Principals

1. Trump burying hatchet(s)
2. Congress funding fight
3. New ad touts EVs in Michigan
4. Nvidia earnings
5. YIMBYs for Harris
6. A ‘clean energy Marshall Plan’
7. Labor union support

PDB: New Trump indictment in election subversion case

Israel raids West Bank … Harris campaigns in Georgia … Biden approved Gaza pier operation despite objections

Trump buries the hatchet(s)

The Trump campaign is embracing former foes as it adjusts to a changed race against Kamala Harris. Nikki Haley, according to Trump, is now welcome on the campaign trail; Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp earned his praise for the “help and support” he’s provided in the state; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now on his transition team. The timing comes after Trump advisors have, on more than one occasion, discussed how they need to unite the party or risk losing. For Trump, his advisers’ advice has played a role in his decision to bury old hatchets, as have private efforts from allies to mend fences — but ultimately, Trump has also realized this is a different race than when he faced Joe Biden, and the effort represents the reality that he might need the extra voters that these folks could bring in.

— Shelby Talcott

The “CR stages of grief”

When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, lawmakers will quickly face what’s become the familiar “CR stages of grief,” as one Senate aide put it. Congress will only have 13 legislative days to assemble a short-term funding patch to prevent a shutdown by Oct. 1. Despite the tight squeeze, Hill aides in both parties believe Congress will settle differences and pass a clean spending bill, an outcome Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s team is pushing for, Axios reported. Still, it’s safe to expect theatrics. Speaker Mike Johnson is under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus to include a crackdown on non-citizens voting in federal elections, though that’s already illegal. “We’re looking for every way to push the SAVE Act and to get it through the Senate,” Johnson said last week during a press call. Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House view it as a non-starter.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

EV advocates make their case in Michigan

The electric vehicle industry is looking to stick up for itself after becoming an election-year target on the right. The newly-formed American EV Jobs Alliance launched its first ad, a six-figure digital buy in Michigan, urging voters to “forget the political noise” and back investments in “good American jobs” rather than ceding them to China. “The truth is simple: America is experiencing a renaissance in manufacturing jobs and a key driver of that is EV’s,” Mike Murphy, the political strategist behind the group, said. “However, the reality is that as America has become more polarized, so have EVs, and the result is we are not reaching our true potential — and that hurts workers, consumers and the nation.” The industry faces cuts to consumer tax credits if Donald Trump wins, but also commercial challenges: Ford recently scaled back EV plans amid soft demand.

— Benjy Sarlin

Markets watch for Nvidia earnings

Wall Street and Washington will be watching Nvidia’s earnings closely today. The chipmaker’s quarterly results are expected to move markets and serve as a gauge of the resiliency of the artificial intelligence boom. “Nvidia’s earnings report may actually have more impact on the overall market than Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech last week,” one analyst told Bloomberg. The company is likely to see its second-quarter revenue more than double, according to LSEG, though that may still fall short of some sky-high expectations based on the previous quarters. Nvidia is “the most important stock in the world right now,” the president of a tech-focused hedge fund told CNBC.

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YIMBYs for Harris host fundraiser with eye on affordable housing

Democratic heavyweights like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore will speak at a virtual fundraiser this evening for Kamala Harris centered around affordable housing — an issue taking on more prominence in the 2024 campaign. Organizers for “ YIMBYs for Harris” aim to harness the grassroots enthusiasm around Harris to push a simple, straightforward message: Build, baby, build. “There’s been so much enthusiasm,” event organizer Armand Domalewski said. Elected Democrats on the speaking roster include Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Schatz said that during the virtual fundraiser he will highlight the role the federal government plays in loosening rules around housing construction. “If we simply make it easier to build the thing we say we want, we will get more of it,” he told Semafor.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

A Harris adviser’s plan to take the IRA global

The US should counter China’s dominance of global clean energy supply chains by helping poorer countries buy US-made hardware, an economic adviser to Kamala Harris, said in an interview with Semafor. Brian Deese, who was also a top economic adviser to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, declined to say whether Harris has endorsed the proposal. But his “clean energy Marshall Plan” offers a blueprint for how Harris, if elected, might seek to shift the US away from relying on tariffs, and toward taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees for clean energy buyers in developing countries. The policy aims to make US exports competitive with cheaper Chinese alternatives, and reduce reliance on China for raw materials and components. It has a political carrot, too: it would clearly link the global energy transition to the bottom lines of US companies, especially in the Republican-majority districts that have captured most Inflation Reduction Act-related investment so far.

Seven in 10 Americans support labor unions

Support for labor unions among the American public is near a record high, even as union membership declined to a new low last year. Seventy percent approve of labor unions, according to new figures from Gallup shared with Semafor, while only 23% disapprove. Approval for unions has inched up over the past 15 years after hitting a low of 48% in 2009. Both major political parties are courting union voters, who could decide the election in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Donald Trump has made gains among the historically Democratic cohort of labor union members, even as most of the union leaders have backed President Biden and now Vice President Harris. One union boss has notably withheld an endorsement: Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last month. O’Brien has since chastised Trump over comments he made about firing workers during an interview with Elon Musk.

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Beltway Newsletters

Playbook: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s decision to campaign in Georgia today “is an affirmation that we are still a battleground state, we are still in this,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Ga. The two will appear in Savannah, an unusual move that is about losing less in areas of the state that are typically won by Republicans.

Axios: Donald Trump is increasingly getting support from the anti-censorship movement — a loose collection of individuals pushing back on real or perceived censorship by large tech companies and the federal government.

White House

• President Biden and Vice President Harris will campaign together in Pittsburgh next Monday.
• The White House is hosting families of Americans whose loved ones have died of overdoses to recognize Overdose Awareness Week today.

Congress

• House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul asked White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to testify publicly at a hearing about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Former Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., decided to leave Congress after he was “swatted”: a SWAT team was dispatched to his home in Wisconsin after an anonymous caller claimed falsely that he had been shot and his wife and two daughters had been taken hostage. — WaPo

Outside the Beltway

Former Fox News host Steve Hilton is considering running for California governor in two years. — Politico

Economy

• US consumer confidence rose during the month of August, according to The Conference Board’s gauge.
• Vice President Harris plans to embrace “targeted and strategic tariffs” if she wins in November. — NYT
• Trump’s economic proposals would increase federal deficits by $5.8 trillion, nearly five times more than those from Harris, over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model.
• Chinese authorities are counterintuitively pressing investors to stop buying the government’s bonds. — WSJ

Business

National Football League owners overwhelmingly voted to allow private-equity funds to buy stakes of up to 10% of any team.

Courts

• Special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against Donald Trump in his 2020 election subversion case in Washington, after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for “official” acts. The indictment removed some charges as well as a reference to “Co-Conspirator No. 4” who is said to be former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. — WaPo
• Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “concerned” about the high court’s landmark ruling earlier this year that awarded Trump immunity from prosecution for official acts he undertook while in office. — CBS News

Polls

• A survey conducted by AARP found Democrat Angela Alsobrooks and Republican Larry Hogan tied in the Maryland Senate race, with both of them polling at 46%.
• Vice President Harris didn’t receive a bump from the Democratic convention but leads Donald Trump by 4 percentage points nationally, according to Morning Consult.

On the Trail

• Vice President Harris will sit for her first interview as the Democratic nominee — done jointly with running mate Tim Walz — on Thursday with CNN’s Dana Bash. Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes accused the pair of being “too nervous for either to do solo interviews” and “hoping it gets lost in Labor Day weekend.”
• Donald Trump said he reached an agreement with Harris on the Sept. 10 ABC debate that will leave the rules unchanged from the previous debate — meaning microphones will be muted when a candidate is not speaking. The Harris campaign, however, signaled there is still debate about the microphone rule, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports.
• Two members of Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation with an Arlington National Cemetery official on Monday who tried to prevent the former president’s staff from filming his wreath-laying ceremony. Cemetery officials told the campaign only Arlington staffers were authorized to take photographs or film in a section where recent casualties are buried. — NPR
• The Trump campaign added Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to its transition team.
• Harris and Walz will begin a two-day bus tour in southern Georgia today.
• The presidential race in North Carolina is now a “toss up,” moving from “lean Republican,” according to the Cook Political Report.
• A conservative group will spend $10 million to chip away at Harris’ support by Black voters by criticizing the White House’s proposal to ban menthol cigarettes, which was delayed in April. — NBC News
• Pop star Taylor Swift has yet to endorse a candidate, but a Swifties for Kamala virtual rally raised more than $100,000 for the vice president’s campaign.
• Trump is offering parts of the suit he wore in the debate with President Biden in June with some sales of new digital trading cards.

National Security

• Chinese government-linked hackers breached US internet service providers — including two large providers with millions of customers – to spy on their users. — WaPo
• Eight groups that advocate for military personnel and their families are calling for the Pentagon to address what they call unsanitary and dangerous living conditions on its bases around the world, including mold, bad air, contaminated water, lead paint, and various pests. — NBC News

Foreign Policy

• Israel said it rescued a hostage held by Hamas in Gaza from an underground tunnel.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to brief President Biden on a plan to end the Russian invasion when he travels to the US to attend the UN General Assembly next month. He also wants to share the details with Vice President Harris and Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Ukraine said it used US-made F-16 jet fighters for the first time to intercept Russian drones and missiles.
• Trump’s onetime national security adviser H.R. McMaster portrays his former boss as an “an unpredictable waffler who undermined himself to the advantage of his competitors on the world stage” in his new memoir. — NYT
• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he is pausing relations with the US and Canadian embassies over criticism of his proposed judicial overhaul.

Technology

• Apple eliminated 100 services jobs, including some in the team that runs Apple News. — Bloomberg

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: A complaint alleges that the author of the book White Fragility plagiarized several other scholars in her doctoral thesis, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

What the Right isn’t reading: Rep. Yadira Caraveo, D-Colo., opened up about her experience with depression.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Morgan Chalfant

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

Jon Tester is a Democratic senator from Montana.