Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not taking calls from Vice President Kamala Harris about storm recovery just over a week after Hurricane Helene hammered parts of his state, NBC News reports.
A source familiar with the situation said he was dodging the Democratic presidential nominee’s calls because they “seemed political.”
A new Wason Center poll in Virginia finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 11 points, 52% to 41% among likely voters.
Politico: “The swing states of Georgia and North Carolina were among the most heavily affected by Hurricane Helene, which flooded towns, destroyed buildings, took out power and cell service and forced widespread road closures, with a death toll that has already ticked above 200. The upturning of everyday life has also introduced unanticipated disruptions into the nuts-and-bolts of running a high-stakes presidential election.”
“Now, election officials are racing to ensure storm-battered residents can safely cast their votes over the next month.”
“The officials say they are still assessing the full extent of the disruption and just how much they will need to shift course due to Helene. What is already clear one week into the recovery effort: The deadly storm is compounding the intense pressures confronting election officials in the final sprint to Election Day.”
Associated Press: Hurricane Milton is a Category 5. Florida orders evacuations and scrambles to clear Helene’s debris.
“Democrats are massively outspending Republicans on internet campaign ads but one social network is a notable exception: X, owned by Elon Musk, who has increasingly used the platform to elevate his chosen candidate, former president Donald Trump,” the Washington Post reports.
“Accounts backing Republican candidates spent three times as much on political ads on X than those backing Democrats from March 6 to Oct. 1 — $3 million to $1 million.”
“The biggest political ad buyer on X is the official account for Trump, who has formed a close political alliance with Musk in recent months and was joined by the entrepreneur on stage at a rally Saturday. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has not bought a single ad on the platform.”
“Vice President Kamala Harris is losing support among young Latino men, even as she continues to hold a lead over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump among Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada – two key states that will help determine the 2024 election,” according to two exclusive new USA Today/Suffolk University polls.
“More than half – 57% – of Latino voters in Arizona said they plan to vote for or lean toward Harris, while 38% said they lean toward Trump, according to a statewide poll of 500 likely Hispanic voters there. Harris also leads Trump among Latino voters in Nevada, 56% to 40%, the statewide poll of 500 likely Hispanic voters found.”
“Now, Asheville is a blue dot in that area. But those voters in Asheville are, they’re, you know, the kind of voters who will figure out a way to vote. You know? They’re upscale voters, kind of liberal voters, and they’re probably going to figure out a way to vote. I’m not sure a bunch of these folks who’ve had their homes and lives destroyed elsewhere in Western North Carolina, in the mountains there, are going to be as easy to wrangle for the Trump campaign.”
— David Axelrod, on his Hacks on Tap podcast, on what the hurricane destruction in North Carolina means for election turnout in November.
Donald Trump used increasingly harsh rhetoric to attack immigrants, suggesting that immigrants commit horrendous crimes because “it’s in their genes,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know now a murder, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
He also said Kamala Harris “wants to go into a Communist Party-type system” to “feed people governmentally.”
Philip Bump: Trump finally just says that some immigrants are genetically inferior.
San Francisco Chronicle: “Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi are two of the most powerful female lawmakers in the world. They came up in the same 7-by-7-mile-wide Machiavellian political environment and broke barriers at every turn in their careers.”
“But it would be a mistake to assume that they’re close allies, or that Harris would lean heavily on Pelosi for advice or support if she becomes president. While the two women have a cordial and respectful relationship, they are not personally close and have only been allies when the situation requires it.”
Los Angeles Times: How San Francisco became a launching pad for the most powerful women in politics.
“Donald Trump beckoned his wife to the most secure room in the White House one Saturday in the autumn of 2019,” the Daily Beast reports.
“There, in spite of the fact that she lacked a security clearance, Melania Trump learned the classified identity of the furry U.S. soldier who chased the leader of the ISIS terrorist group to his death.”
“The mayor is facing criminal charges, his close associates are fleeing the administration and the very top ranks of the police department are in disarray,” Bloomberg reports.
“Since Eric Adams became New York City’s first sitting mayor to be hit with a federal felony indictment, his signature ‘swagger’ is giving way to signs of weakness.”
Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers (R) “has used two different addresses since moving back from Florida, raising questions about where he really lives — and if he’s broken the law,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“The Supreme Court turned away a challenge to President Joe Biden’s three-year-old voter-registration initiative, steering clear of a fractious political fight in the run-up to the November election,” Bloomberg reports.
“The justices without comment left in place a federal trial court order that said 27 Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers lack legal standing to sue over Biden’s 2021 executive order, which directs federal agencies to promote voting access.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans,” the AP reports.
“I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble.”
— Kamala Harris, responding to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who said that her kids keep her humble but Harris has nothing to keep her humble.
“Two months after he swept into the 2024 campaign as a senior adviser and suggested he would be taking it over, Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s onetime 2016 campaign chief, has lost that power struggle and been told to focus on being a surrogate,” The Guardian reports.
“The reassignment may sting for Lewandowski, who technically returned to Trump’s orbit in a leadership role in the summer but quickly made enemies over his suggestion he would mount a power play and questions about whether the campaign mismanaged funds.”
“Just when you thought everyone had already jumped into the 2024 campaign, here come the porn stars,” the New York Times reports.
“Seventeen pornographic film actors on Monday announced that they had launched a $100,000 ad campaign on porn sites warning that Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a Republican administration that has been a centerpiece of some Democratic campaigns — wants to ban pornography and imprison people who produce it.”
“The online ads will run in the states that will decide the presidency: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.