Morning Report

Morning Report — Presidential rivals land final punches amid early voting

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch

In today’s issue:

Vice President Harris visited a Georgia Baptist megachurch Sunday and spoke about kindness. And voting.

“Our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try to suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up,” she told the congregation. “For sure, if you don’t vote, nothing will happen.”

Former President Trump on Sunday put on an apron at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania and repeated his unsubstantiated claim that Harris “lied” about a fast-food job while in college. “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump told reporters at a drive-thru.

With 15 days to go, the two combatants are deploying closing arguments while voting takes place ahead of Election Day in most states, including key battleground states.


“It looks like I’m winning, and winning pretty easily, but we’ll see,” Trump told “Media Buzz” on Fox News on Sunday. “You have to get out the votes.”

Harris, interviewed Sunday on MSNBC, waved off news accounts that her support from Black men, a key Democratic voting bloc, has slipped compared with her Democratic predecessors who won the White House. “There’s this narrative about what kind of support we are receiving from Black men that is just not panning out in reality,” she told the Rev. Al Sharpton.

USA Today: Harris and Trump are essentially tied nationally, according to a new poll released today by USA Today and Suffolk University, indicating a closer race than in August.

The schedules Harris and Trump booked this week showcase where they want to lock up leads and battle for a few thousand more votes in key districts to try to win at least 270 electoral votes come Nov. 5.

Trump’s itinerary this week prioritizes North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada.

Harris this week returns to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, according to her travel schedule, which today includes stops in two of those states in a matter of hours, along with swing state Michigan. The vice president, eager to court persuadable Republicans who reject Trump, hopes to gain a boost today during a trio of town hall events with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has endorsed Harris and describes Trump as a danger to democracy.

On Thursday, former President Obama will campaign with Harris in Georgia. Michelle Obama plans to join Harris for a joint get-out-the-vote rally in Michigan on Saturdayas early voting begins in that state.

“It’s going to be close, but you cannot roll up your sleeves if you’re wringing your hands,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said on ABC News’s “This Week.”

“The antidote to apathy is action,” she added. “We are working our tails off. And I think Michigan goes with Harris-Walz. But we’re not going to take any, make any assumptions. We’re going to do the work all the way through.”

The Hill: Most likely paths to victory for Harris and Trump. 

National polls at this stage are interesting but meaningless. Surveys in swing states, which are like seesaws moving by centimeters, suggest Trump has gained a toehold over Harris, including in Arizona and Georgia. FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast Friday for the first time gave Trump a higher chance than Harris of winning in the Electoral College.

The Hill: GOP-leaning polls trigger questions about accuracy.

BOB’S SMART TAKE

A man of the people. A woman of the people. That’s what candidates for office — especially White House hopefuls — want people to think of them. 

Trump last night attended the New York Jets-Pittsburgh Steelers game in the most important battleground state. Harris held events over the weekend with musicians Lizzo and Usher in the battlegrounds of Michigan and Georgia. 

Voters are deciding which candidate they want in their living rooms for the next four years. Personality is more important than policies in presidential politics. 

Harris and Trump are both wisely turning to pop culture to make the case that they are like you. They understand you. They care about you. 

There are pitfalls, however, if it’s too forced. In 2004, then Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called the iconic Lambeau Field in Green Bay “Lambert Field” (though he did end up winning Wisconsin).

With the 2024 race so close, these cultural events are more important than most think. 

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY 

▪ Here’s how Hurricane Helene is threatening dialysis patients. 

▪ Facing multiple crises, how can cities survive? 

▪ Indigenous communities in Northern New Mexico and environmentalists are pushing back on plans to power Los Alamos National Laboratory’s supercomputers with a new, 14-mile electric transmission line through an important ecosystem. 

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press | Doug Mills, The New York Times

Harris is carefully putting more distance between herself and President Biden, seeking to reassure voters still on the fence that she will govern differently from her boss. Harris delighted her Republican opponents earlier this month when she was unable to point to anything specific she would have done differently from Biden during their time in office. 

Since then, the vice president has taken a different tack. In a contentious interview with Fox News, Harris told Bret Baier that her presidency “will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” citing her own life experience, her policy proposals and her desire for input from Republicans and business leaders.

During a campaign stop in Michigan on Friday, Harris was pressed with the question again.

“To be very candid with you, even including Mike Pence, vice presidents are not critical of their presidents,” she told NBC News’s Peter Alexander. “I think that really in terms of the tradition of it and also just going forward, it does not make for a productive and important relationship.”

Harris has no current plans to campaign with Biden before Nov. 5. Instead, the president plans to try to help Harris by privately leveraging some of his longtime political relationships, specifically with labor leaders and holding official White House events that highlight his administration’s record, NBC News reports.

The Hill: Harris and her allies are making a last-ditch effort to peel off Republican support from Trump in the final days of the election.

TRUMP, DURING A RAMBLING RALLY in Pennsylvania on Saturday, called Harris a “sh-t vice president” and suggested in an off-topic anecdote that golfer Arnold Palmer, who died in 2016, was well-endowed. As the crowd applauded, Trump added: “Kamala, you’re fired, get the hell out of here, you’re fired.”

Trump’s profane presentation capped off a tumultuous week on the trail. The former president’s rallies include freewheeling monologues delivered in an increasingly dark tone. His rally speeches largely echo those he delivered earlier in the year — painting a dire picture of governance by Democrats, whom he describes as “the enemy within,” and a nation overrun by migrants. He champions a tariff-driven economic plan, tax cuts and closed borders and he denounces a long list of foes, especially those he calls “lunatic left” Californians, including Harris.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) took a swing at Harris while he was in Wisconsin Sunday, accusing her of being “the candidate of anti-Christian and anti-Catholic bigotry.” The vice president, who is Baptist, visited two Georgia churches Sunday.

2024 CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP

Read behind fast-moving political headlines: Trump has been fighting to win back his wealthiest donors, while actively courting new ones. The New Yorker reports on what these donors expect to get in return.

Trump and Harris’s recent media blitz shows a homestretch dash to appeal to critical demographics in an age when podcasts and YouTube live streams can be as influential as a “60 Minutes” or late-night interview. 

Top Democrats in Pennsylvania are worried Harris’s operation is being poorly run in the nation’s biggest battleground state.

Overseas voting has become the latest battlefront in Republicans’ legal challenges leading up to the election. State officials are pushing back, insisting they are complying with legal requirements and warning the lawsuits are part of a broader campaign to sow the seeds for postelection challenges. 

From student loans to transgender rights, American students, teachers and parents would see completely different and sometimes directly opposing proposals if Harris or Trump were elected.  

Taking the pulse in key Senate races: In Montana, Democrats are refusing to give up on Sen. Jon Tester’s reelection bid even as his chances against Republican Tim Sheehy appear bleak… In Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey (D) distanced himself from Biden and highlighted his support for certain Trump policies in a new campaign ad… Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) and Republican Eric Hovde sparred over abortion rights and economic issues in a Friday debate… In Ohio, Republican nominee Bernie Moreno is leading Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) by 3 percentage points in his campaign’s latest internal polling, Axios reports.

WHERE AND WHEN

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press | Paul Sancya

CONGRESS’S TO-DO LIST is piling up as lawmakers spend time on the campaign trail ahead of Nov. 5. When they return to Washington, House and Senate members face a jam-packed agenda — from disaster relief funding after hurricanes Helene and Milton to government funding, set to expire in late December.

The Hill’s Aris Folley breaks down some of the major items on the congressional to-do list.

North Carolina: Parts of the state need Small Business Administration loans to begin to recover from Hurricane Helene’s devastation. But the money has dried up, business owners told NBC News, and lawmakers will not return to Washington for weeks to reckon with needed legislation to replenish SBA resources.

Voting rights: Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), pictured above, said this week that if the party wins the majority, its first priority in the next Congress will be election integrity — an issue that’s been front and center throughout the campaign as Trump has floated baseless claims of voter fraud and laid the groundwork to challenge the results if he loses. In a sit-down interview with The Hill on the campaign trail, Clark laid out the contours of an ambitious legislative agenda if Democrats seize the gavel next year, including restoring legal protections for abortion access that were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2022.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press | Hussein Malla

ISRAEL CONDUCTED A WAVE of airstrikes across Lebanon on Sunday, targeting branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial association with ties to Hezbollah. The association operates as a lender and financial services provider for civilians in many areas of the country, where the traditional banking sector is in shambles following a 2019 financial crisis. The strikes marked an apparent escalation of Israel’s war against Hezbollah; a senior Israeli intelligence official said targeting the banking system was intended to disrupt the group’s day-to-day operations and undermine its support in Lebanese communities.

Al-Qard al-Hassan — a U.S.-sanctioned bank Washington has said is used by Hezbollah to manage its finances — has more than 30 branches across Lebanon, including 15 in densely populated parts of Beirut. Israel on Sunday also hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut, while officials in Gaza said rescuers were still recovering people from the rubble after an Israeli attack that killed dozens on Saturday.

Meanwhile, U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein will hold talks with Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday on conditions for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah

▪ The Washington Post: Iran, weakened by attacks on its allies, is bracing for Israeli strikes.

▪ The New York Times: Before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, Saudi Arabia was open to forging stronger ties with Israel. Now, a year into the war in Gaza, it is warming up to its traditional enemy, Iran.

▪ The Washington Post: The Israeli military’s yearlong pursuit of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar ended Wednesday in a battle that took his life. Now comes the battle to define his death.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Washington is investigating the leak of top-secret American documents that show Israel’s military preparations for an expected strike on Iran, U.S. officials said Sunday. 

▪ CNN: Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the island braced for heavy rains and surf from Hurricane Oscar.

OPINION 

■ Punishing Putin is more important than ever, by Stephanie Baker, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion.

■ Ukraine’s defense minister outlines Kyiv’s ‘victory plan,’ by David Ignatius, columnist, The Washington Post.

THE CLOSER 

© The Associated Press | Erin Hooley

And finally … ⚾ The New York Yankees will face off against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2024 World Series, which starts Friday at Dodger Stadium when the two teams will renew their struggle in the World Series for the first time in 43 years.

The Yankees won their first berth in the World Series since 2009 when they defeated the Cleveland Guardians on Saturday. The team holds a record 27 World Series titles.

The Dodgers are back in the tournament after a seventh title win in 2020; the team hasn’t made the World Series since. 

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