Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, political reporters Matt Dixon and Allan Smith explore why Donald Trump will campaign in heavily Democratic states in the final stretch of the 2024 race. Additionally, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explains why whoever wins control of the House of Representatives this fall will have a major say in the direction of the next presidency.
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Trump plans rallies in solidly Democratic states in the final weeks of the race
By Matt Dixon and Allan Smith
Prepare for Donald Trump’s blue state extravaganza.
With less than four weeks until Election Day, the Republican presidential candidate will hold rallies in staunchly Democratic states where he has virtually no chance of winning. It’s an unorthodox strategy that campaign advisers say is designed to focus on areas where Democratic policies have failed, but it will also keep him away from the small handful of swing states that will almost certainly determine the election.
Over the next month, Trump has events planned in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. President Joe Biden won those states in 2020 by an average of 20 points, with his victory in Colorado coming closest by 13 points. And Colorado is the only one of those states to have voted for a Republican presidential candidate this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.
While each event will take place in slightly different locations, the most notable this month will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Trump has long said he wanted to hold a political rally.
“By choosing high-impact institutions, the media cannot look away and refuse to report on the problems and solutions that President Trump offers,” a senior Trump campaign adviser said of the strategy. “We live in a nationalized media environment, and the national media’s attention to these large-scale, out-of-the-norm circumstances extends the reach of its message across the country and reaches into every battleground state.”
Some Trump supporters also argued that entering areas of the country not traditionally visited by Republican presidential candidates could have a tail effect, boosting Republicans in tough races. There are a handful of competitive House races in those states — especially California and New York — where the majority will likely be decided by razor-thin margins.
Still, it is almost certain that the race will be decided in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that are within the margin of error in most public opinion polls and that have been favored by both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. are considered winnable.
“This doesn’t look like a campaign putting its candidate in critical vote-rich locations or swing-vote locations — it looks more like a candidate wanting his campaign to stage rallies for optics and atmosphere,” said Matthew Bartlett, a longtime Republican staffer.
Read more →
Why control of the House of Representatives will define the next presidency
By Chuck Todd
One of the most remarkable aspects of the current political era is how closely contested control over all parts of the federal government is.
It’s not just the presidency that’s on a razor’s edge – that includes the House of Representatives, and even the Senate is highly competitive, although a Republican Party takeover is looking closer to inevitable in this cycle.
We could see all three change party control in the same election cycle, without all ending up in the hands of the same party – an outcome that would be quite astonishing and unprecedented. And yet, as unusual as that would be, in another way it would be more or less par for the course, given how polarized and closely divided we are as a country.
While I don’t believe most voters ultimately prefer divided government, they certainly prefer divided government to the alternative of a party they don’t fully trust taking full control of Washington’s three elected segments.
So perhaps concerned centrists or moderates should take solace in the fact that the odds of divided government in this campaign are unusually high. It should put a damper on how much we can expect from the next president, especially if there is a rift between the House of Representatives and the White House.
There is a big difference in the extent to which the government becomes divided depending on whether the House of Representatives and the White House are controlled by the same party or by different parties. Two words send shivers down the spine of any president who finds that the “other” party has power in the House of Representatives: subpoena.
Given the current incentive structures in both parties, it would be very tempting to use the subpoena power of a majority in the House of Representatives as a political weapon to effectively neuter the president of an opposing party. And it’s a prospect that people should probably anticipate in both scenarios, whether Donald Trump is elected with a Democratic House (he was impeached twice by a Democratic House, after all) or whether Kamala Harris is elected with a Republican House.
Big ideas like a child care tax credit or a rewrite of the tax code would be virtually impossible if the person in the White House is dealing with a House controlled by the other party. It would be a tall order just to get a budget passed without leading to a government shutdown.
Read more from Chuck →
🗞️Today’s top stories
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🌀 Ready for Hurricane Milton: Biden issued a stark warning about the dangerous storm barreling toward Florida as he shot down a conspiracy theory spread by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that the federal government is responsible for controlling the weather. Read more →
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🚫 Foiled election plan: An Afghan living in Oklahoma was charged this week with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack on Election Day on behalf of the Islamic State group, according to court documents released Tuesday. Read more →
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💰 Big hunt for money: Harris’ presidential campaign crossed the $1 billion fundraising threshold in September, just over two months after she took over as Democratic Party standard-bearer. To put that figure in perspective, Biden’s operation raised just over $1 billion during the entire 2020 election cycle. Read more →
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💲 Make or break: Harris is seeking to erase Trump’s persistent lead among voters they trust to steer the economy in the final stretch of the race. Read more →
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🌵 Harris looks west: Harris and several of her key allies are descending on Arizona this week as part of an effort to kick off the state’s elections on Wednesday. Read more →
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🤝 Trump looks west: Trump announced a coalition of Latter-day Saints as his campaign seeks to shore up support among a key voting bloc where apostasy could be particularly damaging on Western battlefields. Read more →
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🎤 Preparing for the debate: Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego are sharpening their criticism of each other ahead of their first and only debate in the Arizona Senate on Wednesday evening. Read more →
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📺 Summary of the debate: Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers had heated exchanges over national security issues and tried to emphasize their bipartisan credentials during the Michigan Senate debate Tuesday night. Read more →
For now, that all comes from the Political Bureau. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com