POLITICO Nightly: The next 63 days

By Charlie Mahtesian and Calder McHugh Supporters cheer as Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally on Aug. 29 in Savannah, Georgia. | Win McNamee/Getty Images NINE WEEK COUNTDOWN — The hour is later than you think. While in some ways it feels like the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump just started, the reality is that it’s nearly over. North Carolina begins mailing out absentee ballots this week. Early voting begins in Pennsylvania in two weeks. Just 63 days remain until Election Day. At the beginning of the post-Labor Day homestretch, the race is incredibly tight — Harris leads in national polls by between 2 and 4 percentage points , on average. The election, of course, is not decided by a national vote. The outcome will be determined in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And there, the contest is exceptionally close as well. Harris holds a narrow lead in six of the seven battlegrounds — all but North Carolina, according to FiveThirtyEight polling averages in those states. But the margin between the candidates is so slim that it’s under one percentage point in more than half of those states. At the moment at least, this is a margin of error contest wrapped in a photo-finish inside a dead heat. For Democrats, the outlook is better than at any other point in the 2024 campaign. Before dropping out, Biden trailed in every battleground state. Even his own campaign conceded that his path back to the White House had narrowed to a harrowing ride through the Rust Belt, with no room for error. Today, Harris has two plausible routes, one through the Rust Belt and another through the Sun Belt. She’s even in striking distance of winning North Carolina, which would all but doom Trump’s chances. Republicans also have reason for hope. Their nominee for president has weathered 88 alleged criminal offenses across four criminal cases and has been found guilty of 34. He still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties to E. Jean Carroll and New York state. Despite all that, he remains essentially tied in the polls. The GOP base remains wildly enthusiastic about voting for Trump. While Democratic enthusiasm has spiked in the aftermath of Harris’ ascension to the party nomination, Republican enthusiasm for Trump has kept pace — and even shows signs of improvement. According to an early August Pew Research Center survey , 72 percent of Trump supporters said they are extremely motivated to vote, up from 63 percent in July. In that same poll, 70 percent of Harris supporters said they are extremely motivated to vote. Trump supporters have another reason to believe: polls have underestimated the level of support for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. It’s been a campaign that has already witnessed a lifetime’s worth of October Surprises — indictments, convictions, an assassination attempt, a catastrophic debate performance, the withdrawal of a president from a reelection bid — and yet there are still some potentially catalytic moments to come. A presidential debate between Trump and Harris is slated to take place just one week from today, on Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News. The two camps remain held up on the rules — including whether the microphones will be hot . Boiled down to its essence, the mic fight is a Harris campaign bet that an unmuted Trump is an unmoored Trump, easily baited into a spectacular act of self-immolation. Throughout the campaign thus far, Harris has stayed relentlessly on message while Trump has swung wildly at her identity ; that’s a distinction that the vice president’s campaign is hoping they can show the American public in miniature next week. A week after the showdown before a national audience, the first of three significant economic moments will arrive — occasions that could go a long way toward determining how Americans feel about the economy, and bolstering or undermining the candidates’ arguments. On Sept. 17-18, the Federal Reserve is set to hold its September meeting, where Chair Jerome Powell is expected to recommend an interest rate cut. A 25 basis point cut is likely already priced in, but if Powell recommends a larger cut of 50 basis points — unlikely but not out of the question — it could spur optimism in the market about inflation, but also could mean that the Fed sees the labor market as particularly weak. In October and early November, we’ll get final, pre-election looks at both the state of inflation and the strength of the job market, which will color the closing arguments in an election where inflation and the economy are the number one issue for many voters. On Oct. 10, the final Consumer Price Index — the most important measure of inflation — before the election will be released. Then, three weeks later on Nov. 1, just four days before voters go to the polls, the final jobs report will be released. Harris is trying to sell voters on an economy where inflation is under control and the job market remains robust. But if one of these indicators suggests otherwise right before Nov. 5, Republicans will have a key data point to leverage in their case against Biden-Harris economic policies. Polls suggest Harris is closing the gap on Trump regarding how much voters trust each candidate to handle the economy. But as she claims more credit for the policies of the Biden administration, these three dates become essential as voters build their impression of how she might handle economic issues as president. With just over two months to go, the race looks tighter than any in recent memory. And while the polls rarely change dramatically between Labor Day and Election Day, the fact that the contest is so close means that even a small atmospheric change could decide who will be the next president. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com and cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie and @calder_mchugh . What'd I Miss? — Supreme Court declines to block Biden family planning rules in Oklahoma: The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected Oklahoma’s bid to claw back millions in federal family planning grants that the Biden administration had rescinded over the state’s refusal to provide information about abortion to patients who request it. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented, saying they would have granted the state’s application for relief. The move continues the court’s trend since its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 to sidestep major abortion questions, including narrow, procedural decisions this past term on abortion pills and emergency abortions that avoided the merits of both cases. — Former New York official accused of acting as a Chinese government agent: A former New York state official who worked under Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and her predecessor ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was accused of trading on her connections to act as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government , according to a sweeping federal indictment unsealed today. Linda Sun, 41, was accused of using her influence as a top aide to both governors to shape state policy toward China and Taiwan, federal prosecutors alleged. MONGOLIA: ENERGY CAPTIVE! — Sorry not sorry, says Mongolia after failure to arrest Putin: That’s the message from Mongolia’s government after it failed on Monday to execute an international arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin as he landed in the country for an official visit. A Mongolian government spokesperson said that the country finds itself in a position of energy dependence , rendering it difficult to handcuff Putin on the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant over war crimes in Ukraine. “Mongolia imports 95% of its petroleum products and over 20% of electricity from our immediate neighborhood, which have previously suffered interruption for technical reasons. This supply is critical to ensure our existence and that of our people,” the spokesperson said. Nightly Road to 2024 SLOW COUNTING — Election officials in Pennsylvania are warning that because of inaction in Harrisburg, the swing state’s votes may again take days to count , creating a window for bad actors to sow distrust in the results, writes the Philadelphia Inquirer. County election officials have been petitioning state lawmakers to update the state’s election code for years. They’ve also persistently asked the General Assembly to clarify questions surrounding which mail ballots can and cannot be counted to address voting rights litigation that has played out in Pennsylvania since no-excuse mail voting was authorized in 2019. But as November approaches, little has changed since 2020 — when former President Donald Trump used the slow counting process to promote unfounded claims of voter fraud in the wake of his defeat. SWAN SONG — A federal judge today ordered former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign to stop using the song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” by Isaac Hayes, at campaign events in response to a lawsuit from the artist’s estate, reports The New York Times. The judge, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, issued a temporary injunction blocking further use of the song “without proper license.” However, Judge Thrash did not grant the estate’s request to order Trump’s campaign to take down recordings of past events in which it had used the song. TOO LATE NOW — A Michigan judge ruled that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must remain on the November presidential ballot , dealing a blow to his crusade to strategically remove his ticket from the battleground state, reports The Associated Press. Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump in August. Since then, he has sought to withdraw his name in states — like Michigan — where the race could be close. Kennedy filed a lawsuit Friday in Michigan’s Court of Claims against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, in an effort to withdraw his name. Michigan’s election officials had previously rejected Kennedy’s notice of withdrawal. AROUND THE WORLD A Ukrainian firefighter talks on the radio while he works to extinguish the fire on the site of an electrical substation that was hit by a Russian strike in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. | Alex Babenko/AP MAJOR BLAST — Russian forces struck buildings including a hospital with two ballistic missiles in the city of Poltava today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “One of the buildings of the Institute of Communications was partially destroyed. A nearby hospital building was also hit. People found themselves under the rubble. Many were saved ... Unfortunately, many died,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement. As of early this evening, 51 people were confirmed dead and more than 200 injured, the prosecutor’s office said. More people may be trapped under the rubble, the president added. The rescue operation is ongoing. Poltava Communications Institute — a military university to prepare officers — put a mourning candle image on its Facebook page, issuing no statement. Zelenskyy said an investigation will take place to understand how the attack could happen and kill so many. STILL SEARCHING — Rife conjecture, lengthy talks and a constantly changing list of possible candidates have marked French President Emmanuel Macron’s latest push to break the deadlock that has gripped France since snap elections this summer delivered a hung parliament. As the French returned to work and school on Monday, their country appeared no closer to having a government than it did before the Olympics. The day began with Bernard Cazeneuve as the apparent front-runner, but the former prime minister was out of contention after lunch. Then, it was rumored that Macron was in talks to appoint a little-known top civil servant, Thierry Beaudet, to the post. Overnight, conservative heavyweight Xavier Bertrand replaced Beaudet as the new favorite. Macron today held talks with conservative leaders including Senate leader Gérard Larcher and conservative parliamentary leader Laurent Wauquiez, according to several people with knowledge of the talks who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, seemingly solidifying Bertrand’s status as likely nominee. But by this afternoon, Bertrand was already facing serious objections to his appointment. The last 36 hours have baffled even seasoned political observers, and inspired no shortage of mocking memes and jokes online. French journalist Diane de Fortanier tweeted a mock graph of the rise and fall of potential candidates, while former Elysée official Gaspard Gantzer poked fun at Macron’s dithering and endless consultations — joking he’d next be meeting with French prime ministers, winners at the Césars and Tour de France champions. Even outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal couldn’t escape the frenzy during a visit to a school in the Paris region on Monday, when he got a grilling by pupils over who the next prime minister will be and whether he was still friends with the French president. Nightly Number Nearly $25 million The amount of money that Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee said they are sending to support down-ballot Democrats — an earlier investment and far more money than the top of the ticket has sent in past election years. RADAR SWEEP SHARING IS CARING — In Austria, wealth inequality is a serious problem — the richest one percent owns half of the European country’s wealth. One member of the 1 percent wants to figure out how to solve the problem — with the help of the 99 percent. The heiress and philanthropist Marlene Engelhorn convened a group of 50 Austrians selected by lottery to discuss how to redistribute €25 million ($27.6 million) — and then do so, without outside influence. In The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa reports from the meetings of the Austrians selected to complete this task and considers their solutions to the problem. Parting Image On this date in 1984: Then-Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale, vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and New York's Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo wave to New Yorkers as they march in the Labor Day parade in Manhattan. | Lana Harris/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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How To Take Down Trump SEPTEMBER 10

How To Take Down Trump Debate strategies for Harris Dan Rather and Team Steady Sep 3 Credit: Getty Images In the next 63 days, the presidential candidates will make multiple campaign appearances in dozens of states. Millions will be spent on hundreds of political ads. But one night a week from today will go a long way to determining who wins the White House.  Next Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will formally meet for the first time on the “debate” stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I write “debate” in quotes because what will happen next Tuesday is really a joint appearance or a co-interview. The candidates will not be arguing their policy positions as though they were on a high school debate team.  With the race seemingly close, their appearance on September 10, the only one scheduled, is critical for both candidates. More on that in a moment. First, the details. Harris has committed to the debate. So has Trump, sort of. As recently as this weekend, he was still hedging, taking shots at host network ABC News. “ABC is probably the worst in terms of fairness,” Trump said on Fox “News” on Sunday. “George Flopadopoulos, the people they have are just, they’re just terrible, Jonathan Karl.” Neither George Stephanopoulos nor Jonathan Karl is moderating. That job goes to David Muir and Linsey Davis. To the rules: In the first “debate” between Trump and President Biden, both campaigns agreed to have microphones silenced when the candidates were not speaking in their turn. For this debate, Harris’s team wanted hot mics. She even took to social media to make her case. “Donald Trump is surrendering to his advisors who won't allow him to debate with a live microphone. If his own team doesn’t have confidence in him, the American people definitely can’t,” she posted on X. “We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way — with the microphones on the whole time.”  Trump has had issues with hot mics — remember the “Access Hollywood” audio? As of this writing, the mics will be muted. The debate will happen in a closed room, with no live audience. The candidates are not allowed to have notes or props, and there will be two commercial breaks. As you will most likely never forget, the June 27 presidential debate was Joe Biden’s undoing. His bad debate performance and all that followed — a precipitous drop in the polls, donations drying up, down-ballot concerns — pushed Biden to drop out of the race.  Democratic operative and truth-teller James Carville knows people love to watch a train wreck in real time, hence the popularity of reality television, and the first debate. “I guarantee a lot of voters are salivating for a second round. Only this time, Mr. Trump must be the train wreck, and it’s on Ms. Harris to lay the tracks,” Carville wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. Harris and her team have learned a lot from almost 10 years of Trump and his hate-filled bloviating. Carville suggests Harris needs to use that knowledge to “help Trump hurt himself.” Rather than cower under his constant barrage of lies and insults, she needs to get under his skin by laughing him off, by not rising to his bait. If she flips the script, he can be pushed off balance. Trump is always worried about being perceived as weak, especially at the hands of a woman of color. Harris’s training as a prosecutor should help her. She knows how to be methodical and remain unfazed, how to stay on offense while putting opponents on defense — a place Trump hates to be and has not been in many debates. Trump’s unpredictability is his not-so-secret weapon. If Harris can remain unperturbed by it, he may get rattled. “She should welcome the personal attacks as a badge of honor. And each time, no matter how many times he does it, respond with this refrain: It’s the same old tired playbook, and I’m focused on a new way forward,” Carville wrote. The pre-debate expectations game is in full swing. The first expectation is a large TV audience. The last time Trump debated a woman, Hillary Clinton, 84 million people tuned in. I would bet at least as many will be watching next Tuesday. Trump is, unsurprisingly, downplaying his preparations for the debate. His press secretary claims he “does not need traditional debate prep.” In a statement to NBC, Karoline Leavitt went further: “President Trump has proven to be one of the best debaters in political history as evidenced by his knockout blow to Joe Biden.” That may be what the campaign is saying, but the stakes for this debate remain stratospheric, for both candidates.  Next Tuesday will be the first and likely last time voters will see the two candidates side by side. Everything on that stage will be important: what they say, what they don’t say, how they say it, eye contact, body language. To get ready for the most important night of her political life, Harris has a light campaign schedule this week and is prepping with her closest advisers. I know we all want to manage expectations, but she needs to knock it out of the ballpark to sink Trump’s presidential aspirations once and for all.  If you value independent journalism that provides vital information to protect our democracy, please consider upgrading as a supporting member. It allows me to keep Steady sustainable and free for those who cannot afford it, especially during this critical election season. Thank you. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, Dan

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SCARED Trump has Surrogates SEND MESSAGE on Debate

 COWARD! Incapable of DEBATING! DEMENTIA DON can't even answer questions...never mind DEBATE!

Laying the pretense to back out...BIG PHONY!

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MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump having his surrogates put out the same message on way he expects to lose the debate against President Biden. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch

POLITICO NIGHTLY: How Trump can win the debate

BY CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO Presented by The National Council on Election Integrity With help from Renuka Rayasam DO-OVER — In public, aides to President Donald Trump hailed his “dominating” performance over what they described as a rickety Joe Biden in the first presidential debate. Privately, they acknowledge that voters saw it quite differently. Biden’s average lead in national polls grew to 10 percent from 6 percent in the two weeks after the debate, and to 5 percent from 3.5 percent across six key battleground states tracked by Real Clear Politics. Trump’s post-debate slide has spawned a broad consensus that he dial it way back during tonight’s debate in Nashville. Allow Biden to stagger and stay out of his way, goes this line of thinking. “Let Joe Biden talk,” the sports pundit Jason Whitlock advised Trump during a Wednesday interview. “He’ll do the work for you.” But if Trump does that, he’ll lose again, according to the collective wisdom of about a half-dozen Republican wiseguys and gals whom I spoke with this week — an appraisal that members of Trump’s campaign privately agreed with. So how can Trump win tonight? Biden has demonstrated in dozens of televised town hall forums and primary debates that he can deliver serviceable performances that connect with the public. Tonight, Biden is expected to again try to appeal directly to Americans, looking into the camera and reminding them of the litany of Trump’s failures and his own plans to address them, advisers said. Biden won’t try to “debate” Trump in the traditional sense, which he knows isn’t really possible. What can Trump do, especially with a microphone that’s sometimes muted while Biden speaks? Trump needs to apply controlled pressure to draw him in, the sources argued. In Cleveland, Trump was boorish and petty, deploying frustrated zingers that questioned Biden’s smarts and mental acuity while whiffing at headline-making gimmies, including refusing to condemn a white hate group and failing to urge calm and deter violence around the election. In Nashville tonight, Trump needs to focus more on the issues and less on Biden personally. Republicans want Trump to try to tie the former vice president up on taxes and environmental policies such as fracking and the Green New Deal. Trump’s anticipated criticism of Biden’s son, Hunter, and his alleged business dealings should be part of a broader effort to yoke the former vice president to Washington corruption and self-dealing rather than fixating on personal matters like addiction, they say. Seemingly random figures Trump tends to throw out lose their effectiveness without context. “Biden gets angry when confronted with his flip flops or his family,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who worked for President George W. Bush and is close to the Trump White House. “But Trump has to come prepared with the facts on it all to prosecute the case.” Given Trump’s aversion to debate prep, it’s difficult to imagine him putting it together in the way his supporters want him to. But there’s already a model he could follow, Republicans said. “Put Pence’s performance on a loop and use it for debate prep,” Jennings said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at ccadelago@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @ccadelago and @renurayasam.   A message from The National Council on Election Integrity: The National Council on Election Integrity, a bipartisan group of political, government, and civic leaders, was formed to ensure that every American’s vote is counted this November. Stand with the council and demand every vote be counted: take the pledge at CountEveryVote.org.   A worker cleans newly installed plexiglass shields on the debate stage inside the Curb Event Center ahead of the presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville. The debate commission later removed the plexiglass barriers after consulting their medical advisers. | Getty Images THE DEBATES FINAL ROUND — POLITICO will have all your news and analysis before, during and after the debate. For starters: — Biden’s plan to study changes to the judiciary might get him through tonight’s debate or the election, but just about no one seems thrilled with it, writes Burgess Everett. The former vice president’s proposal to create a 180-day commission falls far short of the left’s dreams of adding seats to the Supreme Court. And Republicans continued to allege that Biden will pack the court and is being disingenuous about his real intentions. — Tonight’s presidential debate will have an entire section devoted to climate, a long-neglected issue in American politics that has become an urgent issue in 2020, writes Michael Grunwald. And Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who wasn’t the first choice or even a top choice of most climate activists, seems to have figured out how to make it a winning issue . Biden has emphasized his support for very popular things, like climate science and clean energy, emphasized his opposition to controversial things, like the “Green New Deal” and a fracking ban, and avoided mentioning the parts of his climate policy that could become controversial if people actually knew about them. — Trump has made clear he’s coming after Hunter Biden at tonight’s debate for allegedly profiting off his father’s position. The president and his allies are touting a set of purloined documents to accuse his Democratic opponent of corruption, write Kyle Cheney, Natasha Bertrand and Andrew Desidero. And Joe Biden would seem to have an easy comeback to Trump: Look at what your own kids have done since you became president, writes Natasha Korecki. — As October draws to a close, political junkies are waiting for the traditional October surprise. But, with the maelstrom of news that has been 2020, are October surprises a thing of the past? A cast of all-star POLITICO editors and reporters dives into the history of the late-election events and explains why this year may be different.   HELP BUILD SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL HEALTH: POLITICO is a proud partner of the ninth annual Meridian Summit, focused on The Rise of Global Health Diplomacy. The virtual Meridian Summit will engage a global audience and the sharpest minds in diplomacy, business, government and beyond to build a more equitable economic recovery and save more lives. Join the conversation to help secure the future of our global health.     PALACE INTRIGUE SECRETARY SANDERS? Sen. Bernie Sanders is hoping to be a part of Biden’s potential administration and has expressed a particular interest in becoming Labor secretary, two people familiar with the conversations tell Alice Miranda Ollstein, Megan Cassella and Holly Otterbein. “I can confirm he’s trying to figure out how to land that role or something like it,” said one person close to the Vermont senator. “He, personally, does have an interest in it.” Sanders on Wednesday declined to confirm or deny that he’s putting his name forward for the position. “Right now I am focused on seeing that Biden is elected president,” he told POLITICO. “That’s what my main focus is.” Former Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said Sanders has not talked directly with anyone on the Biden campaign about a future role, but plans to push Biden, his former Senate colleague, to “include progressive voices” in both the transition and in a potential new administration. Yet two other people close to Sanders, including one former aide, said the senator has expressed interest in being in the administration, should Biden win in November. Sanders has been making his push for the top job at the Labor Department in part by reaching out to allies on the transition team, one person familiar with the process said. Want more on the presidential transition? Transition Playbook, which launched today, will track the appointments, the people and the power centers of the next administration. Sign up today and read their first edition. THE GLOBAL FIGHT BEYOND THE WATER’S EDGE — The Trump campaign wanted tonight’s debate to focus exclusively on foreign policy. Instead the debate moderator, NBC News Kristen Welker, selected six topics, including national security but also climate change and Covid-19, for discussion by the candidates. If the two men were to talk for 90 minutes about foreign policy, some clear differences would emerge, POLITICO’s foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi told Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam over Slack today. Biden would talk about restoring international alliances and America’s leadership while Trump would argue that he’s stopped the U.S. from being ripped off by allies. Both would keep fact checkers busy. Nahal talked about whether Biden’s foreign policy would differ markedly from Trump and whether a Republican would be in the running for Biden’s secretary of state. This conversation has been edited. In reality, just how different would Biden’s foreign policy be from Trump’s? Biden genuinely is more keen on the need to be nicer to U.S. allies and to work with them to tackle important global challenges. He’s also more determined — or at least he says he is — to promote democracy and human rights than Trump. Those things really do separate the two. Trump views foreign policy on a much more transactional basis: “I got this for that.” But that being said, the two men have similarities on foreign policy, especially now that Biden is more attuned to what progressives in the Democratic Party want. He’s more skeptical of trade deals than he once was. Both will use tough language on how to deal with China. How will Biden bridge the divide between progressives and centrists? I wrote a whole magazine story about it. Progressives — and I’m talking about people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — say they would keep a President Biden on his toes. They’ve already been giving him names of people he should hire and ones he shouldn’t. If you look at Biden’s foreign policy platform and the Democratic Party platform, you can see that progressives have had a lot of impact. For example, Biden puts a lot of emphasis on economic issues in his foreign policy platform. He also wants an end to “endless wars.” Do you know where Biden’s first foreign trip would be? And the first leader he would invite to the White House? It’s fun to speculate. My guess is: His first phone call would be to Mexico; his first trip would be to Canada, and pretty quickly after that to Germany & the U.K. And the first leader he’d invite to the White House? New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. But as far as I know, the Biden team hasn’t settled on anything for these yet. Any thoughts on who would staff his cabinet or ambassadorships? Could we see Mitt Romney as secretary of state? My guess is Biden would draw from a pool that includes some of his former Democratic presidential primary competitors, including Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, for cabinet posts. On ambassadorships, he would probably try to give more to career foreign service officers than Trump did, but also maybe a retired senator or some other big name here and there. No Republicans? I don’t think he’ll put a Republican in the Cabinet. But ambassadorships, maybe. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM — European nations are shutting down. Countries in Asia are tentatively resuming normal life after taking swift action at the start of the pandemic. The U.S.? That’s a different story. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporters Carmen Paun and Dan Diamond break down the state of Covid across the globe. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast OBSERVE AND REPORT — The first 2020 U.S. election report by international observers makes for sober reading, Ryan Heath emails us. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — which has 47 member countries including the U.S. — has deployed 30 experts around the U.S. to monitor all aspects of the election through October. While that’s well short of the 500 the organization hoped to bring (thanks Covid-19!), they’ll be joined by another 100 members of Parliament for the week of Election Day, Nov. 3. Among the report’s observations: Around 9.8 million Americans citizens can’t vote for their representatives. “Citizens resident in the District of Columbia and in U.S. territories are not fully represented in the Congress,” the report notes. “Some 5.2 million citizens, about half of whom have served their sentences, are disenfranchised due to criminal convictions. These restrictions disproportionally affect racial minorities.” In addition, “campaign expenditure is unrestrained” — thanks to court decisions and lack of a Federal Election Commission quorum — and will total around $11 billion. OSCE concluded that although America’s news media is “highly polarized,” the country’s 1,758 television stations, 15,460 radio stations and 1,300 news print publications help us wade through rising misinformation.       COVID-2020 RAW FOOTAGE — Trump released video footage today of the tense interviews he and Vice President Mike Pence had separately with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, including a particularly combative exchange in which Stahl accuses both men of having “insulted” her and the news program.   GLOBAL PULSE, GLOBAL PURPOSE: At a high-stakes moment when global health has become a household concern, it is pivotal to keep up with the politics and policy driving change. Global Pulse connects leaders, policymakers and advocates to the people and politics driving global health. Join the conversation and subscribe today for this new weekly newsletter.     FROM THE HEALTH DESK RED VIRUS, BLUE VIRUS — Through the lens of the presidential election, May’s initial spike in U.S. coronavirus cases took place predominantly in solid-blue and Democratic-leaning states, while states currently considered tossups led summer’s record number of new Covid-19 cases. October’s surge in cases, however, seems to be shared almost equally by all states. Patterson Clark | POLITICO NIGHTLY NUMBER 50-50 The probability, according to a source familiar with the exchange who was not permitted to speak on the record, Trump gave Gov. Gavin Newsom last month in California that climate change had a significant role in driving historic wildfires, moments after casting doubt on whether that was the case. (h/t Jeremy B. White) PARTING WORDS A TRANSLATOR’S NIGHTMARE — If the last debate between Trump and Biden was a mess and at times tough to follow in English, just picture it in Spanish, Sabrina Rodriguez emails us. The interjections, the speaking over one another, the half-sentences: That’s what Telemundo’s interpreters had to translate in real-time for the Spanish-language news service’s more than 6 million debate viewers. Now, Telemundo executives and interpreters are gearing up for what they expect to be another unpredictable night. Telemundo executives say it’s a huge challenge to follow Trump in real-time and accurately convey his tone to viewers. “Trump doesn’t even answer in complete sentences, so you have to be on your toes — for that person to be able to think quickly and translate it accurately for live television,” said Leticia Herrera, Telemundo’s vice president of news specials. She’s optimistic this final debate will be easier for the interpreters to translate and viewers to follow given that the candidates will have their microphones muted for parts of the debate. César Cardozo, Telemundo’s lead translator, said he has grown accustomed to anticipating what Trump is going to say, but he’s not as confident that tonight will go smoothly. Cardozo, who has interpreted Trump several times, has been translating politicians since the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The Spanish voice of Trump said his goal tonight is to not let his translation become noise for viewers. “You try to be prepared for all the contingencies — and pray,” said Cardozo. “It’s like jumping from a plane. You carry your parachute, but the only thing you know for certain is you have to hit the ground.”   A message from The National Council on Election Integrity: The National Council on Election Integrity is a bipartisan group of political, government, and civic leaders united around protecting the integrity of our elections. Our country has held successful elections through good times and bad, and this November is no different. Individual voters, the media, candidates, and the political parties have a duty to be patient while local election officials count every vote. Because no matter who we choose to represent us, in America we count every vote. Stand with the National Council on Election Integrity: take the pledge at CountEveryVote.org.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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