 | By Charlie Mahtesian | Presented by Citi | | Donald Trump speaks with Polish American community members at the Polish National Alliance in Chicago on September 28, 2016. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
| ASSIMILATION NATION — In an election likely to be decided by a razor-thin margin, across a landscape that consists of a small group of battleground states, both campaigns are leaving no rock unturned in the hunt for every vote. The recent fixation on the Polish American vote is a prime example. As she made her case for the defense of Ukraine in the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Kamala Harris made an explicit nod to “the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania” who should be worried about the threat to Poland and Europe posed by Trump’s opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Trump’s campaign responded a week later by scheduling a visit to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, a Polish-American Catholic holy place in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where Trump is expected to meet Sunday with Polish President Andrzej Duda. There’s just one problem: The Polish American voting bloc both campaigns are targeting is a mirage. It’s a phantom battleground constituency that doesn’t really exist anymore. Many Polish Americans continue to have an affinity for the old country, and take great pride in their heritage. Poland’s rich cultural traditions continue to be venerated in America. Polish fraternal organizations and other cultural institutions are still going strong. They’re just no longer a discrete voting group that is likely to be responsive to election appeals. It’s a familiar American story. More than a century of assimilation, intermarriage, economic success and the fraying of ties with the ancestral homeland over time have made the idea of a cohesive bloc of Polish American votes as outmoded as the idea that there is a cohesive bloc of votes from the other big white ethnic groups — English, German, Irish and Italian. Even in Chicago, once said to contain more Poles than any city outside Warsaw, the Polish American vote isn’t what it used to be. More than anything else, the naked plays for the Polish American vote are a reflection of the fact that there are somewhere around 9 million Americans with Polish ancestry, many of them concentrated in politically strategic locations — three of the top 5 states ranked by percentage of Polish Americans are the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In the early and mid-20th century, it was a different story. Throughout World War I and into the post-World War II era, the Polish American vote was a potent one, especially in the Rust Belt cities that were home to sizable immigrant communities. Polish Americans were a force in presidential elections, where they were mainly a Democratic constituency that delivered huge margins to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, particularly in the wake of Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland. In FDR’s 1940 campaign, according to Samuel Lubell , some Polish American precincts in Buffalo voted as high as 20-to-1 in favor of the president, “his heaviest pluralities in the whole country.” Dwight Eisenhower made gains among Polish American voters in the 1950s, but in 1960 Polish Americans leaped at the opportunity to vote in large numbers for a fellow Catholic, John F. Kennedy. In the ensuing decades, however, many generations into their American journey, Polish Americans largely ceased voting as a unit. The community had already ascended the heights of American politics, producing scores of prominent politicians. There was former presidential candidate and Maine Sen. Ed Muskie, the son of immigrants, whose first language as a child was Polish. Polish Americans were elected as big city mayors across the Northeast and industrial Midwest. The ranks of the House and Senate were also filled with Polish Americans, including House giants such as Michigan Rep. John Dingell and Illinois Rep. Dan Rostenkowski. (Those seven counties, all named Pulaski, spread across the eastern half of the United States? They’re a memorial to Casimir Pulaski , the American Revolutionary War hero who hailed from Poland.) The last recognizable act of muscle-flexing was likely in the 1976 presidential election, in the wake of Gerald Ford’s epic debate gaffe . After asserting that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration,” Ford compounded matters by stating that “I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.” The Polish American vote flipped to Carter that year by a wide margin after voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, and Ford lost 6 of the 10 most heavily Polish states — after all 10 had gone to Nixon in his landslide win four years earlier, according to Donald Pienkos , a Polish American historian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. What Democratic voting habits remained among Polish Americans were largely broken by anti-communist stances of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. There was considerable speculation that Bill Clinton’s desire to win over Polish American and other central European voters played a role in his efforts to enlarge NATO and include Poland, but Dick Morris, Clinton’s political strategist, brushed aside the idea when asked if he polled on the idea. “Neither I nor the president ever believed there is such a thing as a Polish vote,” he said in the late 1990s. “There is a white vote, a black vote, a Jewish vote, and a Hispanic vote.” For all the attention devoted to Harris and Trump’s efforts to court the Polish American vote, what’s largely gone unnoticed is Polish President’s Duda’s efforts to court Trump. It’s not unheard of that a foreign leader would meet with a presidential candidate, even on American soil. And Duda is something of a Trump whisperer with close ties to the former president. But the meeting, in the homestretch of one of the most divisive elections in American history, in perhaps the most important swing state? Now that’s a naked play. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie .
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— DOJ files $100M suit against owner of ship that crashed into Baltimore bridge: Federal prosecutors today filed suit against the owner of the container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore earlier this year, alleging that the company and those on board the ship knew about persistent faulty electrical and mechanical problems and failed to fix them. The Justice Department is seeking $100 million in damages from Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Maritime PTE, the owners and managers of the ship, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The damages DOJ is seeking include the cost of responding to the disaster as well as for clearing the wreck and bridge debris from the Patapsco River. — Atlantic City mayor and wife indicted for alleged child abuse: Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr. and his wife — who is the city’s superintendent of schools — face criminal charges for allegedly abusing their teenage daughter , local prosecutors announced today. According to the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, Small Sr. and La’Quetta Small physically assaulted their daughter, who was 15 to 16 years old during the time of the alleged abuse. The indictment follows charges against the couple earlier this year. — Internal watchdog says State Department mishandled Iran envoy’s clearance: State Department officials failed to follow standard procedures when suspending the security clearance of Iran special envoy Rob Malley , leading to “significant confusion” about what work he could do, an investigation has found. In some instances, the confusion “likely led” Malley to engage on topics “outside the limited scope of issues on which he was authorized to work,” according to the investigators’ report. The findings by the State Department Inspector General’s office — whose report was first obtained by POLITICO — are likely to deepen the mystery around Malley, a controversial Washington figure who has been the subject of an FBI criminal investigation involving his handling of classified information.
| | LET’S SKIP IT — The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to issue a presidential endorsement today, according to a statement from the union. The powerful labor union is deeply connected to working class voters in the Midwest and other battleground states that could be crucial to the outcome of November’s election. It cited a lack of consensus among its million-plus members, and the non-endorsement is a sizable blow for Vice President Kamala Harris given the Biden administration’s unabashed union loyalty during his term. But the West Coast Teamsters still endorsed Harris, just minutes after the announcement from the national chapter. PRESSURE FROM THE TOP — Former President Donald Trump is once again urging House Republicans to shut down the government unless they can pass a GOP proposal tacked onto the current short-term spending plan that requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, mere hours before a floor vote. “If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” he wrote on his Truth Social social media platform. “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.” LONG ISLAND LIVING — Donald Trump is making a surprising stop on the campaign trail today — heading to Long Island , a Republican stronghold that has helped make the state more competitive for his party. New York is deeply unlikely to go red. But even if the suburbs east of New York City don’t pave the path to the White House, they are crucial to determining who controls the House next year. Trump will rally supporters in the district held by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of five freshman Republicans in New York facing tough reelection fights. “While New York perhaps is not a battleground state, Long Island is a battleground island,” D’Esposito said in an interview. “It does benefit him, because as president, he’s going to need a majority in the House, and those seats that we’re defending on Long Island and around New York are key to that majority.”
| | | People gather at the scene of a reported device explosion in southern Lebanon today. | Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images
| ‘NEW PHASE OF WAR’ — Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said its war in the region is entering a “new phase,” hours after announcing Israeli troops would be moved to the north of the country and a second wave of explosions rocked Lebanon. “In a conversation with the Air Force personnel at the Ramat David base, I emphasized: We are opening a new phase in the war,” Gallant said today in a statement on social media. “The center of gravity is shifting to the north through the diversion of forces and resources,” he added. Northern Israel shares a border with Lebanon, home to the Hezbollah movement, with whom Israel has exchanged rocket fire almost daily over the past year. This week, pagers and walkie-talkies, some of them belonging to Hezbollah members, exploded in a sophisticated, remotely coordinated attack, killing over a dozen people including children and injuring thousands. The Lebanese Red Cross said it was responding to “multiple explosions in different areas” and remained on high alert. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the bloodshed, which has been widely condemned, including by the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
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0.5 percent The percentage that the Federal Reserve announced today it would slash interest rates by , while projecting two more cuts before the end of the year, in a clear sign that officials believe they have won the battle against inflation. The move — which is twice as large as a standard rate cut — also indicates that the central bank is growing nervous about the weakening labor market. |
| | | SETTING TIMERS — In 1995, at the age of 16, Michael Thomas was involved in the killing of 14-year-old Gabriel Alcaraz Jr. in Fresno. After serving a little over a year of juvenile detention, Thomas admitted he was the shooter to prosecutors, and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He ended up at California State Prison in Corcoran until he was released in February, 27 years later. In prison, though, he began to learn the trade of baking , working on honing his skills as a baker. And when he got out, he secured a job at the esteemed Italian restaurant Flour + Water in San Francisco. For SFGATE, Nico Madrigal-Yankowski reports on Thomas’ story and how learning a skill like baking can turn your life around in more ways than one.
| | | On this date in 1973: Cuba's Prime Minister Fidel Castro speaks with India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whom he visited on a two hour stop over in New Delhi. | AP
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A message from Citi: How will digital currencies shape the future of finance?
As blockchain technology advances, digital currencies are poised to disrupt traditional banking models and could redefine the global monetary landscape – presenting both challenges and opportunities for businesses.
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Explore in-depth analysis from Citi on the potential implications in the Citi GPS Report, Money, Tokens, and Games. | | | | |
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