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Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a digital ad on Thursday trying to tie Donald Trump to embattled North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) over their past statements on contraception, Axios reports.
The ad is the latest effort by the Harris campaign to connect Trump to the most extreme members of his party on the politically salient issue of reproductive rights.
“Even before news broke of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ indictment, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was already signaling to allies that he was preparing to run for mayor,” Axios reports.
“From a star in Democratic politics to a disgraced governor pushed to resign amid a sexual harassment scandal, Cuomo’s dramatic rise and fall could soon have another chapter.”
“Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) infuriated many of his House colleagues with his since-deleted racist X post about Haitian migrants, prompting a top Black Democrat to introduce a measure to formally reprimand him that will likely see a floor vote,” Politico reports.
“Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) is expected to force action on the censure resolution when the House returns after the November election.”
The Hill: Higgins walks back comments calling Haitians “thugs.”
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday walked back from a private understanding with the Biden administration and distanced himself from the proposal for 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon presented by the U.S., France and other allies,” Axios reports.
New York Times: “As they head home to make the case to voters for why they deserve to keep their dysfunctional House majority, Republicans have little to point to in terms of accomplishments. Must-pass legislation like raising the debt ceiling and spending bills to avoid ever-looming government shutdowns moved forward slowly, and only because Democrats supplied most of the votes to pass those bills.”
“Their investigations into the Biden family failed to implicate the only Biden who mattered, the one who is the sitting president, and did not result in the impeachment many promised their voters two years ago on the campaign trail. Their inquiries became moot anyway, after Mr. Biden said in July that he would not seek re-election.”
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announced new executive actions on Thursday to address gun violence, an election-year move that builds the president’s legacy on the issue and provides Harris with a fresh opportunity to highlight her leadership as vice president,” Politico reports.
“Donald Trump’s mass voter turnout program in crucial battleground states is now principally being run by America PAC, the political action committee backed by the billionaire Elon Musk,” The Guardian reports.
General Stanley McChrystal, in a New York Times op-ed:
“I’ve thought deeply about my choice and considered what I’ve seen and heard and what I owe my three granddaughters. I’ve concluded that it isn’t political slogans or cultural tribalism; it is the best president my vote might help select. So I have cast my vote for character, and that vote is for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
“Ms. Harris has the strength, the temperament and, importantly, the values to serve as commander in chief. When she sits down with world leaders like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, representing the United States on the global stage, I have no doubt that she is working in our national interest, not her own.”
“Senate Democrats announced Thursday they are spending millions to defeat Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida, where polls have shown the incumbents surprisingly vulnerable,” Bloomberg reports.
“A sweeping bill introduced by a Democratic senator Wednesday would greatly increase the size of the Supreme Court, make it harder for the justices to overturn laws, require justices to undergo audits and remove roadblocks for high court nominations,” the Washington Post reports.
“The legislation by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is one of the most ambitious proposals to date to remake a high court that has suffered a sharp decline in its public approval following a string of contentious decisions and ethics scandals in recent years. It has little chance of passing at the moment, since Republicans have generally opposed efforts to overhaul the court.”
Bloomberg: “At age 39, and with a national profile few might have foreseen, Ramaswamy is on the cusp of — something. It was only nine months ago that he ended his long-shot campaign for the Republican nomination, where he prayed with Evangelicals and rapped to Eminem.”
“Now, if Trump wins on Nov. 5, Ramaswamy might very well follow the former president back to Washington. There’s talk of a cabinet position, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security. Trump has vowed to deport millions of people living in the US illegally and has said that one the places he’d start would be Springfield. Ramaswamy declines to discuss his potential role in a Trump administration…”
“He’s also strongly considering running for governor right here in Ohio.”
Time: “As of Sunday, when Zelensky arrived to begin his trip, some officials in his entourage seemed to be tempering their expectations. No matter who wins in November, one of them told me, ‘things will get worse for us.'”
“In their view, the victory of Kamala Harris would likely prolong the policies of the Biden administration, which Zelensky and his advisers see as overly cautious and indecisive in standing up to Russia. Trump’s victory, on the other hand, offers both risks and opportunities for the Ukrainians.”
Said one insider: “There is a level of hope for Trump. Of course we could be mistaken.”
Sources told The City that New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for taking actions in his official capacity after receiving donations from foreign sources.
Details on the charges are still unclear, but sources told the New York Times it is part of a larger probe that looked partly into his 2021 campaign for mayor.
Update: The indictment was unsealed.
Rudy Giuliani has been officially disbarred in Washington D.C. over his false claims the 2020 election was stolen for Joe Biden.
“Special counsel Jack Smith, stymied at every turn by federal courts from putting Donald Trump on trial, is about to submit his most compelling evidence that the former president conspired to derail the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election,” Politico reports.
“Whether the public sees it before the 2024 election rests with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.”
Rick Perlstein: “In 2016, I experienced the desolation of my candidate for president losing after the most respected polling experts told me she had a 71.4 percent, 85 percent, 98.2 percent, and even 99 percent chance of winning. As a historian, I was studying how Ronald Reagan’s runaway landslide in 1980 was proceeded by every pollster but one supremely confident that the race was just about tied.”
“I’ve just finished a fine book published in 2020 that confirms an intuition I’ve been chewing on since then. It turns out this is practically the historical norm. W. Joseph Campbell’s Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections demonstrates—for the first time, strangely enough, given the robust persuasiveness of its conclusions—that presidential polls are almost always wrong, consistently, in deeply patterned ways.”
The Wall Street Journal has a useful overview.
“Donald Trump’s lawyers are on a mission to wipe out his biggest financial liability — a nearly half-billion dollar fraud verdict that’s soaring by about $100,000 every day,” Bloomberg reports.
“Lawyers for the Republican presidential nominee will ask a New York appeals court Thursday to throw out the $454 million verdict handed down in February. They argue the claims were filed too late and that the ‘massive’ penalty violates constitutional guarantees against excessive punishments.”
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.
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