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STEPPING IT UP — We’re past Labor Day, and as Washington revs up again for the fall, President’s JOE BIDEN reelection campaign is kicking into a new gear of tarring Republicans and promoting the president.
Over the next few months, the Biden campaign plans to highlight the GOP primary’s stampede to the right, putting unpopular Republican positions on abortion or guns front and center for Americans, The Messenger’s Dan Merica and Amie Parnes report. Ads that contrast Biden with Republicans could help the campaign turn the election into a choice, not a referendum, as Democrats tried to make happen in 2022 too.
And the campaign is stepping up its fundraising work by highlighting DONALD TRUMP’s threat to democracy more to juice its mediocre small-dollar numbers, NBC’s Allie Raffa and Peter Nicholas report. They’re trying to bolster fundraising rolls ahead of the end-of-quarter Sept. 30 deadline.
The Biden ads won’t all be negative: WaPo’s Michael Scherer digs into the unusual nature of the campaign’s big $25 million swing-state ad buy, which arrives more than a year earlier in the cycle than, for example, Trump’s reelect in 2020. The ad campaign’s goal is to transform voters’ image of Biden and help set a different narrative early, especially in a fragmented media environment. Various targeted ads will aim to reach Hispanic, Black and female voters. It’s not clear yet whether all the money will come from the campaign through the end of the year or if the DNC and state parties will step in. PATRICK BONSIGNORE, ADRIAN SAENZ and TERRANCE GREEN are overseeing the effort.
Biden’s five-day spin around the globe, though part of his official business, also has an ancillary political motivation for the president: reminding Americans of his vigor and abilities amid broad skepticism about his age, NYT’s Katie Rogers report and CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Jeremy Diamond report from India and Vietnam. “Back home and abroad, White House officials have publicly expressed irritation over news reports that describe the president as keeping the same languid campaign schedule as Mr. Trump,” Rogers writes.
The latest Biden-Trump contrast: Trump’s team is eyeing major new tax cuts to promote on the campaign trail and implement if he returns to the White House, WaPo’s Jeff Stein reports. Trump’s plan for massive new tariffs could pay for the tax cuts — and the cuts in turn could blunt the tariffs’ domestic pain, the former president’s campaign thinks. It’s far from a definitive policy platform yet, but the ideas being discussed include slashing the corporate tax rate to 15%, making further tax cuts for individuals and sending checks from tariff revenue to Americans.
The White House wasted no time in excoriating the ideas: “President Biden believes tax policies are the ultimate window into who a leader is really fighting for,” deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES said in a statement. “[A]nother wave of deficit-increasing tax welfare for big corporations — especially one directly tied to unprecedented price increases on American families — would turn back the clock to the trickledown economics that hollowed out the American middle class and added trillions to the national debt.”
One big headwind for Biden: A new WSJ poll tells an increasingly familiar story: Americans are starting to feel a bit better about the economy, but Biden is reaping basically no political benefit, Tarini Parti and David Harrison report. Positive feelings about the economy among independents, for instance, have risen 9 points since December. But with overall sentiment still quite low, few people credit Biden with any improvements.
One big tailwind for Biden: Republicans’ long-standing Electoral College advantage may finally be eroding, NYT’s Nate Cohn writes in a big new analysis. The key is shifting voter blocs and issue sets: The GOP has gained among voters of color and in less competitive states like New York and Florida, while Democrats have made inroads with white voters in purple states who prioritize issues like abortion and democracy. The upshot is that Cohn estimates the GOP’s Electoral College edge may have shrunk from 3.8 points in 2020 to just 0.7 points as of now, which could soothe Democrats’ anxiety over Biden’s and Trump’s roughly tied positions in many polls.
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JOIN US — Tomorrow afternoon, Eugene is moderating a POLITICO event called “Business or Pleasure: Into the Age of the New Traveler.” It will feature a travel industry and labor panel, which includes SEIU International President MARY KAY HENRY, and a one-on-one interview with House Transportation and Infrastructure ranking member RICK LARSEN (D-Wash.). RSVP here
CONGRESS
SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN — Rep. CHIP ROY (R-Texas), a Rules Committee member, isn’t backing down on spending cuts: Today, he wouldn’t even commit to supporting the Defense appropriations bill to come to the House floor this week, Jordain Carney reports. And he indicated to Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig that hard-right holdouts may have some competing demands for leadership in the spending fight: “Some people feel very strongly about holding the spending level. Some people want to see policy changes. Some people want to see both right now.”
FIRST PERSON — “I watched the newly-public security camera footage from January 6. I saw things I hadn’t seen before — including eerie scenes of lawmakers fleeing for their safety on one of the darkest days in American history,” by Insider’s Bryan Metzger
22 YEARS LATER
THE COMMEMORATIONS — Marking the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, VP KAMALA HARRIS today spent about an hour at Ground Zero for a ceremony at the National September 11th Memorial, along with DHS Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS and top New York elected officials. Also at the event: Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS. (Politicians don’t speak at the ceremony; they bear witness as loved ones of the dead take the podium.)
Biden will speak in Alaska to mark the occasion later today, the first president to do so somewhere other than New York, the D.C. area or Pennsylvania. First lady JILL BIDEN will be at the Pentagon, and second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF near Shanksville, Pa.
AROUND THE COUNTRY — “Bells toll as the U.S. marks 22 years since 9/11, from ground zero to Alaska,” by AP’s Jennifer Peltz and Karen Matthews: “People gathered at memorials, firehouses, city halls, campuses and elsewhere … ‘For those of us who lost people on that day, that day is still happening. Everybody else moves on. And you find a way to go forward, but that day is always happening for you,’ EDWARD EDELMAN said as he arrived at ground zero to honor his slain brother-in-law, DANIEL McGINLEY.”
STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE — “Guantanamo trial for 9/11 mastermind in disarray on 22nd anniversary,” by USA Today’s Josh Meyer: “TERRY STRADA, a representative of many 9/11 families, said the possibility of such a plea agreement [to take the death penalty off the table] is just the latest — but probably the biggest — slap in the face yet for those demanding answers and accountability for al Qaeda’s suicide hijackings.”
2024 WATCH
THE DELEGATE DILEMMA — Trump and DeSantis are readying for a showdown at the California GOP state convention later this month over rules to determine how the state’s delegates will be allocated in the primary, NBC’s Allan Smith reports. This summer, the state party pushed through a rules change to turn California into a winner-take-all state if the No. 1 vote recipient crosses the 50% threshold. That raises the possibility that Trump could run away with all the delegates in the nation’s most populous state. DeSantis’ allies are mounting an effort to try to get the rule amended at the convention — but the bar is high to change it now, and one Trump ally says it was a mistake for the DeSantis folks to “telegraph” it in advance.
NOT SO SUPER — DeSantis’ heavy reliance on his super PAC Never Back Down has increasingly “sparked tension over strategic differences and communication barriers,” WSJ’s Alex Leary reports. JEFF ROE maintains that now is DeSantis’ moment as more voters start to tune in to the primary for the first time. But as the governor’s official campaign has shrunk, he’s had to cede more control over narrative and tactics to Never Back Down — and sometimes the public messaging flares to communicate between the two entities have backfired.
OFF THE DEEP END — False conspiracy theories about the pandemic have grown so widespread on the right that the majority of participants in a recent New Hampshire focus group thought the current Covid uptick was tied to Democrats trying to rig the election, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports. As viral misinformation festers, fears about “a mass reimposition of restrictions” at the federal level are playing a growing role in Republican primaries. Separately, even anti-Trump Republicans in the focus group want to send way less aid to Ukraine.
JUDICIARY SQUARE
THE LATEST FARA FLOP — “Prosecutors drop foreign-agent case against Trump transition adviser,” by Josh Gerstein: “In a court filing Monday, prosecutors indicated they’re giving up their long-running quest to convict BIJAN RAFIEKIAN, a California businessman and former business partner of Trump ally MICHAEL FLYNN, on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey amid Trump’s successful White House bid seven years ago.”
MORE POLITICS
AFTERNOON READ — “Restore Roe, or Go Beyond It? The Question Is Fracturing the Abortion Rights Movement,” by Mother Jones’ Madison Pauly: “This fracturing has cast doubt on whether a version of [a Missouri abortion rights] initiative will even make it to the ballot next year. … At present, it’s unclear whether a campaign for an abortion-rights constitutional amendment would receive the support of the state’s sole former abortion provider — or from the national Planned Parenthood Action Fund.”
MEDIAWATCH
CHOTINER ON DOUTHAT — “Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion,” by The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner: ROSS “DOUTHAT, who joined the Times in 2009, occupies an all but vanished position: he is a Christian conservative who lives among liberals, writes for them, and — even when he is arguing against abortion, or against ‘woke progressivism’ — has their respectful attention. This is in part because he is curious, not only distraught, about the decline of faith in American life.”
PLAYBOOKERS
MEDIA MOVE — Dafna Linzer is now editorial director and EVP at U.S. News & World Report. She previously was executive editor of POLITICO.
TRANSITIONS — Udochi Onwubiko is joining Demos as director of economic justice. She previously was labor policy adviser in VP Kamala Harris’ office and senior policy adviser in the Wage and Hour Division at the Labor Department. … Adam Jorde is now a senior government affairs adviser at Wilkinson Barker Knauer. He previously was head of government affairs at Twilio and is a Kevin Cramer and John Thune alum. … Michelle Baker is joining Forbes Tate Partners as a public affairs partner. She previously was a chief of staff of health and EVP of corporate strategic initiatives at Ketchum.
WEEKEND WEDDING — Erica Pandey, a senior reporter at Axios, and Vincent Cicale, a senior associate scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb, got married Saturday at the Pleasantdale Chateau in New Jersey. Since her family is from Nepal, they had two ceremonies in one day. The couple met through mutual friends at a New Year’s Eve party in NYC right before the pandemic. Pic … Another pic
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