“About three hours after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, on a Saturday evening in mid-July, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got a phone call: Would he consider joining forces with Mr. Trump? What about serving as his running mate?,” the New York Times reports.

“The caller was Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur who had advised Mr. Kennedy on chronic disease policy. He suggested that it might be a moment for unity — Mr. Trump had just narrowly escaped the same fate that had befallen Mr. Kennedy’s father and uncle. Mr. Kennedy, who was running an independent campaign for president, said he wasn’t interested in the vice presidency, and the call ended.”

“A short while later, Mr. Kennedy called back. Yes, he said, he would speak with Mr. Trump.”

Washington Post: “With little chance of improving Trump’s standing, Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.”

“Labor Day is a critical mile-marker on the road to the general election, and Kamala Harris has reached it with a slim advantage over Donald Trump. But the former president would still be well within striking distance if the election were held today,” Politico reports.

“Because of Republicans’ advantage in the Electoral College, a race that Harris leads nationally by between 2 and 4 percentage points, on average, is the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth, and it’s set to be decided in a smaller-than-usual number of states.”

“The polls are extraordinarily tight in all of them, and that isn’t expected to change much over the next nine weeks. In modern presidential elections, where the race stands on Labor Day is usually pretty close to where it ends up once the votes are counted.”

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A new Wall Street Journal survey “found that while a majority of voters continue to hold negative views about the direction of the country and the economy, there has been a slight uptick in optimism.”

“Nearly 30% of respondents said the country is headed in the right direction, a 9-point jump from early July, while 61% said the country is headed in the wrong direction, a 9-point decrease. The figures reflect the most favorable view of the country’s trajectory since at least November 2021.”

“President Joe Biden reemerges on the campaign trail this week, entering a new political phase as he closes out his time in the White House and works to ensure Vice President Kamala Harris succeeds him,” CNN reports.

“Biden and Harris will kick off the final sprint to the election together on Labor Day, using the holiday to woo working-class voters with an event at a local union hall in Pittsburgh – a symbolic show of force in a city Biden himself often turned to at key points in his political career.”