Principals

1. A labor boss door knocks for Harris
2. Dems’ big anxiety
3. Choking on CHIPS
4. The last polls
5. Reality check on antitrust
6. Berlin’s Trump prep
7. Gray Lady’s political role

PDB: Concerns about Intel grow in Washington

Trump in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan; Harris in Pennsylvania … Moldovan president wins reelection … Politico: What becomes of MAGA after Trump?

AFL-CIO leader confident on Harris

The leader of a labor union knocking on doors for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania is feeling optimistic about her chances ahead of Election Day. “We are feeling very confident,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told Semafor. “We try to make sure that we’re not getting overconfident.” Schuler, who has spent the last week crisscrossing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to reach out to working-class voters, said she detected a surge in energy among women voters. In Allentown, Shuler said she encountered Donald Trump voters who were switching their votes or regretted voting for the GOP candidate after a comedian’s disparaging remarks about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally. Shuler downplayed the decision by two unions to avoid an endorsement, and insisted that Pennsylvania working-class voters are as enthusiastic about Harris as they were about “Scranton Joe.” “Any hesitation people may have had in the beginning has been erased because they’ve gotten to know her,” Shuler said. Both Harris and Trump will campaign in Pennsylvania today.

— Morgan Chalfant

Democrats worry Trump will contest results

Republican overconfidence about Donald Trump’s showing in a tight race is stoking Democratic fears that the former president will contest the results if he loses. Lawmakers have worried for weeks about the potential for political unrest after the election, particularly if Trump loses but claims victory anyway — and his tone in the closing days is amplifying that concern. “The narrative that Trump is peddling — that he’s already won the election — that is setting it up for his supporters to believe that it was stolen, and that’s in advance of the votes even being cast,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “He’s inciting a reaction to an outcome where the American people may choose Harris.” The renovated Electoral Count Act makes Democrats feel better about Congress’ role in certifying the results, at least; Welch said his party would certify a Trump win if it happens.

— Burgess Everett

House GOP gets tortured over semiconductor law

House Speaker Mike Johnson is staying silent about how he would “further streamline” the semiconductor manufacturing law known as CHIPS and Science — after claiming on Friday that he had mistakenly said his party would “probably” try to repeal it. He made the risky comment about a law that’s delivered millions to battleground districts during a campaign stop for vulnerable GOP Rep. Brandon Williams in New York. Johnson initially referred to curtailing environmental reviews for projects funded by the law, but Congress has already passed a bill doing that. Meanwhile, Williams is scrambling to explain his own stance. In a statement to Semafor, he doubled down on 2022 comments calling the semiconductor law “corporate welfare” — and also said it’s justified because it benefits national security and New York’s economy. “Well, giving billions of taxpayer dollars to profitable companies is corporate welfare,” Williams said. “What else would you call it?”

— Kadia Goba

Final polls contain some surprises

The final polls confirmed a tight presidential race and delivered conflicting results. A New York Times/Siena College poll shows Kamala Harris with edges in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia, while Trump leads in Arizona and the two are tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The British polling firm Focaldata, meanwhile, finds Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Trump leads in Georgia and North Carolina. The two are tied in Arizona. Nationally, Harris leads Trump 49% to 46% in an ABC News/Ipsos poll, while a national NBC News poll has the two candidates deadlocked at 49% each. A shocking Des Moines Register poll has Harris leading Trump in Iowa. There’s reason to be skeptical about the single poll — which Trump’s pollster dismissed as a “clear outlier” — but it nevertheless carries warning signs for the Republican’s campaign because Iowa’s electorate has similarities to Wisconsin’s and Michigan’s.

What to expect on antitrust next year

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

Antitrust is the rare issue where both presidential nominees face real pressure around the same regulatory enforcer. Kamala Harris’ Wall Street supporters want her to ditch Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who has cost them millions in fees from mergers she’s blocked. And companies looking to get bigger may fare slightly better under a Donald Trump administration, which would likely ease off Khan’s crackdown on mergers between oil companies. But they shouldn’t expect a free hand to consolidate under Trump, either: The pro-business Republican center is splintering, with JD Vance speaking admiringly of Khan and Trump using antitrust cases to burnish his populist credentials. That matters because Joe Biden’s biggest antitrust swings — trust-busting cases against Apple, Meta, Google, and others — will either head to court, or to a likely appeal of trials already underway, under the next president.

— Liz Hoffman

Germany braces for Trump 2.0

The German government is gaming out what a Donald Trump victory could mean for Berlin and German diplomats and politicians have been racing to build up relationships with Republicans, lawmakers and officials told Semafor’s Mathias Hammer. While German officials admit they did not seriously plan for Trump’s victory in 2016, “preparations are much more elaborate and more detailed than eight years ago,” Nils Schmid, a senior lawmaker, said. Germany has long been the subject of Trump’s ire, and national security strategists in his orbit regularly berate Europe’s largest economy for years of low defense spending. Some of Germany’s neighbors think Berlin has failed to present the kind of ambitious policies that could help insulate the country from the possible shocks, with one European official telling Semafor that Germans are still “in denial” about what a Trump administration would mean.

New York Times wrestling with its political role

The New York Times’ top editors were questioned last week by newsroom staffers over whether the Gray Lady adequately covered Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses and if the paper deliberately became more aggressive in the campaign’s final weeks, Semafor’s Max Tani reports. In a recording of the off-the-record meeting, executive editor Joe Kahn said the Times took internal and external criticism seriously, but he pushed back against the external critics. He said staffers should tune out against much of the online outrage, saying it was driven by those trying to skew its political coverage. “I don’t think they’re very interested in the hard work that everyone in this room is doing,” Kahn said. “They’re not interested in genuinely revelatory fact-based reporting that helps people navigate the most polarized issues of our time.”

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer stopped by a Penn State vs. Ohio State watch party for Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who is locked in a tight reelection battle. Perry, who has often clashed with GOP leaders, acknowledged that the two “disagree on some things” but called Emmer an “honest broker.”

Playbook: Election Day isn’t here yet, but the blame game is already starting in both camps. If Donald Trump loses, expect Republicans to blame Trump’s lack of discipline and choice of running mate. If Kamala Harris loses, Democrats will blame Joe Biden, her choice of a running mate, and her embrace of the word “fascist” to describe Trump.

WaPo: The union vote has emerged as a potential vulnerability for Harris in Michigan, where Harris supporter and former GOP congressman Fred Upton said Trump has convinced some UAW members that Democratic electric vehicle policies will compromise their jobs.

Axios: An internal email from Trump campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles acknowledged the possibility he could lose the election and said campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Fla., would be used for transition and inaugural teams should he win.

White House

• President Biden will call US service members who participated in recent counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Congress

• Democrats are worried about the tightening Nevada Senate race. — Axios

Economy

• The US added only 12,000 jobs during the month of October.
• OPEC and its allies will delay a planned production for December by one month.

Business

• Volkswagen chief Oliver Blume said the automaker’s cost-cutting plans are necessary due to “decades of structural problems” at the company. — Bild am Sonntag

Courts

• Donald Trump’s former White House counsel Don McGahn agreed to speak at an event held by anti-Trump conservatives later this month. — Politico

Crime

• The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend,” in recorded interviews with author Michael Wolff. — Daily Beast

On the Trail

• A leading Democratic group warned that Kamala Harris’ chances of winning the election grew smaller during October. — WaPo
• Donald Trump said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 and that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot at media covering one of his final rallies in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
• Trump transition chief Howard Lutnick said he is consulting with Elon Musk, Jared Kushner, and Wall Street to staff a possible second Trump White House. — WSJ

National Security

• New security fencing has been installed around the White House, Capitol, and Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, as officials prepare for unrest around Election Day.

Foreign Policy

• US officials said they are looking into reports that an American citizen has been detained in Iran.
• Iran telegraphed plans for another attack on Israel. — WSJ
• An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was arrested and accused of leaking intelligence to the media.

Technology

• Policymakers in Washington have grown worried enough about Intel to begin quietly discussing scenarios should the chipmaker need further assistance, beyond the billions in government funds the company is already slated to receive through the bipartisan chips law, Semafor reported.
• Some progressives are growing more critical of the CHIPS law as the Biden administration has loosened environmental guardrails associated with the legislation. — Politico

Media

• In an open letter to Jeff Bezos, Semafor’s CEO and co-founder Justin Smith asked the Washington Post owner to join a summit on restoring trust in the news media that will be convened next year in Washington. “A last minute, controversial decision to cancel presidential endorsements is the kind of backward-looking tinkering that ultimately slows down this reinvention,” Smith wrote of Bezos’ recent decision to scrap presidential endorsements at the paper.
• A Republican FCC commissioner claimed Kamala Harris’ Saturday Night Live appearance violated the agency’s “equal time” rule.
• Meanwhile, NBC gave Donald Trump free commercial time during its NASCAR coverage on Sunday in response to Harris’ time on Saturday Night Live. — The Hollywood Reporter

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: FEMA didn’t answer nearly half of the calls it received for federal disaster assistance in one week, as call centers were overwhelmed following hurricanes Helene and Milton.

What the Right isn’t reading: Actor Harrison Ford endorsed Kamala Harris.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

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

Tom Cole is a Republican congressman from Oklahoma and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Republican-leaning US-Africa specialists are predicting that a second Donald Trump administration would take a more “transactional, realistic and pragmatic” approach in dealing with Africa, Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke reported.

Trump’s four years in office were characterized by a reportedly dismissive attitude towards Africans, but his supporters say he was the first to raise awareness about what a huge threat China is to US interests in the continent.