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, we examine how Donald Trump is ramping up his campaign activities in the final stretch of the race. Plus, senior political editor Mark Murray analyzes the fault lines in our new poll of Latino voters.
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Trump is stepping up his campaign pace after the Republican party worried Harris caught him flat-footed
By Katherine Doyle, Jake Traylor and Jonathan Allen
Former President Donald Trump is finally gearing up for an all-out sprint in his bid to reclaim the White House.
Trump, who was caught flat-footed when Democrats switched candidates this summer, has held 26 campaign events this month — most of them rallies — more than the 21 he attended in June and July combined, according to an NBC News analysis of his schedule. The rise started in August, when he organized 19 events.
While it’s traditional for campaigns to pick up steam after Labor Day, some Republicans worried Vice President Kamala Harris got the better of him when she stormed the country in August after taking over from President Joe Biden as leader of her party . Now Trump is racing against Harris and the clock.
Trump held two rallies this weekend in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In both, he launched increasingly personal attacks on Harris, baselessly questioning her mental fitness and calling her “mentally retarded.” At the rally in Pennsylvania, he called for Harris to be “impeached and prosecuted” over her policies on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Leading the charge for more events is Trump himself, a campaign official said. He said Trump would have a quiet Sunday, but instead urged, “We have to do something,” leading to the rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Trump will make two stops in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the day of the vice presidential debate. And on Saturday, Trump plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, to hold an event at the site where he was shot in an assassination attempt on July 13.
Read more →
Fallout Hurricane Helene: Trump took a detour from the campaign trail on Monday to visit Valdosta, Georgia, one of the areas hit by Hurricane Helene.
Matt Dixon, Adam Edelman and Megan Lebowitz report that Trump falsely claimed that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has been unable to reach Biden to discuss the hurricane’s impact on his state. Earlier in the day, Kemp, a Republican, said he initially missed Biden’s call, but he called back and the two were able to connect Sunday evening.
While Trump said he did not travel to Georgia to talk politics, he criticized a photo Harris posted on social media, saying she had been briefed by the FEMA administrator as “FAKE and STAGED,” and he said the federal administration and Democratic governors, including Roy Cooper of North Carolina, “are doing their level best not to help people in Republican areas.”
Biden and Harris have both said they plan to travel to the areas affected by Helene once their visits do not impact emergency response operations.
Read more →
New poll underlines how diverse – and divided – Latino voters are
By Mark Murray
The biggest takeaway from our NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC Latino poll is how politically diverse and divided Latino voters are in 2024, which reflects the same fault lines we see in the broader electorate.
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump 54%-40% among registered Latino voters nationwide, the poll shows. There is a notable gender gap: Latina women support Harris over Trump by 26 points, 60%-34%, while Latino men are split 47% each between the two candidates.
Broken down by religious affiliation, Harris leads Catholic Latinos by 20 points (56%-36%) and leads non-religious Latinos by even more (71%-24%). Meanwhile, Trump has a 36-point lead among evangelical Latinos (64%-28%).
There is also the education gap. Harris leads among both college-educated Latino men (58%-42%) and college-educated Latina women (61%-35%), while Trump ranks higher among men without a college degree (51%-38%).
And then there are issues like immigration: The poll shows that 52% of Latino voters say it is more important to prevent discrimination against immigrants and create a path to citizenship, compared to 46% who say it is more important to secure the border and deter immigrants from entering the country illegally.
“Latino voters are incredibly diverse. It cannot be overstated,” said Democratic pollster Aileen Cardona-Arroyo of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Micah Roberts and his team at Public Opinion Strategies.
“We are looking at Latino voters rather than a consolidated Latino community,” she added.
Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro put it this way on Sunday’s Meet the Press: “I sometimes wonder if there is such a thing as ‘the Latino vote.’”
That largely explains why, according to the poll, Democrats have lost ground among Latino voters over the past decade. They are not monolithic and reflect the same divisions – across gender, religion and education – that we see in the electorate at large.
Read more: Nnamdi Egwuonwu examines how the Harris and Trump campaigns target the increasingly fragmented Latino electorate in very different ways.
🗞️Today’s top stories
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⚫ Consequences of attempted murder: A majority of voters blame the “extreme political rhetoric” of some politicians and media figures for contributing to the attempt to assassinate Trump in Florida this month, the latest NBC News poll shows. Meanwhile, Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old man accused of plotting to kill Trump, pleaded not guilty to all charges. Read more →
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⚖️Abortion ban lifted in Georgia: A judge in Fulton County struck down Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, allowing the procedure to resume and become legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. Read more →
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⚖️ The election rule in Georgia is disputed: Democrats are suing the Georgia State Election Board over a recently passed rule requiring counties to hand count ballots cast on Election Day. Read more →
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📣 Speaking of their generation: Senior voters are likely to play an important role in the election, as the once reliably Republican voting bloc has become increasingly a toss-up. Read more →
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💰 Double: Harris vowed to “double” the Justice Department’s resources to cut off the flow of fentanyl into the US after Trump falsely claimed she wanted to legalize the drug. Read more →
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💵 Need help: The Wall Street Journal reports that Americans are now more reliant on government assistance than ever, leaning on programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The aid is crucial in economically stressed regions, many of which are in swing states. Read more →
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🗳 Downvote Battles: Here’s a look at the state legislative chambers where control is up for grabs this fall. Read more → Follow live coverage from the campaign trail →
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
