Principals

1. Trump’s favorability bump
2. Fed rate decision
3. Avoiding a ‘stupid’ shutdown
4. Hezbollah pager attack
5. Harris’ Hill play
6. Russia’s anti-Harris campaign

PDB: Senators in both parties open to treaty vote on US-Saudi defense pact

Semafor to interview Pelosi … Blinken in Cairo to push for Gaza ceasefire … NYT: Second Trump assassination attempt sparks worries abroad

Trump gets a favorability bump

Donald Trump’s favorability rating has increased 5 points since last month, according to new figures from Gallup. Currently, 46% of US adults rate Trump favorably, while 44% say the same of Kamala Harris. But both are viewed unfavorably by even more Americans. Notably, Harris’ favorability score declined slightly after the bump she received since taking over the Democratic nomination. Independents view Trump more favorably than Harris, Gallup found. The poll was conducted Sep. 3-15, a period that covers the first debate between the two candidates.

Washington, Wall Street brace for Fed rate decision

The Federal Reserve is expected to announce a 25-basis-points to 50-basis-points interest rate cut, in a decision that will reverberate in Washington less than two months before the election. “The key issue for them at this meeting is their sense of the balance of risks,” one former senior Fed adviser told The Wall Street Journal. “If you are more worried now about growth and employment than inflation, then you might well want to take out a little bit of insurance” with the larger cut. We’ll be watching closely for the reaction from Capitol Hill, where some Republicans have broken with Donald Trump in offering support for the Fed cutting rates and some Democrats have demanded a (highly unlikely) 75-basis-points cut. The US got positive economic news on the eve of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference: US retail sales rose during August.

Hill prepares for Plan B ahead of long-shot spending vote

Speaker Mike Johnson forges ahead today on his six-month government funding bill, with voter ID requirements attached to the proposal. Lawmakers expect it to fail, given widespread Democratic opposition and small-scale GOP resistance. They’re already looking toward what comes next: The House could pass a shorter spending bill that would get Democratic votes. If they don’t, the onus would be on the Senate to jam the House with its own shorter funding plan. “We hope, after this vote, we will sit down and negotiate a bipartisan, bicameral bill,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senate Republican leaders aren’t yet saying what they might support, but a big year-end spending deal would likely remain on the table. Oh, and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell had choice words for his party: “We cannot have a government shutdown. It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election. Because certainly we’d get the blame.”

— Burgess Everett

Israel blamed in Hezbollah pager attack

Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives in thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah that were detonated on Tuesday, according to multiple reports. The extraordinary attack killed at least nine people and wounded thousands. Israel, which has not publicly commented on the incident, installed the explosives in the devices months before Tuesday’s attack, Reuters reported. US officials said the pagers were supplied by a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo, which has since claimed they were actually manufactured by another company. The developments followed Israel’s announcement that addressing attacks by Hezbollah would now be part of its war aims, as well as fresh US warnings to Israel about waging a broader war in Lebanon. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the US was not involved in the pager attack nor aware of the plans ahead of time.

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Harris sketches out priorities for Congress

Vice President Kamala Harris is making clear that her presidency would feature a packed Congressional agenda. During a wide-ranging Tuesday interview with members of the National Association of Black Journalists, she reiterated her call for a bill codifying Roe v. Wade and said she’d support capping child care costs at 7% of working families’ incomes. That level lines up with a well-known Senate Democratic bill on the issue. Asked if she’d take executive action to create a commission on reparations to Black Americans — an idea she broadly supported during her 2020 primary run — she declined to commit, saying, “Congress would ultimately have the ability to do this work.”

— Kadia Goba

Russia aims to denigrate Harris

Russian-government linked influence campaigns are taking aim at Kamala Harris, according to a new report from Microsoft’s threat analysis center. Beginning in late August, soon after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, the company began seeing Russian groups producing and spreading fake videos to damage Harris, including one that showed a purported attack by Harris supporters on a Trump rally goer. Microsoft concluded that the synchronized anti-Harris messages across several groups “results from top-down direction from the top of the Kremlin.” Earlier this month, the Justice Department seized over two dozen internet domains used by a Russian influence campaign known as “Doppelganger,” but Microsoft warned that the group has already moved to new domains.

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Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The House task force investigating the assassination attempts against Donald Trump will receive a briefing from the Secret Service this afternoon on Sunday’s incident. The group is also discussing a potential visit to Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Playbook: Kamala Harris largely avoided making news during her interview with members of the National Association of Black Journalists, but did offer some insights into her approach to race issues.

WaPo: Next year’s tax debate will largely hinge on the results of the presidential election, but lobbyists in Washington are already preparing for an expensive battle to keep in place Trump-era tax breaks. “This is the Super Bowl of tax,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce.

Axios: Israel planted explosives in pagers used by Hezbollah as “a surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple” the militant group, but officials decided to move forward with the attack now after becoming worried Hezbollah would discover the rigged pagers.

White House

• President Biden will host a reception for Hispanic Heritage Month tonight. Vice President Harris will deliver a speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s leadership conference.
• Harris called Donald Trump following a second attempt on his life. She said that she told him “there is no place for political violence in this country.”

Congress

• House Speaker Mike Johnson announced plans to expand the purview of the bipartisan task force investigating the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump to include the second assassination attempt.
• Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., will be the new chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
• Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., told Semafor he’s hoping for a post-election debate on permitting reform.

Economy

• Christopher Waller, a Federal Reserve governor seen as a possible Fed chair under Donald Trump, shrugged off Trump’s desire to have a say in decisions on interest rates. “If the president wants to complain about it, he is free to do so just like everybody else,” Waller said. “That doesn’t mean I have to listen or adjust policy to that.” — Bloomberg

Business

• The Biden administration extended its review of Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of US Steel.
• Former White House deputy national security adviser Mike Pyle is headed back to BlackRock after spending the summer advising Kamala Harris. — Politico

Courts

• Sean Combs, the rap artist and producer also known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, was denied bail after pleading not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
• Suspicious mail containing a white powder has been sent to election offices in at least 16 states this week. — ABC News

Polls

• Fifty-four percent of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat support” the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, according to a new Scripps News/Ipsos poll.
• Seventeen percent of US adults regularly get their news from TikTok, up from 3% four years ago, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
• Democratic Maryland Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks is leading Republican candidate Larry Hogan 49% to 42% among likely voters in the state, according to a new Emerson College poll.

On the Trail

• Donald Trump said he would restore the state and local tax deduction, which he limited when he was president.
• What would a Kamala Harris victory look like? Semafor’s David Weigel and Kadia Goba talked to pollsters and strategists about the specific voter groups that are most crucial in a winning map.

National Security

• Five admirals and other current and former US naval officials may testify in a bribery case against the Navy’s second-highest ranking officer, retired four-star Adm. Robert P. Burke.

Foreign Policy

• Senators in both parties are open to the Biden administration’s elusive defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, despite long-standing concerns about its human rights record and a high bar to Senate approval, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Elana Schor report.
• The State and Commerce Departments announced plans to host a meeting of artificial intelligence experts from a group of several countries participating in a global network of AI Safety Institutes. The meeting will take place in San Francisco on Nov. 20-21, right after the US presidential election.

Technology

• Instagram unveiled changes meant to increase privacy for users under 18.
• Microsoft and BlackRock are part of a group aiming to raise $100 billion to invest in artificial intelligence data centers and the infrastructure to power them.

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: Interest payments on the US national debt exceeded $1 trillion, according to data released last week.

What the Right isn’t reading: Senate Republicans blocked a Democrat-sponsored bill that would have protected access to in vitro fertilization treatments and required insurance plans to cover it.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

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

David Cicilline is a former Democratic congressman from Rhode Island.

• Capitol Hill’s bipartisan outrage at Secret Service: ‘They failed twice.’
• Top US antitrust cop says DOJ will overhaul how it reviews bank deals.
• The UAE wants to transform climate finance by capping its own returns.