The Hill’s Morning Report — Biden, nasty Senate race put Pennsylvania in spotlight

by Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver - 08/31/22 6:26 AM ET

President Biden took his 2022 midterm roadshow on Tuesday to Pennsylvania, a key battleground, where he laid out his latest argument for Democrats to retain hold of Congress in moving ahead — combating crime and gun control — as the party’s chances have increased in recent weeks.

Biden, who has seen his approval ratings increase slightly in recent weeks, lauded his administration’s work aimed at preventing crime, specifically citing the bipartisan gun prevention and mental health law passed in late June. He also used the opportunity to pan some Republicans over their calls to “defund” the FBI, contrasting it with his push to beef up police departments across the country.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI,” Biden said, pointing to some congressional Republicans who have called for the destruction of the agency following the search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month (The Hill).

“When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police,” Biden added (The Washington Post).

The appearance marks Biden’s first of three in the Keystone State in a week’s time. He is set to deliver a prime-time speech in Philadelphia on Thursday centered on protecting democracy and to appear in Pittsburgh for the city’s annual Labor Day parade on Monday.

Politico, The Washington Post and other outlets late Tuesday reported in detail (including one photo) the Justice Department’s first forceful rebuttal to Trump’s request to inject an independent special master into a dispute about documents, including highly classified materials, removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8. The government’s assertion: Trump’s team may have knowingly hidden and moved materials.

The former president is due to respond to those DOJ objections by Wednesday evening. A Thursday hearing in West Palm Beach, Fla., is set to weigh both sides of what is becoming a prolonged and unusually public legal battle about Trump’s possession of cartons of materials sought by the National Archives for more than a year.

NBC News: Trump hired former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise to help represent him in his clash with the Justice Department.
READ: The Justice Department’s filing.

While the drama over documents continues in the Sunshine State, Pennsylvania remains a lively political test of both parties’ efforts to control the Senate after Election Day. Biden’s Tuesday visit to Wilkes Barre, Pa., on Tuesday will be shadowed by Trump, who plans his own rally there on Saturday (ABC News).

Biden wants to help Keystone State candidates for Senate and governor — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro — by putting a national frame around this fall’s contests. With 68 days to go until Election Day, both Democrats are considered slight favorites. Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz is struggling in polls and state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), the GOP’s nominee for governor, is testing the laws of political gravity by declining advice to appeal to moderate Republicans who could swing the election one way or another.

“The conventional wisdom is they both have shots in a year when a lot of folks thought we’d get clobbered,” T.J. Rooney, a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, told the Morning Report. “Everyone prays Trump will continue to make headlines, which turns it from a referendum into a choice.”

The nasty battle between Fetterman and Oz took yet another turn on Tuesday as the progressive Democrat said that he will not debate the former daytime talk show host next week, accusing the Oz campaign of continuing to mock the stroke he suffered days before the May primary (The Hill).

“As I recover from this stroke and improve my auditory processing and speech, I look forward to continuing to meet with the people of Pennsylvania. They’ll always know where I stand,” Fetterman said in a statement. “Today’s statement from Dr. Oz’s team made it abundantly clear that they think it is funny to mock a stroke survivor. I chose not to participate in this farce.”

The debate was set to be hosted by Pittsburgh-based KDKA-TV. Fetterman did not rule out taking part in future debates.

▪ David Catanese, McClatchy D.C.: Is Oz done? Republicans still see a path to a comeback against Fetterman.

▪ NBC News: Crime emerges as a focal point in Pennsylvania Senate race.

▪ Niall Stanage: Five reasons Democrats’ midterm chances are rising.

Elsewhere on the 2022 scene, a pair of polls released on Tuesday showed a dead heat shaping up in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker. A survey released by Emerson University showed Walker leading by 2 percentage points (46 to 44 percent), while a Trafalger Group poll has the former University of Georgia star leading the incumbent Democrat by a single point.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) holds solid leads over Democrat Stacey Abrams in both surveys (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: Democrats see opening to take down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

▪ Dave Wasserman, The Cook Political Report: House overview: GOP control no longer a foregone conclusion.

▪ CNN: Alaska to tabulate ranked-choice ballots today as Sarah Palin attempts political comeback.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Trump’s Truth Social barred from Google Play over content moderation.

▪ The Associated Press: Indiana abortion clinics sue to block state’s near-total ban.

▪ The State: South Carolina House advances near-total abortion ban with rape, incest exceptions up to 12 weeks.

▪ The Hill: Appeals court rules two Trump administration Gulf lease sales unlawful.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ ADMINISTRATION

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday changed longstanding Justice Department policy to try to avert appearances and public accusations of political bias and activism by employees under his jurisdiction. He banned all department political appointees from participating in campaign events in any form. “We must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work,” Garland said in a memo (The Hill).

The Hill’s third installment of a special report on Afghanistan includes reporting by Rebecca Beitsch that explains how thousands of Afghans remain stuck in third-party countries a year after the United States left Afghanistan to the ruling Taliban.

The New Yorker: The evacuation of Afghanistan never ended. At the end of 2021, according to the United Nations, there were more than 2.7 million Afghan refugees registered worldwide. Since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, there have been no such reliable figures.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday said U.S. counterterrorism work “is not done” a year after U.S. troops and intelligence assets departed Afghanistan (The Hill).

NASA plans a second try on Saturday afternoon to send the Artemis I rocket and the Orion unmanned capsule to the moon from Kennedy Space Center. A planned launch Monday was postponed because of several systems problems during countdown (The Hill).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Mikhail Gorbachev — the last president of the Soviet Union and the leader who set in motion the reformist principles of glasnost and perestroika that ended seven decades of Communist rule and the Cold War — died at age 91, Russian state media reported on Tuesday, citing the Central Clinical Hospital, which announced that he died after a long illness. Gorbachev’s office said earlier that he was undergoing treatment at the Moscow hospital. No other details were given (The Associated Press and The New York Times).

Gorbachev in the span of about six years lifted the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world. The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner ultimately was chased from office at home but hailed as a visionary abroad. Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not share perspectives about Russia’s future. Putin saw himself “second only to God,” Gorbachev once commented.

Biden, in a written statement, praised Gorbachev, with whom he met at the White House in 2009, as “a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.”

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency today are headed from Kyiv in Ukraine to try to inspect Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which is operated by Ukrainians while being controlled by Russian forces and used as a dangerous base for war. As Reuters aptly reports this morning, questions and tensions abound for the future of the Zaporizhzhia plant — and risks of catastrophe.

Gazprom, Russia’s government-owned energy giant, is expected today to temporarily stop natural gas flows through Nord Stream 1, the critical pipeline that connects Russia to Germany, aggravating worries about European energy supplies. Germany is rushing to fill natural gas storage facilities before winter as backup against cutoffs by Russia. The Russian government appears to be trying to obstruct that effort as well as create uncertainty over future gas deliveries (The New York Times).

On Tuesday, Pope Francis, through the Vatican, unequivocally condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine as “senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.” Tuesday’s damage control was a response to public criticism that the pope has been too tolerant in recent remarks about Russia’s aggression and too vague about Ukraine’s suffering (The Associated Press).

🌏 Today and Thursday in Hawaii, representatives from the U.S., Japan and South Korea will meet amid heightened tensions with China over Taiwan (Reuters). … The Biden administration plans to ask Congress to approve an estimated $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan that includes 60 anti-ship missiles and 100 air-to-air missiles, Politico reported on Monday. … Amid China’s tensions with Taiwan, Taiwanese soldiers on Tuesday fired flares and then warning shots at three unidentified drones that flew near an offshore grouping of islands under their protection. The drones later flew back toward the Chinese mainland, according to the Defense Command (CNN). … Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday became the latest U.S. elected official to visit Taiwan (Reuters).

OPINION

■ Gorbachev played a complicated but unique role in world history, by Natan Sharansky, opinion contributor, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3czXHmK

■ Gorbachev almost made Russia democratic, by William Taubman, opinion contributor, The Wall Street Journal. https://on.wsj.com/3wHKbnW

■ The enemy gets a vote: The forever war and future war after Afghanistan, by Joseph Felter, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3Rm167f

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at noon for a pro forma session and return to work in the Capitol on Sept. 13.

The Senate convenes on Friday at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m.

Vice President Harris has no public events.

First lady Jill Biden will speak during a White House meeting at 12:30 p.m. focused on helping K-12 school districts fill teacher vacancies. Joining her: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, National Education Association President Becky Pringle, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education President Lynn Gangone and others.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2:45 p.m.

🖥 Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://digital-stage.thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ STATE WATCH

This week, Mississippi has serious water problems, including Pearl River flooding, contamination and malfunctioning water treatment for drinking water. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R), elected in 2020, formally proclaimed a state of emergency on Tuesday for the water system in Jackson, where at least 150,000 residents are without clean water and are being told not to drink what comes through the faucets.

Heavy rainfall and flooding this week exacerbated well known problems in one of two water treatment plants in Jackson. The city had already been under a boil-water notice for a month because the Health Department discovered cloudy water and said digestive problems could result from ingesting it. The governor said his state will try to help resolve indefinite contamination problems by hiring contractors to work at the treatment plant, which was operating at diminished capacity with backup pumps after the main pumps failed “some time ago,” he said (The Associated Press and CBS News). The National Guard has been distributing bottled water to long lines of takers (CNN).

In New York City’s Times Square on Thursday, a state law goes into effect making the Manhattan tourist attraction one of scores of “sensitive” places (others are parks, churches and theaters) in which guns are banned. New signs have appeared in Times Square identifying it as a “Gun Free Zone.” The state measure, passed following the Supreme Court’s June decision expanding gun rights, also sets stringent standards for issuing concealed carry permits (The Associated Press).

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

The administration plans to shift its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment coverage and federal underwriting to the private sector as soon as January, in large part because pandemic appropriations approved by Congress are depleted (The Hill).

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday allowed New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in effect since December for municipal workers, to be enforced (The Hill). The emergency application to the high court came from New York police detective Anthony Marciano, who listed New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) as one respondent. The case is currently being considered by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The White House on Tuesday announced plans to expand its monkeypox response by providing vaccinations and education at large LGBTQ-centered events around the country. The move follows a recent pilot program carried out in Charlotte, N.C. “Given the progress we’ve made toward making the tools available to end this outbreak, our vaccine strategy is to meet people where they seek services, care or community — especially in communities of color. We know that Prides and other large LGBTQI+ focused events can do just that,” said Demetre Daskalakis, deputy director for the White House’s national monkeypox response. Daskalakis added that the goal is to make the response more “intentional and targeted” (The Hill).

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,044,763. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 387, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

➤ TECH

Elon Musk, in regulatory filings revealed on Tuesday, cited a Twitter whistleblower’s report as a reason to scrap his bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion. While the whistleblower claims are being investigated, Musk wants to postpone his legal battle with Twitter over his push to exit the deal (The New York Times).

THE CLOSER

And finally … The last member of an Indigenous tribe, who lived a solitary, largely hidden life for decades deep in a Brazilian forest, was found dead on Aug. 23, reportedly of natural causes (CNN). His death marks the end of his tribe, according to authorities in Brazil tasked by the government to protect them (The New York Times).

Nicknamed the “Man of the Hole,” he had lived in complete isolation for the past 26 years on the Tanaru Indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon in Rondonia state, according to nonprofit organization Survival International. The man’s body was found lying in a hammock in a hut. There were no signs of struggle, violence or the presence of other people in the area. His body was to undergo a forensic examination.

The last known image of the forest dweller was released in 2018 by Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency, known as Funai. The organization said the man’s abandoned campsites and shelters of straw and thatch left clues about his lifestyle, including that he grew corn and papaya.

He appears in a clandestinely made and shaky video clip taken years ago (YouTube) and, in another snippet, hidden inside a thatched shelter and apparently wary of an intruder.

Live Science (2018): Last survivor of uncontacted tribe, “Man of the Hole,” is spotted in the Amazon.

New York Post (2016): “Man of the Hole’s” lonely life.

Brazil is home to about 240 Indigenous tribes, many of which are under threat from farmers, ranchers, illegal miners and loggers who want to drive them off the land.

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