Principals

1. Harris’ Pennsylvania chances
2. Milton’s destruction
3. Tallying Trump’s many tax promises
4. Evers, Shapiro and Whitmer on tour
5. New China strategy
6. EU Ukraine training
7. Trump’s potential next allies

PDB: New battleground polling

Trump campaigns in Colorado, Nevada … A blunt Obama tells Black men to vote for Harris … Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors

Harris’ Pennsylvania chances tied to Casey dynasty

Kamala Harris needs Sen. Bob Casey more than he needs her in order to pull off a win in battleground Pennsylvania, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. Harris isn’t a native of the state like President Biden, and that was barely enough for him to win the state in 2020. Polling shows Casey is comfortably ahead of Republican challenger Dave McCormick, but the race is tightening. McCormick said Harris is making things easier for him. “It helps me, honest to God. Biden was like, ‘Pennsylvania, Scranton Joe,’” McCormick said. Harris may benefit from Casey’s name recognition, as well as Casey’s late popular two-term governor father. Obama began a campaign swing for Harris in Pittsburgh last night, a sign of the importance of the state.

Biden presses Congress to return early for disaster relief

House Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t budging amid pressure from President Biden to call Congress back early to fund disaster relief. On Thursday, Biden said Congress “should be coming back and moving on emergency needs immediately,” before acknowledging that he hadn’t spoken directly with Johnson. An aide to the speaker said Congress would return after the election. Meanwhile, the government is burning through disaster relief money: FEMA said it has spent nearly half of the disaster relief money appropriated for this fiscal year in just eight days. Hurricane Milton left at least 12 people dead and millions without power, while causing thousands of flight cancellations.

Trump adds to his ‘ice cream and candy’ tax break offers

Donald Trump keeps adding to the $7.5 trillion price tag of his economic proposals, far outpacing the bill that Kamala Harris’ plans would rack up. Within a span of 24 hours, he threw his support behind eliminating “double taxation” for Americans living overseas and followed up at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday with an idea to make interest on car loans tax-deductible. It’s the latest in Trump’s flurry of tax cut ideas, alongside pledges to remove taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tips. Gordon Gray, a right-leaning economist at the Pinpoint Policy Institute, called it “classic retail politics” meant to sway key voting blocs and “ice cream and candy with none of the vegetables.” The Trump campaign did not provide more details on the new ideas.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

On this week’s episode of Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, Ben and Nayeema take on the critique of bias in the media — a conversation that always seems timely, but especially so right now, weeks away from a US election and with an expanding conflict in the Middle East. To help make sense of what we see as media bias and the moral questions that journalists have to grapple with every day, they bring on James Bennet, who has been in the center of the thorny conversation around bias and the Middle East since his tenure as the Jerusalem Bureau Chief at The New York Times. He continued to be at the fulcrum of this discourse when he was forced to resign as the Times Editorial Page editor during a heated moment at the publication in 2020.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Blue wall governors hit the trail

All the blue wall states reelected Democratic governors in 2022 — and now they are joining the 2024 fray. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is revving up a bus tour with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers starting on Monday to talk to voters about their support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The trio will focus on abortion rights, the economy and, you guessed it, Project 2025. Whitmer said Donald Trump will “drive our economy into the ground just like he did last time he was president. We can’t let that happen.” So, basically, “we’re not going back.” It’s the latest in a cha-cha line of Democratic super-surrogates coming in for Harris — starting with former President Barack Obama.

— Burgess Everett

Rahm Emanuel pitches coalition against China

US ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel pitched a new idea for an economic alliance to counter China, a proposal Beijing dismissed as containment. Emanuel told Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant that the US should apply lessons from the Cold War and develop a coalition to push back on Beijing when it penalizes countries with tariffs or uses debt to control them. “We’ve got to get the economic statecraft up to par with what we’re doing on the security front, what we’re doing on the political/diplomatic front,” he said, elaborating on an idea that he laid out in The Wall Street Journal that would involve countries making a NATO-like pledge to aid one another against economic aggression. “The so-called ‘multilateral economic containment strategy’ is essentially a pan-security and pan-ideological approach to normal trade exchanges, and a ‘small courtyard and high wall,’” a Chinese embassy spokesman said.

EU to renew training mission for Ukrainian soldiers

The European Union is poised to renew training Ukrainian troops through 2026, officials told Semafor’s Mathias Hammer. The program, established soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has trained more than 60,000 soldiers. While two officials described the extension as a done deal, a third cautioned that reaching an agreement could still be complicated because of “one usual suspect,” referring to Hungary. “It’s just a question of what is the price we have to pay,” the official said. The EU and UK, not the US, have taken the lead in training Ukrainian soldiers for the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is on a tour of European capitals to push for more military aid in lieu of a planned meeting with President Biden. Ukraine denied reports that Zelenskyy was ready to discuss a ceasefire on the trip.

The world’s Trumps-in-waiting

Donald Trump may have more friends on the global stage if he wins this time, Semafor world elections reporter Brad Glasser writes. Trump already gushes over Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, but there could be others competing for his affection. In addition to Argentine president Javier Milei, there are populist-right leaders threatening to break out across multiple continents who might prove more sympathetic to Trump’s brand of politics. In Canada, Vox has dubbed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre the vanguard of a “polite Trumpism” that mixes hard-right rhetoric with more moderate policy. In South America, presidential contender José Antonio Kast has been called “the Chilean Trump” in the press and the right could challenge for leadership in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Speaker Mike Johnson appears set on raising the threshold for the motion to vacate that allows rank-and-file members to try to remove the speaker. “I don’t think there’s anybody who thinks the current sword of Damocles is sustainable,” he said.

Playbook: Never Trumper Sarah Longwell thinks that the presidential race will be a “boys vs. girls election” because of the gender gap. “It’s not just that Donald Trump and JD Vance are not attracting women; it’s that they’re actively repelling women,” Longwell says. “Basically, like, they’ve given up on the idea that they can get women, and they are really leaning on the fact that they can turn out men at a rate unseen before.”

WaPo: Trump’s campaign is filled with lobbyists, despite his earlier focus on “draining the swamp.”

Axios: The US is getting a better understanding of Israel’s planned attack on Iran, even if it’s “still a bit more aggressive” than Washington would like, a senior Israeli official said. A US official said the administration was “a little less nervous” now.

White House

• Ethel Kennedy passed away at 96. President Biden remembered her as a “a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.”
• The Biden administration is restarting student loan debt collection but will delay “the harshest consequences” for student borrowers until after the November election. — Politico
• Biden told Donald Trump to “get a life, man.”

Outside the Beltway

• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied a report that she would help one of her political donors, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, build a casino next to Citi Field.

Economy

• The Consumer Price Index slowed in September to an annual 2.4%, showing inflation easing but missing market expectations.
• The World Trade Organization slightly raised its global trade volumes outlook for this year and said growth should rise to 3% in 2025, as long as the conflicts in the Middle East don’t escalate.
• Authorities are trying to goose economies overseas. A majority of investors surveyed by Bloomberg forecast Beijing would unveil more than $250 billion in additional fiscal stimulus when it holds a briefing scheduled for Saturday. Meanwhile, recent reports suggest the European Central Bank will accelerate its pace of interest rate cuts.

Business

• TD Bank will pay $3 billion in penalties and accept limits on its growth in the US after admitting it failed to adequately prevent money laundering and violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

Courts

• US District Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to unseal more filings from special counsel Jack Smith that lay out his election interference case against Donald Trump, whose attorneys signaled they expect to challenge.
• Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial is slated for next May.

Polls

• A new poll conducted by GOP firm OnMessage Public Strategies shared first with Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig shows the 2024 race is a coin toss in six battleground states. Donald Trump holds a slim lead in four of the states and is tied with Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, where early voting has started. “It does favor Trump today and that is different than two or three weeks ago,” Wes Anderson, a partner at OnMessage, said. “But having said that, every single one of these is well within the margin of error.”
• Harris leads Trump among suburban voters 47% to 41%, according to an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos polling.

On the Trail

• Kamala Harris will take part in a town hall on CNN on Oct. 23 after Donald Trump declined another debate. CNN also offered Trump a town hall but has not received a response.
• Harris made her case to Latino voters at a town hall in Las Vegas sponsored by Univision.
• Bill Clinton is hitting the campaign trail for Harris. — CNN

Foreign Policy

• NBA Commissioner Adam Silver predicted the league would “bring games back to China at some point.”
• Tehran threatened to target Arab Gulf states if their territories or airspace are used in an Israeli attack on Iran. — WSJ
• Lebanon said that 22 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Beirut.

Technology

• Tesla unveiled its Robotaxi driverless car which Elon Musk has dubbed the “Cybercab” and said it will be priced at under $30,000.

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: Donald Trump announced that his daughter Tiffany is pregnant during his speech at the Detroit Economic Club.

What the Right isn’t reading: President Biden criticized Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for spreading a conspiracy theory about the federal government controlling the weather.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

Reporters: Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Jared Moskowitz is a Democratic congressman from Florida and a former director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.