If Vice President Harris is campaigning as an underdog, former President Trump is exasperated that his once top-dog perch destabilized after President Biden bowed out. Republicans are telling Trump to take their advice and stick to a script that exploits Harris’s vulnerabilities on policy, not her race or personal attributes. He has not.
“We can take nothing for granted in this moment,” Harris told Democrats Sunday during a sold-out San Francisco fundraiser expected to raise more than $12 million.
“It’s really been a good couple weeks, but we have a lot of work to do,” the vice president added.
Trump has peppered his advisers with questions about whether Harris can sustain her momentum, constantly asking about new polling, according to The New York Times. The former president’s advisers believe Harris’s honeymoon will end after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which begins in a week.
Harris leads Trump in battleground states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to surveys conducted Aug. 5-9 by The New York Times and Siena College. Harris leads 50 percent to 46 percent among likely voters in each state, a decided upswing for Democrats but also a snapshot that revealed Trump’s persistent strength when it comes to trust in his handling of the economy and immigration.
The surge in Democratic momentum stems from improved voter perceptions of Harris. Her favorability rating increased 10 percentage points among registered voters in Pennsylvania in the last month, according to Times/Siena polling. Voters also view her as more intelligent and more temperamentally fit to govern than Trump.
The former president has attacked Harris’s intelligence, seriousness and fortitude. He has defended his appetite for the political jugular and only glancingly referred to his own future policies, which he shorthands as no taxes on Social Security, “drill baby drill,” “mass deportations” and states-decide abortion laws.
Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), during multiple media interviews, has tried to add GOP policy specifics while challenging some of Harris’s liberal policy ideas from 2019, which her campaign and the White House say she subsequently jettisoned, such as her proposed ban on fracking.
Vance, who describes himself as a staunch defender of traditional families with children, floated the idea Sunday of more than doubling the federal child tax credit to $5,000, seeking to reframe a “profamily” stance that has come under attack from Democrats.
“I don’t think that you want this massive cutoff for lower-income families, which you have right now,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But the senator was not specific about who would qualify if the tax credit were expanded from its existing maximum of $2,000 per child.
Harris on Saturday said she supports eliminating taxes on tips, taking a similar position to Trump while appearing in swing-state Nevada, where service workers are an important constituency.
“It is my promise to everyone here, when I am president, we will continue to fight for working families, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” she said.
Harris, who will appear this week in suburban Maryland with Biden to talk about lowering costs for Americans, said she would work to drive down consumer prices and vowed to “take on big corporations that engage in illegal price-gouging” and corporate landlords who unfairly raise rents on working families. She also pledged to push big pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices (Reuters).
On the international front, Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) are grappling with pressure from the pro-Palestinian movement on the campaign trail. Protesters confronted Harris at a Michigan event last week and at least one demonstrator could be heard shouting “Free Palestine” as Harris and her motorcade moved through San Francisco, a pool reporter noted. Mixed signals from the party’s left flank raise questions about whether Harris and Walz can appease those voters by November.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY
▪ Israel’s military Sunday ordered Khan Younis civilians to evacuate from part of the humanitarian zone in Gaza, warning of plans to fight Hamas in “embedded terrorist infrastructure” there.
▪ U.S. colleges are cutting majors and slashing programs to save money, an unpleasant surprise that creates turmoil for some students.
▪ This week’s economic data may help clarify guesswork about the trajectory of U.S. inflation, employment and growth.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press / J. Scott Applewhite | In 2014, then-Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a National Guard veteran, focused on veterans’ health care and long waits for medical appointments.
CAMPAIGN POLITICS
House Republicans want to keep the heat on Walz regarding his military record and 24 years spent in the Army National Guard, although never in a combat zone. House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee Chair Jim Banks (R-Ind.) wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking if Walz’s comments suggesting he was at “war” during his service amount to “stolen valor.” Banks is running for a Senate seat and is the favorite to win in November.
On Sunday, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), interviewed on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday,” defended Walz’s military service, speaking as a former Marine combat officer who served in Afghanistan. He denied the Minnesota governor misrepresented his noncombat service and called such attacks from political foes a “desperate political smear job.” NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Walz’s record in Minnesota: high corporate taxes, big spending, low unemployment.
▪ The New Yorker: Tim Walz and the lessons of high-school football.
▪ The Hill: Walz learned hardball politics while serving in the House from 2007 to 2019.
▪ The Hill: Harris’s prosecutorial background and Walz’s progressive Minnesota record put criminal justice center stage, including their respective policies on gun control, which Harris mentioned Sunday at a fundraiser. The Democratic duo boasts about their records, while Republican critics see their positions as ripe for voter criticism.
2024 Roundup
▪ Foreign hackers have turned their attention to the U.S. presidential election. Microsoft reported that an Iranian group called Mint Sandstorm run by the intelligence unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps breached the account of a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign in June. Trump said Saturday that it was his campaign that was hacked by the Iranians. Investigators believe Iranians want Trump to lose in November.
▪ Trump falsely claims his campaign events attract larger crowds than Harris’s rallies and he accused her campaign on Sunday of “cheating” with a fake photo, which he labeled on social media as “ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” It’s the kind of charge he deployed in 2016 and 2020, amid legal defenses this year and again in the past month amid his presidential bid. Harris’s campaign fired back.
▪ Senate Republicans are heartened by a favorable map this election year that suggests they may control the upper chamber in January, but Democrats believe their slim chances to retain the majority look a wee bit rosier with Harris and Walz at the top of the ticket. “The energy upsurge is dramatic,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a former vice presidential nominee who is seeking reelection.
▪ Progressives remain furious with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee because of its big-money role during recent Democratic primaries in which critics of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, lost to moderate Democrats.
▪ Celine Dion and her representatives formally objected on Saturday to the Trump-Vance campaign’s unauthorized use of her song about love on a sinking ship, “My Heart Will Go On,” from the soundtrack of the film “Titanic.” On social media, she added, “… And really, THAT song?”
WHERE AND WHEN
Morning Report’s Kristina Karisch is off this week.
The House and Senate are out until after Labor Day.
The president begins his day in Rehoboth Beach, Del., and will travel with first lady Jill Biden to the White House, arriving at 9 a.m. Biden will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m.
The vice president is in Washington today. She will record video remarks for a convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2 p.m.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press / Evan Vucci | President Biden says he’s focused on governing through January. He’s pictured in the Oval Office last month when he told the nation he would not seek reelection in order to make way for the next generation of aspirants.
ADMINISTRATION
LEAD & DEFEND: Biden, in a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview, explained that he withdrew from the presidential race because he took to heart the worries among top House and Senate Democrats that he would cost his party in down ballot races and be “a distraction” in an all-important, neck and neck election.
“We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden said, repeating his overarching goal of protecting democracy while recalling his statement years ago that he could be a transitional president. Trump, if elected, “is a genuine danger to American security,” Biden added. He called Harris and Walz “a hell of a team” and said he will do whatever Harris thinks will “help most” during her campaign.
Biden’s status as a lame-duck president has liberated him to focus on governing and his legacy, Democratic lawmakers say. They hope Biden will use the remainder of his term and days freed up by being off the campaign trail (including quiet weekend moments with first lady Jill Biden relaxing on the sand at Rehoboth Beach, Del.), to ponder how to nudge Democratic policy priorities forward, including by executive action, if necessary.
BIDEN’S TO-DO LIST: He and the first lady will be in New Orleans on Tuesday to focus on the administration’s “moonshot” program to cure cancer. The president will appear Thursday with Harris in Prince George’s County, Md., near Washington to talk about lowering prices.
“He has five months,” Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), the chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, told The Hill. “He can really lean in on what he cares about and the mark that he wants to leave. And he doesn’t have to worry about what other people’s expectations are for what he’ll accomplish,” she added.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients instructed the administration’s governing team early this month to pursue policies before January that focus on implementation of major laws enacted on Biden’s watch; student debt relief and reducing prescription drug prices; defending personal freedoms and civil rights; and protecting the nation’s strength, security and leadership in the world (CNN).
WIDENING WAR? The president told CBS that the Middle East teeters between a possible negotiated end to war between Israel and Hamas, or a widening conflict. On Sunday, Hamas said it won’t attend ceasefire negotiations this week.
Asked if he believed a ceasefire deal remains achievable between Israel and Hamas, despite continued weekend attacks in Gaza and stalled talks, Biden sounded cautious.
“The plan I put together, endorsed by the G7 [countries], endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, et cetera, is still viable,” he said. “And I’m working literally every single day — and my whole team — to see to it that it doesn’t escalate into a regional war. But it easily can.”
The president reflected on what he sees as his administration successes and what he would like to pursue before he leaves office.
“When I announced my candidacy … I said, ‘We’ve got to do three things: restore the soul of America; build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down; and bring the country together.’ No one thought we could get done — including some of my own people — what we got done,” Biden said.
“The biggest mistake we made, we didn’t put up signs saying, ‘Joe did it’!” he said, smiling.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press / Karl B DeBlaker | Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif)., pictured last month, addressed Democrats in North Carolina.
CONGRESS
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told MSNBC while on a media blitz to promote her new book, “The Art of Power,” that she hopes her long ties to Biden continue with “love” and support, despite her private and public push to get him to withdraw as the party’s presidential nominee.
She called Biden “a very consequential president,” but said she acted because “I wanted the decision to be a better campaign so that we could win. I did not think we were on a path to victory. So that was really more the thing. He made his decision that that would be accomplished by him stepping aside.”
Pelosi, who says Trump is a threat to the nation’s security and Constitution, told PBS News while discussing her experience as the nation’s first female Speaker that she believes Harris, for whom she campaigned Sunday in California, is ready to be the first female president. Pelosi said the vice president is “a person of deep faith, of great patriotism. So I think, from a political, from a personal and from an official standpoint, she’s prepared to lead us.”
Pelosi, who became a Walz fan during his House career, commended his humor and sense of duty, his knowledge of the issues and his useful relationships with Democratic and Republican members of Congress. “Twelve years in the Congress, that’s good preparation to be the vice president of the United States,” she said.
LAND DISPUTE: Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) has squared off against the Department of Agriculture and native tribes as the sponsor of a farm bill provision that would block the transfer of 9,500 acres in his state (The Hill).
TRADE: A bipartisan Senate proposal would bar a U.S. trade system that allows exporters to bypass scrutiny and tariffs using a “de minimis” measure (The Wall Street Journal). The bill proposed by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Bob Casey (Pa.) and Republican Sens. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.) and Susan Collins (Maine), takes direct aim at Chinese fast-fashion brand Shein and online marketplace Temu, and also aims to cut down shipments into the U.S. containing illicit drugs. The trade group representing the US textile industry said the legislation would help “level the playing field” for domestic manufacturers.
OPINION
■ Questions we’d love to ask Kamala Harris, by The Washington Post editorial board.
■ If you like your health plan, meet Kamala Harris, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press / Athit Perawongmetha | The summer Olympics in Paris ended Sunday with a celebration of athletic prowess, as pictured with France’s rhythmic gymnastics team, plus anticipation of the 2028 summer games in Los Angeles.
And finally … 🥇The summer Olympics in Paris ended Sunday in a pointillist mashup of colorful flags, exultant teams of uniformed competitors and musical performances from celebrities such as Billie Eilish and Snoop Dogg.
There were dramatic closing-ceremony nods to the joys of victory and agonies of defeat, along with a celebratory handover by France to Los Angeles, host of the 2028 games.
On Sunday, U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles, 23, lost her bronze medal awarded for an individual floor exercise a week ago to Romanian gymnast Ana Bǎrbosu after a court invalidated a change to Chiles’s score. The court did not disapprove the Monday score correction, but instead ruled the U.S. challenge to her lower score came 4 seconds too late under the rules.
The United States captured 126 total medals to lead all nations; 40 of the awards are gold (tied with China). That gold-medal tie was made possible Sunday after a squeaker victory by the U.S. women’s basketball team. Americans also posted 42 silver and 44 bronze podium appearances.
Winners also included Paris, which delivered on its beautiful (and expensive) ambitions for the games, and NBC, which helped viewers learn more about 32 Olympic sports — and especially the American athletes who chase their dreams.
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