Principals

1. Hill’s holiday preview
2. Congress aims to reshape Secret Service
3. Secret Service gets low marks
4. Israel-Hezbollah tensions
5. Buy Japan
6. UNGA announcements

PDB: Harris plans another speech on economic policy.

Biden heads to UNGA; Trump holds rally in Pennsylvania … NYT: Polls show Trump leading Harris in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia … WSJ: Pilots spooked by GPS spoofing

House set to approve spending patch

Prepare for another government funding fight to ruin the Hill’s holiday season. House Republican leadership will put forth a short-term stopgap plan to fund the government with additional funding for the US Secret Service while excluding the twice-rejected election integrity proposal Speaker Mike Johnson had previously insisted on attaching to the measure. The new plan will fund the government through Dec. 20, positioning Congress for a new spending battle just before the holidays — and perhaps more importantly, after an Election Day that could shift the balance of power in both chambers. The House GOP anticipates a vote on the spending bill by Wednesday, and it’s likely that the Senate will follow suit with plenty of time before current funding expires on Sept. 30 (but not without conservative angst in the House).

— Kadia Goba and Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Secret Service on Hill’s plate this week

Congress appears set to expand protection standards at the beleaguered US Secret Service before it leaves town this month, though it’s still not certain if everything will come together. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is expected to push for Senate passage this week of the House-passed legislation to take the same precautions for presidential candidates, presidents, vice presidents and former presidents, an aide said. It should be a decent candidate for quick approval in the Senate, we’re told. Any one senator could block the effort, but the chamber is likely to get it done given bipartisan angst in the Capitol about the Secret Service. What’s more, Congress added around $230 million for the agency to its new stopgap spending legislation, as well as spending flexibility for the rest of this year. It’s a surprisingly fast reaction to the second alleged assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump earlier this month with more than a month of the campaign ahead.

— Burgess Everett

Americans sour on Secret Service

Americans soured dramatically toward the US Secret Service over the last year, after it weathered significant scrutiny over its handling of the first attempted assassination against Donald Trump. The percentage of US adults who rate the Secret Service’s performance as “excellent” or “good” plummeted 23 percentage points since last year to 32%, according to the new poll from Gallup. A quarter of Americans view the agency’s job as “only fair” and 36% call it “poor.” The poll was conducted Sept. 3-15, following the first attempt on Trump’s life but largely before the second attempted assassination. The findings are on par with the decline in Americans’ confidence in the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the Federal Reserve following the Great Recession, Gallup says.

Israel, Hezbollah step up strikes

Tensions rose further in the Middle East as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to take “whatever action is necessary” to stamp out the threat posed by Hezbollah. On Monday, Israel launched airstrikes on Hezbollah military targets in what it called a pre-emptive attack, while telling Lebanon residents to evacuate from places where the group operates. Over the weekend, Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at northern Israel, which launched its own strikes on Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon. “We have entered a new phase titled ‘the battle of open-ended reckoning,’” a Hezbollah official said. President Biden told reporters that the US would do “everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out.” In an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that a top Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike Friday was planning an Oct- 7-style attack. “We don’t want war, but if it’s waged against us, we go all the way,” he said.

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Japanese PM makes investment case

President Joe Biden’s and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s fond farewells over the weekend will be followed by a Japanese push to maintain what Nikkei Asia called a “stronger-than-ever alliance” between the two countries — while trying to woo US investors back to a country emerging from decades of stagnation. There is a cross-partisan “consensus” in both Washington and Tokyo on a tough policy toward China, Japan’s Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs, Maki Kobayashi, said in an interview in New York. “We are very confident that the Japan-US global partnership is going to be unchanged whoever comes to the White House.” So Kishida, who leaves office Oct. 1, is spending Monday at a closed-door event with asset managers, touting promising economic statistics and “communicating to American investors that the Japanese economy is really coming back.”

— Ben Smith

USAID focuses on gender equality at UNGA

World leaders are flocking to New York for the UN General Assembly, where the US is rolling out new funding to help boost women in the global agriculture industry, according to a pair of announcements shared exclusively with Semafor. Today, the US Agency for International Development is launching a new partnership with leading food companies like PepsiCo, Nespresso, and Danone to support women in agriculture supply chains, while also announcing $681 million in new commitments from organizations and foreign governments for a broader initiative focused on women’s economic empowerment. Officials will discuss the plans at a Clinton Global Initiative event. The US also plans to increase funding for a program to address the challenges women face in the agriculture and water sectors by $114 million, USAID will announce Tuesday.

— Morgan Chalfant

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The government funding agreement announced over the weekend faces an immediate test today in the House Rules Committee, where it will need Democrats to pass given the presence of several conservative hardliners on the panel.

Playbook: A new NRCC poll shows Alaska Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola trailing GOP challenger Nick Begich on the first-round ballot, while an internal poll for former New York Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones has him gaining on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.

WaPo: The high cost of housing is becoming an increasingly important issue in down-ballot races.

Axios: Kamala Harris is “backing away” from an earlier pledge to use executive action as president to give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship.

White House

• President Biden is meeting today with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
• Biden is slated to give a speech on climate change at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

Congress

• Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that GOP North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is “unfit to serve” if the allegations about his posts on a porn website prove true.
• A new report from House Republicans says that US federal research funding helped fuel advancements in Chinese military technology. — NYT

Outside the Beltway

• Four people were killed and 18 more injured during a shooting in Birmingham, Ala.
• Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks claimed tax breaks that she didn’t qualify for. — CNN

Economy

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the US economy is heading for a soft landing, adding that the Biden administration’s top priority is lowering prices for consumers.

Business

• Citigroup’s expansion plan for China is on hold after the Federal Reserve penalized the bank over its data management and risk controls. — Bloomberg
• Apollo Global Management may invest as much as $5 billion in Intel. — Bloomberg

Polls

• Kamala Harris’ favorability score has increased 16 percentage points since July, but Donald Trump still has an advantage over her on the economy and inflation, according to a national NBC News poll.
• Harris has a 4-point edge over Trump nationally and only a 2-point edge across battleground states, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.

On the Trail

• Donald Trump is still refusing a second debate, saying that an Oct. 23 rematch would come “too late.”
• Kamala Harris plans to roll out more economic policy proposals this week and will further elaborate her vision on the economy on Wednesday. “It is about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations and ambitions of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face,” she told reporters.
• Harris said at a New York fundraiser that she would work with labor and businesses to grow investment in cryptocurrency. “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, while protecting our consumers and investors,” she said.
• Four top campaign aides for embattled North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson resigned.

National Security

• The Secret Service faces its latest test this week as it handles security for the UN General Assembly. — AP

Foreign Policy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid a visit to a Pennsylvania ammunition factory on his US trip.
• The US, India, Japan, and Australia agreed to deepen military cooperation and work to combat cancer during President Biden’s final Quad summit over the weekend.
• Leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new president.

Technology

• The US Commerce Department is expected to propose a ban today on barring Chinese software and hardware imports for connected and autonomous vehicles due to concerns over national security. — Reuters
• TSMC and Samsung are considering building semiconductor factories in the UAE.

Media

• Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both considering sitting for “60 Minutes” interviews. — Axios
• Elon Musk’s X told Brazil’s Supreme Court it complied with orders to remove posts a justice ruled were misinformation and hateful.

Big Read

• Kamala Harris has undertaken a behind-the-scenes effort to reach out to corporate America leaders, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who she spoke with this past week, The Wall Street Journal reports. While Harris’ policy plans remain relatively thin, corporate leaders are encouraged by her openness to their feedback and her personal outreach has “fueled optimism that she would reject some progressive priorities as president that executives view as damaging.”

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: Donald Trump called for legislation banning sanctuary cities.

What the Right isn’t reading: Trump didn’t mention Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate under fire in North Carolina, during his rally in the state on Saturday.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

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

Stewart McLaurin is the president of the White House Historical Association.

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