2020
Republican worries rise as Trump campaign pulls back from television advertising
Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post
Fearing a coming cash crunch, President Trump’s campaign has pulled back from television advertising over the last month, ceding to Democratic nominee Joe Biden a huge advantage in key states and sparking disagreements over strategy among the president’s senior team. Republican officials have been inundated with calls from worried activists and donors who complain about constant Biden ads in their local media markets, with very few paid Trump responses, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Trump makes wild claims about revitalizing auto industry at Michigan rally
Dave Boucher and Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press
President Donald Trump made wildly inaccurate claims at a rally outside Saginaw on Thursday night, suggesting he has revitalized auto manufacturing in the state when it actually lost jobs even before coronavirus hit in March. “We brought you a lot of car plants, we brought you a lot … and we’re going to bring you a lot more,” Trump began his speech at MSB International Airport in Freeland.
Trump, struggling to define Biden, steps up Harris attacks
Kathleen Ronayne and Jonathan Lemire, The Associated Press
Donald Trump barely mentioned Tim Kaine when he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016. But four years later, the president has plenty to say about Kamala Harris.
Trump campaign weighing White House event around Election Day
Shannon Pettypiece and Ginger Gibson, NBC News
Trump campaign aides are weighing another event on White House grounds around Election Day, despite criticism over the venue’s use as a political prop during the Republican convention. There have been serious discussions about the logistics of pulling off an political event there in the closing days or hours of the race, following President Donald Trump’s satisfaction with his convention address on the White House South Lawn, according to two people familiar with the planning.
Biden says US must maintain small force in Middle East, has no plans for major Defense cuts
Steve Beynon, Stars and Stripes
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he supports drawing down troops in the Middle East but if elected president would keep a small force there to prevent extremists from posing a threat to the United States and its allies. “These ‘forever wars’ have to end. I support drawing down the troops. But here’s the problem, we still have to worry about terrorism and [the Islamic State],” Biden told Stars and Stripes in a telephone interview.
Biden will pull TV ads on 9/11 anniversary
Zach Montellaro, Politico
Joe Biden’s campaign will pull down its television advertising on Friday, going dark on the airwaves on the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A Biden aide confirmed that the campaign will not air television ads on Friday, in response to an inquiry from POLITICO early Thursday afternoon. President Donald Trump’s campaign did not respond to a similar inquiry sent at the same time.
Democrats build big edge in early voting
Alex Isenstadt, Politico
Democrats are amassing an enormous lead in early voting, alarming Republicans who worry they’ll need to orchestrate a huge Election Day turnout during a deadly coronavirus outbreak to answer the surge. The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts.
Harry Reid predicts Democrats will flip the Senate
Sahil Kapur, NBC News
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., made a bullish prediction Thursday that his party will flip six or seven Republican-held seats in the 2020 election and seize the majority. “I think we’re going to retake the Senate,” the Nevada Democrat told NBC News.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, faces toughest reelection challenge in S.C.
Josh Dawsey and Chris Dixon, The Washington Post
With lightning flashes of a South Carolina summer thunderstorm blazing the sky behind him last month, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R) unleashed an angry and sometimes profane, if contrived, case for reelection. “Don’t buy this bull—- about Joe Cunningham being some kind of moderate,” he told a crowd of GOP faithful protected under a roof.
Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly apologizes for racist joke
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Arizona Republic
Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly apologized on Thursday for an offensive comment he made two years ago while joking about the physiological changes his twin brother experienced after spending a year in space. Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut, made the remarks during an appearance before the Boy Scouts of America, Northern New Jersey Council.
Twitter’s new rules will flag it if Trump claims early victory
Cristiano Lima, Politico
Twitter said Thursday it will label or remove posts that prematurely declare victory in the upcoming U.S. election, making it the latest social media company to set out a plan for a prolonged vote count and a president who appears primed to dispute results if he does not win. The social network’s rules currently prohibit a narrower set of election-related tweets, including posts that stoke confusion about how to vote and other forms of voter suppression.
White House & Administration
Trump administration considers postponing refugee admissions, U.S. official says
Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg, Reuters
U.S. officials are weighing whether to postpone or further cut refugee admissions in the coming year amid legal fights over President Donald Trump’s refugee policy and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official said.
Trump administration secretly withheld millions from FDNY 9/11 health program
Michael McAuliff, New York Daily News
The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, the Daily News has learned. The Treasury Department mysteriously started withholding parts of payments — nearly four years ago — meant to cover medical services for firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated by the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program, documents obtained by The News reveal.
Despite judge’s order, plans being made for census layoffs
Mike Schneider, The Associated Press
Even though a federal judge ordered the U.S. Census Bureau to halt winding down the 2020 census for the time being, supervisors in at least one California office have been instructed to make plans for laying off census takers, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. The email sent Wednesday from a field manager in California instructs supervisors to rate the census takers working under them with letters “A,” “B,” and “C.”
Trump’s Payroll Tax Pause Fizzles as Employers Spurn the Move
Laura Davison and Steve Matthews, Bloomberg
A month after President Donald Trump moved to shore up workers’ incomes by giving employers the option of deferring payroll taxes, the effort has failed to energize a U.S. economy still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. No major private employer has stepped forward with plans to forgo withholding the levy from workers’ paychecks — as Trump’s action allowed from Sept. 1 through year-end. Costco Wholesale Corp., with 163,000 U.S. employees at latest count, isn’t participating, and neither is United Parcel Service Inc. nor FedEx Corp.
F.D.A. Regulators Publish Rare Self-Defense Amid Rising Vaccine Pressure
Noah Weiland, The New York Times
As President Trump continues to suggest a coronavirus vaccine could be ready before Election Day, top regulators at the Food and Drug Administration issued an unusual statement on Thursday promising to uphold the scientific integrity of their work and defend the agency’s independence. In an opinion column published in USA Today, eight directors of the F.D.A.’s regulatory centers and offices warned that “if the agency’s credibility is lost because of real or perceived interference, people will not rely on the agency’s safety warnings.”
Justice Dept. Announces Dozens of Fraud Charges in Small-Business Aid Program
Katie Benner, The New York Times
The Justice Department said on Thursday that it had charged 57 people with trying to steal more than $175 million from the Paycheck Protection Program to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic as questions swirled about how its funds were disbursed. Some cases involved “individuals or small groups, acting on their own, who lied about having legitimate businesses or who claimed that they needed P.P.P. money for things like paying workers or paying bills, but instead used it to buy splashy luxury items for themselves,” Brian C. Rabbitt, the acting head of the department’s criminal division, said at a news conference.
‘I saved his a–‘: Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder, Woodward’s new book says
Sonam Sheth and John Haltiwanger, Business Insider
President Donald Trump bragged that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That’s according to the veteran reporter Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, “Rage,” set to be released next Tuesday.
He tweeted about a conspiracy theory and “gender bending.” Now Trump wants him to run the Office of Personnel Management.
Eric Yoder, The New York Times
At his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, John Gibbs, the nominee to head the federal Office of Personnel Management, received few questions about his views on managing federal personnel. Instead, a major focus of senators from both parties was on past political comments by Gibbs, a former conservative commentator and software developer who for the past three years has held senior appointed positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, currently heading a community planning and development office.
Congress
Vulnerable Republicans avoid criticizing Trump after admission to Woodward about downplaying virus
Manu Raju and Alex Rogers, CNN
Republican senators facing tough reelection races this fall steered clear of criticizing President Donald Trump after his stunning admission that he downplayed the severity of the crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus, dodging questions regarding his remarks or defending his overall response to the pandemic. For months, Republican senators have praised the President’s response to the health and economic crisis, the central issue in their political campaigns, even as polling suggests that a majority of Americans disapprove of it, recognizing many of their own races depend in large part on the President’s performance in November.
Vulnerable Dems anxious over stalled Covid talks
Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris, Politico
Moderate House Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed about stalled coronavirus relief negotiations, with vulnerable members starting to privately push Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders to take action to break the stalemate. Those anxieties — particularly among the Democrats in GOP-leaning districts known as frontliners — have spiked as lawmakers watched the standoff drag out in the Senate this week while they were stuck back home in their districts amid the pandemic.
Pelosi warns ‘no chance’ of US-UK trade deal if Brexit undermines Good Friday accord
Adam Shaw, Fox News
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday warned that there would be “no chance” of a U.S.-U.K. trade deal if the U.K. were to undermine the 1998 Good Friday Irish peace accord as it battles with the European Union over the fallout from Brexit. “Whatever form it takes, Brexit cannot be allowed to imperil the Good Friday Agreement, including the stability brought by the invisible and frictionless border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Rubio Seeks Security Review of Chinese Bid for GNC
Katy Stech Ferek, The Wall Street Journal
Sen. Marco Rubio on Thursday urged a national-security review panel to scrutinize a Chinese company’s attempt to buy struggling vitamin-and-supplement retailer GNC Holdings Inc. In a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Sen. Rubio (R., Fla.) noted that Pittsburgh-based GNC keeps health data on millions of U.S. customers.
General
Leaked Audio Reveals CNN Head Jeff Zucker Floated a Trump ‘Weekly Show’ in 2016
Matt Stieb, New York Magazine
The middle of this past decade would have been a transitional moment for Donald Trump even if he did not secure a win in the last election. After receiving and turning down the role of a lifetime playing the president in Sharknado 3 in 2015, he was floated a post-election “weekly show” at CNN, according to audio of a call between network president Jeff Zucker and Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen that was obtained by Fox News.
States
States Are in Desperate Search for Help Battling Record Wildfires
Jack Healy et al., The New York Times
As wildfires began consuming communities across Oregon this week, leaders at the state emergency management office fired off an email to counterparts around the country, pleading for 10 firefighting strike teams that could bring 50 extra engines to the region. The state got one commitment: Utah would send a team with five engines.
Wisconsin Supreme Court temporarily suspends mailing of absentee ballots
Riley Vetterkind, Wisconsin State Journal
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily suspended the mailing of absentee ballots for the Nov. 3 election as the court weighs whether to order the Green Party presidential ticket be added to the ballot. The order from the conservative-backed majority on the state Supreme Court, coming a week before the state-imposed Sept. 17 deadline to send out requested absentee ballots to registered voters, is in a case brought by Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins.
Breonna Taylor case set to go before grand jury
Laura Strickler, NBC News
The Kentucky attorney general is preparing to present evidence from the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor to a grand jury as early as next week, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The killing of Taylor, who was shot by officers after they broke into her Louisville apartment while executing a search warrant in March, set off waves of protests and helped spur a national reckoning over police misconduct.
Advocacy
How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
Laura Sullivan, NPR News
Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups. None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Don’t Let Politics Obstruct Long-Overdue USPS Reform
Erik Stern and Martin Schwarz, Morning Consult
Only in 2020 could the United States Postal Service get swept up in politics. Alas, more than 20 Democratic state attorneys generals have now sued USPS for allegedly changing mail procedures ahead of the 2020 election, while the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over mail delays.
The Grief Americans No Longer Share
Garrett M. Graff, The Atlantic
Few images of 9/11 are more haunting than those of the New York City hospitals that sat empty, ready for injured people who never came. Years later, Francine Kelly, the nurse manager at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Lower Manhattan, remembered the scramble as everyone mobilized in that first hour after the attacks.
Research Reports and Polling
Democrats Made Gains From Multiple Sources in 2018 Midterm Victories
Scott Keeter and Ruth Igielnik, Pew Research Center
Compared with Hillary Clinton’s 2-point popular vote advantage over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, the Democratic Party expanded its margin over the Republican Party to 9 points in votes cast for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, a gain of 7 percentage points. This increased support was sufficient for the Democratic Party to gain the majority in the House with a net pickup of 41 seats.
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