Principals

1. Electoral certification confidence
2. Russian election meddling
3. Reality check on taxes
4. Boeing workers vote
5. Trump on Rogan
6. LAT drops presidential endorsement

PDB: Biden’s controversial remark, John Kelly’s warning

Trump campaigns in Georgia; Harris in Pennsylvania for town hall … Israel says it killed Hezbollah official set to become leader … Pentagon chief says evidence of North Korean troops in Russia

What Congress did to prevent another January 6

Two years ago Congress finally — and quietly — put the finishing touches on its bipartisan law to make it much harder to object to an election result, Burgess Everett and Elana Schor report. Now people should start paying attention to it. No matter the result of the election, it’s going to be just plain harder for lawmakers to even force roll call votes on certifying the election, much less overturn the whole thing. The recent electoral count law “makes overturning the election in Congress quite difficult,” Adav Noti, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told Semafor. Raising the threshold to 20% of House and Senate members is perhaps the most crucial reform given how Trump supporters tried to overturn the 2020 election. “The reforms we enacted will go a long way toward preventing another Jan. 6,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.

US says Russia behind smears of Tim Walz

The US intelligence community is blaming Russia for manufacturing and spreading lies about Tim Walz. “The intelligence community assesses that Russian influence actors created and amplified content alleging inappropriate activity committed by the Democratic vice presidential candidate,” an official with the Office of Director of National Intelligence told reporters. The smears include what the US says is a manipulated video of a fake former student making sexual assault allegations. The intelligence community said it anticipates foreign election meddling to ramp up through Election Day, predicting that Russia and Iran may consider fomenting violent protests or amplifying threats especially after Jan. 6, 2021. Russia will likely focus on protests “challenging the election outcome,” the official said, noting that Moscow, which the US assesses prefers Donald Trump, “will be more aggressive in this period if the vice president wins this election.”

— Morgan Chalfant

What to expect on taxes next year, depending on who wins

In the two weeks before the US election on Nov. 5, our Reality Check series explains the clear Washington policy implications — which are often a long way from campaign rhetoric.

In 2025, nothing is certain except taxes … well, at least some votes on them. The expiring Trump tax cuts will require action no matter who’s in charge, but from there it gets tricky. An all-Republican government would seek to simply extend those pricey tax cuts, though some Republicans want to take another look at the corporate rate and Donald Trump has floated a bevy of tax promises that are very tough to fulfill. An all-Democratic government almost certainly would let tax cuts for higher earners expire and keep some of them for others that “could be counterbalanced by tax increases on the billionaires or corporations,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. OK, what about a split government? It’s hard to see Congress allowing a tax increase for everyone right at the holidays next year. A temporary extension is always an option.

— Burgess Everett

Boeing workers vote on deal to end strike

It’s decision time for Boeing machinists, who will vote today on a new offer from the company to end a weeks-long strike. Boeing offered a raise of 35% over four years, an improvement over an earlier 25% raise offer workers rejected that still falls short of their 40% demand. Still, analysts and union officials seem relatively optimistic that union members will approve the contract in a simple majority vote. “This is a much better offer than we have seen from Boeing,” one travel industry analyst told ABC. A vote to end the strike would be a boon for acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, who has been involved in brokering indirect talks between Boeing and the union. The vote coincides with the new Boeing CEO’s first earnings call during which he’s expected to offer information about production targets and his vision for the troubled company.

White House Senior Advisor to the President for Energy and Investments Amos Hochstein will join the Sustainability session at the Fall Edition of Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Oct. 25. The discussion will focus on the challenges posed by climate change and what they mean for the future of climate finance, decarbonization, and food security.

RSVP to this session and the World Economy Summit here.

Trump scores a big podcast interview

Donald Trump is sitting down with Joe Rogan. The former president will film the podcast in Texas on Friday, a person familiar with the planning confirmed. The sit down is notable, and not just because of Rogan’s huge reach: Trump has leaned into podcasts and independent media personalities, and his campaign tried multiple times to get on Rogan’s show when Trump first launched his campaign, but the podcaster always said no. The two have at times butted heads: In 2022, Rogan said he isn’t “a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form” and didn’t “want to help” Trump by having him on as a guest. After Rogan complimented Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in August, Trump wrote on Truth Social that it would “be interesting to see how loudly” Rogan “gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring.”

— Shelby Talcott

Los Angeles Times won’t endorse for president

The Los Angeles Times won’t endorse a candidate for president this year, Semafor’s Max Tani reports. The paper was preparing to endorse the Democratic candidate after doing so in every presidential race since it first endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, but executive editor Terry Tang told editorial board staff earlier this month that the paper would not be endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle — a decision that came from Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. The publication announced its 2024 electoral endorsements last week, with scant mention of the presidential race.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Speaker Mike Johnson will appear with Donald Trump at his New York City rally on Sunday.

Axios: The rally — which is being held at Madison Square Garden — will cost the campaign more than $1 million.

Playbook: Some of Trump’s allies say that his transition chief Howard Lutnick is using his role to advance his own business interests. Some veterans of the first Trump administration are also finding themselves sidelined by Lutnick.

White House

• President Biden said of Donald Trump in New Hampshire: “We gotta lock him up.” The comments, which he later tried to clean up by saying “politically lock him up,” offered new ammunition to Republicans who claim his administration is engaged in political persecutions against Trump.
• National security adviser Jake Sullivan is giving a speech at the Brookings Institution this morning on the US economic agenda.

Congress

• House Republicans are bracing for an “intra-party war” over the motion to vacate, which allows rank-and-file members to attempt to oust the speaker. — Politico
• Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and 11 congressional Democrats are urging President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Attorney General Merrick Garland to formally investigate an Israeli airstrike last year that injured American journalists.

Outside the Beltway

• Jewish students and staff at the University of California, Los Angeles were assaulted, threatened, and harassed as pro-Palestinian protests widened on campus, a report from a task force at UCLA said.

Economy

• The International Monetary Fund lowered its forecast for China’s 2024 GDP growth, while raising projections for US growth.

Business

• JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon has privately told associates that he supports Kamala Harris and would consider a role in her administration. Meanwhile, Bill Gates told people he donated $50 million to a nonprofit backing Harris. — NYT
• Frontier and Spirit Airlines have held talks about a renewed merger attempt. — WSJ

Courts

• US prosecutors charged an official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in a failed plot to kill human rights activist Masih Alinejad in New York.
• Former Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries was indicted on sex-trafficking charges.
• A federal judge ruled that Rudy Giuliani must turn over his assets to Georgia election workers as they look to collect their $148 million defamation claim against him.

Polls

• Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump nationally, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
• Trump has a slight edge over Harris in Nevada, according to a new AARP poll.
• Harris leads Trump by 19 points in New York state, according to a Siena College poll, a 7-point bump since the last survey in September.
• Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., is up three points since September, putting him in a dead heat with John Mannion in New York’s 22nd congressional district, according to internal polling for Williams’ campaign shared exclusively with Semafor’s Kadia Goba.

On the Trail

• Eminem performed at a rally for Kamala Harris in Detroit alongside former President Barack Obama.
• Harris told NBC News she isn’t worried that sexism could affect the election and that the US is ready for a woman of color to be president.
• The Harris campaign is worried about cracks in the blue wall. — NBC

National Security

• The FBI is investigating the leak of classified documents related to Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran.
• Poll workers are beefing up security ahead of Election Day. — NBC
• Apprehensions of migrants at the southern border for September were the lowest since the pandemic.

Foreign Policy

• Turkey restricted exports of US-origin military equipment to Russia after receiving a warning from Washington. — FT
• Donald Trump’s campaign filed a complaint accusing the UK’s Labour party of foreign election interference.

Technology

• TSMC told the US one of its chips was found in a Huawei product. — Reuters
• The CEO of Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML expects the US to push for more restrictions on equipment sales to China. — Bloomberg

Media

• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s memoir was published posthumously.

Big Read

• Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times his old boss “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.” The interview was part of a larger push by Kelly to air his fears about Trump ahead of the election. Kelly said he was especially motivated by Trump’s “disturbing” threats to use the military against “the enemy within,” which he said recalled prior attempts by Trump to deploy troops against Americans. In a separate article in The Atlantic, he said Trump complained American generals were not more like Germans.

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: Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard announced she is joining the Republican Party at a Donald Trump rally.

What the Right isn’t reading: Women in states with abortion bans are getting the procedure at about the same rate as they did before Roe v. Wade was overturned, a report found.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

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

Vivek Ramaswamy is a former GOP presidential candidate.