just three months after the court dismissed a similar case involving Idaho, criticized as a preelection punt that offered no clarity on the issue.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s state Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban, halting a ruling from a trial court judge from just one week ago that had overturned the law.
ON THE FIRST DAY of its new term, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two lower-profile cases involving unemployment benefits and pet food companies. The justices also released a list of cases they declined to take up, including:
A case to restore a lawsuit by Pennsylvania Republicans that challenged executive actions expanding voting access on the basis that only state legislatures can regulate federal elections.
A challenge by the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to court rulings that forced the platform to turn over data on Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith.
A Georgia Republican’s far-fetched lawsuit against Fox News accusing the company of racketeering and conspiring to elect his opponent in a 2022 bid for Congress.
OPINION
■ Joe Biden’s Oct. 7 legacy of failure, by William McGurn, columnist, The Wall Street Journal.
■ Meta oversight board’s big leap will make a small splash, by Dave Lee, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press | NASA
And finally … 🛰️ It’s an interstellar crash site inspection.
Two years after NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which sent a golf cart-sized spacecraft crashing into the asteroid Dimorphos, the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday sent up a spacecraft to check if it worked.
DART’s mission was a test of concept to prove, if an asteroid one day threatens to hit Earth, it could be pushed out of harm’s way.
In September 2022, DART shortened Dimorphos’s orbit around Didymos, a bigger asteroid, by 33 minutes, researchers said. Now, the ESA spacecraft Hera will survey Dimorphos’s mineral makeup and the dust surrounding it and help scientists understand how big the DART crater is, which could help in future asteroid deflections.
But don’t expect updates quite yet: Hera isn’t set to reach the asteroids until the fall of 2026.
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