Evening Report — Phillips makes Biden challenge official

by Amee LaTour - 10/27/23 5:11 PM ET

Evening Report

Phillips: ‘Time for the torch to be passed’

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) launched his presidential bid in Concord, N.H., on Friday, speaking highly of President Biden while suggesting the incumbent can’t win next November.

Phillips said he’s running “not in opposition to President Biden, who has my affection and my gratitude — rather, with two core convictions: That I am the Democratic candidate who can win…the 2024 election. And second, it is time for the torch to be passed to a new generation of American leaders[.]”

Phillips, who is 54 years old, also filed for New Hampshire’s primary Friday. Biden announced this week he wouldn’t do so amid the primary calendar dispute between the state and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Primary voters can still write the president in on their ballots.

While large numbers of voters have expressed dissatisfaction with Biden as the Democratic option for president next year, Phillips has his work cut out for him in terms of getting his name and message out.

Phillips isn’t coming in with a high national profile, and there are no Democratic primary debates planned. Phillips also missed the deadline to file for early state Nevada’s Democratic primary.

The Biden campaign, for its part, said in a statement that it’s “hard at work mobilizing the winning coalition that President Biden can uniquely bring together to once again beat the MAGA Republicans next November,” Reuters reported.

CATCH UP QUICK

Officials said this morning the effort to capture the suspected gunman in Maine‘s Wednesday night mass shooting had expanded to local waterways and that shelter-in-place orders remained active in two counties. A news conference is scheduled for 5 p.m. tonight.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said “ground forces are expanding their activity this evening” in Gaza following two raids earlier this week.
Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) pleaded not guilty to charges related to fraudulently inflating campaign finance reports and charging donors’ credit cards without authorization. His trial was set for September 2024.

DEFENSE

Administration officials address airstrikes in Syria

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC that yesterday’s U.S. airstrikes on weapons and ammunition storage locations in eastern Syria “were very much done in self-defense.”

Kirby said the strikes “went right at targets that were tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. That is resourcing, funding, training, and making capable all these proxy groups.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were “a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”

From The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell: “The United States has not provided evidence as to who is to blame for the assaults — which have consisted of a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets — but claims that Iran is behind them.” Read more here and here.

📊 FRIDAY FIGURES

Swing State Series — We’re giving a snapshot of where things stand one year out in five battleground states for both president and Senate in 2024. In Part 2 of our series:

The Cook Political Report rates Arizona’s presidential election and Senate race as Toss-ups.

Presidential peek: The sparse recent polling out of Arizona testing a hypothetical rematch between President Biden and former President Trump shows Trump with a slight lead:

An early October Morning Consult poll conducted for Bloomberg News found Trump with 47 percent to Biden’s 43 percent in Arizona. The swing state poll’s Arizona sample had a margin of error (MOE) of 3 percentage points.
An early October Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted for The Telegraph showed Trump up 5 percentage points, both when Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named as an option and when he wasn’t. (MOE 3.6 percentage points)
Check out how FiveThirtyEight’s (now 538) polling averages for Trump and Biden in Arizona trended throughout 2020.

Keep in mind: Arizona voted Republican in presidential elections from 2000 to 2016. Then, Biden won the state in 2020 by less than half a percentage point.

The Senate side: Not only does Arizona have a recent history of competitive Senate elections, but incumbent Kyrsten Sinema’s affiliation switch to Independent creates the potential for an unpredictable three-way contest (should she run for reelection).

Sinema was elected to the Senate as a Democrat in 2018, defeating Martha McSally (R) 50 percent to 47.6 percent.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is running in 2024, as is Kari Lake (R), who lost the state’s gubernatorial election last year.

In a National Research poll from earlier this month, Gallego and Lake were tied within the margin of error in both a two-way contest and in a three-way race including Sinema (MOE 4.9 percentage points). In the two-way, Gallego and Lake each had 44 percent.
A poll commissioned by Gallego’s campaign from early October showed him with slight leads in both two-way and three-way races with Lake.

In the House: The state is also poised for a couple competitive House elections. Cook considers Arizona’s 1st and 6th congressional districts Toss-ups.

See Part 1 of our Swing State Series on Pennsylvania here. And check back next Friday for an analysis of Michigan’s 2024 battleground terrain.

israel-hamas conflict

U.S. announces new sanctions

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo announced new sanctions against individuals and companies in Iran, Sudan and Turkey on Friday as part of the U.S.’s “commitment to dismantling Hamas’s funding networks.”

IN OTHER NEWS

Speaker Johnson says House will propose stand-alone Israel aid bill

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Sean Hannity aid for Ukraine and Israel should be considered separately. He said the House would propose a stand-alone $14 billion aid bill for Israel.

Ivanka Trump must testify in New York civil fraud case, judge rules

A judge ruled Friday that Ivanka Trump, once a party in the civil fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and others, must testify in the trial despite having been dismissed as a defendant from the case.

More coverage: Trump testimony in civil fraud trial expected to begin Nov. 6

OP-EDS IN THE HILL

“Why do some voting advocates fight equal access for the blind?” — Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind. (Read here)

“Americans want IRS modernization — why doom Direct File before it has a chance to succeed?” — Ayushi Roy, deputy director of New Practice Lab, recently named a winner of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas competition. (Read here)