In today’s issue:

• Harris, Trump sharpen barbs 
• CEOs swivel toward Trump
• RFK Jr. remains on ballot in Wisconsin, Michigan 
• US criticizes Israeli strike in Gaza

---

Vice President Harris and former President Trump will both campaign today in North Carolina and Wisconsin, agreeing on the stakes and the states with voting power to write their futures.

They’re closing out election arguments this week with some vivid name calling. Harris — during a Washington, D.C., speech Tuesday that drew a mammoth audience and used the White House as a backdrop — called her opponent a “petty tyrant” and compared him to “wannabe dictators.” 

Her speech, nonetheless, was intended to celebrate unity. “We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms,” she said. “It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.” 

The Hill: Harris: time to turn the page on Trump.

The Hill’s Niall Stanage has five takeaways from the vice president’s rally, noting her efforts to simultaneously attack Trump, summarize her economic policies, offer a biographical reintroduction and explain that her presidency would be different than President Biden’s because today’s issues are different. 

Trump, who at that hour addressed supporters in Allentown, Pa., called Harris “a phony; makes you sick.” His remarks, delivered in a majority-Latino city that is home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, ignored the uproar over a comic who entertained this week at a Trump rally with a joke about Puerto Rico, calling the U.S. territory a “floating island of garbage.”

Because of Trump’s strides in attracting Latino male voters this year, Republicans are holding their breath over the joke’s impact in swing state Pennsylvania, where about half a million people have Puerto Rican roots.  

The Hill: Trump later shrugged off the furor during a conversation with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, saying his campaign did not vet the comedian (although the standup routine was in the event’s teleprompter). “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal,” Trump said.

Biden, during a video call with progressive group Voto Latino, stepped into his own verbal quagmire Tuesday when he appeared to call Trump supporters garbage. The White House, in a hasty statement, said Biden was referring to the rhetoric at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday as “garbage.”  

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been,” Biden said, according to the transcript provided by the White House.

The president’s gaffe reminded both parties of Hillary Clinton’s remark at a 2016 fundraiser that “half” of Trump’s supporters fit into “a basket of deplorables,” a comment Republicans gleefully wielded against her.   

The Hill: A Libertarian presidential candidate appearing on swing-state ballots emerges as a wild card.

---

SMART TAKE FROM THE HILL'S BOB CUSACK:

Third-party bids for the White House have fizzled in 2024, but they could still play a deciding role on who will become the 47th president. 

A year ago, there was hope for third parties. Why? Because roughly 70 percent of the country didn't want to see a rematch of Biden against Trump. 

A group called No Labels launched an effort to get on state ballots in the hopes of recruiting a high-profile candidate. It didn't work.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a long-shot independent bid and at one point was attracting 15 percent of the vote — enough to get into the presidential debates. He was subsequently iced out of the debate process and endorsed Trump. 

Kennedy is still on the ballot in some states, including battleground Michigan. He is urging people not to vote for him. 

In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein attracted more than 31,000 votes in Wisconsin. Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes. In 2020, Stein wasn't on the ballot in Wisconsin and Biden won it by about 20,000 votes. Much to the chagrin of Democratic leaders, Stein is on the state’s ballot again this year.

The races in the swing states are so close that 5,000 votes could sway the outcome, so the third-party effect could be the deciding factor on Tuesday.

---

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY: 

▪ U.S. job openings tumbled last month to their lowest level since January 2021, a sign the labor market is losing some momentum, the government reported Tuesday. Job openings fell at health care companies and in federal, state and local governments.

▪ The Federal Emergency Management Agency said this week it will spend $42 million in California’s Rancho Palos Verdes to buy up some landslide-damaged homes to be turned into less risky open space.

▪ In far-flung Native Alaskan villages, the ability to vote is a big challenge when there are no election supervisors, poll workers or open polling stations. On the plus side, more than 46,000 Alaskans managed early voting by mail and in person as of Monday, considered “historic.” 

---

LEADING THE DAY  

ALLIANCES BETWEEN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES and business tycoons are as old as the United States. Whether bankrolling major campaigns, offering advice, lobbying for policy changes or jumping into government, business leaders gain special currency in politics regardless of party.

Major tech executives are making overtures to Trump in the final days of a presidential contest that some are betting the former president will win. Apple’s Tim Cook (pictured above), Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Blue Origin’s David Limp are among those getting recent facetime with Trump. Elon Musk is already there.

The GOP nominee’s controversial vow to raise tariffs on Chinese goods, and even on domestic companies (think Trump’s threat last month to John Deere) that shift manufacturing out of the U.S., has captured the attention of companies, key industries and investors. Economists argue that huge tariffs wind up costing U.S. consumers — a view Trump disputes. He’s pledged a 60-percent tariff on Chinese goods as well as general tariffs of 10 percent and 20 percent. Trade and manufacturing experts expect those specific numbers to change, and there's some doubt about when higher tariffs would take effect, if Trump returns to the White House.

The former president has attracted business allies who benefit from lucrative tax breaks included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Some of the tax provisions are set to expire next year. Trump hates the climate-energy elements of Biden’s law, but businesses the former president cares about are making money off it.

Industries with the most at stake from this year’s presidential outcome include health insurers and energy, carmakers (think Tesla and GM), tech and retailers, Bloomberg News reports.

The guessing games have begun about individuals in the business world who might land plum posts in a Trump or Harris Cabinet.

Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, TV’s “Shark Tank”personality who got mega rich with internet broadcasting, is a prominent campaign surrogate for Harris who insists he has no interest in a Cabinet post. Born in Pittsburgh, he has donated to Republican and Democratic politicians over the years. Cuban has ramped up his support for the Democratic ticket and offers a friendly voice for the business voting bloc while surfacing the Democratic Party’s internal debates over antitrust and tech.

Bloomberg “Game Changers” profile: Mark Cuban: How I became a billionaire.

---

2024 CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP:

Here are five congressional races considered key to future energy and environmental policy.

Here are four open House seats complicating Democrats’ path to the majority.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) has crisscrossed the country this month to campaign with Senate GOP incumbents and challengers, hoping to lock down the votes he needs to put him over the top in a closely contested leadership race with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). (House and Senate Republicans will hold internal leadership elections Nov. 13.)

Early and mail-in ballots are “murky snapshots” of possible election results next week amid debate about what state tracking data suggests for both parties.

Democratic ground game: Advocates from multiple climate and environmental advocacy groups are knocking on doors for Harris. “We know that so much is on the line for climate,” activist Saad Amer told The Hill ahead of a strategy session this week. “I am feeling like we can totally do this.” 

“The suburbs — that’s the whole deal”: How the suburbs became Harris’s clearest path to victory.

Campaign ads: For weeks, Republican candidates in key House and Senate races and Trump have blanketed the nation with campaign ads critical of transgender rights, painting their opponents as radical for supporting trans-inclusive policies. The Hill spoke with three people who were featured without their consent in those ads.

---

WHERE AND WHEN

• The House will convene a pro forma session at 2 p.m. Friday. The Senate will hold a pro forma session at 11:30 a.m. Friday.
  
• The president will meet in the Oval Office at 11 a.m. with stakeholders and officials to discuss federal efforts to support Hispanic-serving institutions. To celebrate Halloween at the South Lawn this evening at a decorated White House (themed “Hallo-READ”), the president and first lady Jill Biden will host local students, military-connected children and neighborhood families for trick-or-treating with lots of candy and books. 
  
• The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.  
  
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken will speak in Washington about the “state of American diplomacy.” His remarks will be livestreamed at state.gov and available at the State Department YouTube channel.      
  
• Candidate schedules this week: Harris today will be in Raleigh, N.C.; Harrisburg, Pa.; and hold a rally and concert in Madison, Wis. On Thursday, Harris will hold an afternoon rally in Phoenix to include a concert with Los Tigres del Norte, and will appear at campaign events in Reno, Nev., and Las Vegas. Today, Trump will campaign in Rocky Mount, N.C., and Green Bay, Wis. On Thursday, Trump will campaign in Albuquerque, N.M., and Henderson, Nev., and join Tucker Carlson's live tour in Glendale, Ariz., for a ticketed interview. On Friday, Trump will hold an event in Milwaukee. On Saturday, the former president will campaign in Salem, Va. Today, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) will appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS Mornings.” He will campaign in the North Carolina cities of Charlotte, Greensboro and Asheville. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) today will be interviewed by popular podcaster Joe Rogan and headline an evening town hall in Bedford, Pa. 

---

ZOOM IN

THE SUPREME COURT has a number of election-related applications on its emergency docket less than a week before Election Day. On Tuesday, the court rejected Kennedy’s push to get off the ballot in two swing states: Michigan and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court’s ruling comes after the justices similarly denied efforts to restore Kennedy’s name to New York’s ballot and Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s name to Nevada’s ballot. 

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is challenging who can cast provisional ballots in Pennsylvania, with potentially thousands of votes hanging in the balance, and Virginia Republican officials seek to remove more than 1,600 people from voter rolls based on assertions they are noncitizens.

In North Carolina, a federal appeals court ruled against national and state Republicans in a challenge to 225,000 voter registrations in the state, reversing a lower court’s ruling sending the challenge back to state court. The challenge will now remain in federal court, where it faces steep odds.

And a North Carolina appeals court on Tuesday rebuffed the RNC’s request to not process certain overseas ballots in the upcoming election unless the voter shows they were previously a resident of the key battleground state. 

In Pennsylvania, a federal judge on Tuesday dismissed six Republicans’ lawsuit that could have thrown thousands of overseas ballots into question in the key swing state. U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner tossed the challenge on multiple grounds: waiting too long to file it, lacking legal standing, failing to include required parties and having no viable cause of action. 

▪ The Hill: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday refused to recuse herself from overseeing the case of the suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Trump at his golf course. 

▪ The Washington Post: Major businesses and their lobbying groups have seized on a set of recent Supreme Court decisions that sharply limit the government’s regulatory powers, aiming to advance dozens of lawsuits that could invalidate a vast array of federal climate, education, health and labor rules.

▪ NBC News: David DePape, charged in the aggravated attack with a hammer against Paul Pelosi, husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in their San Francisco home, on Tuesday received a state sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. DePape previously received a 30-year federal sentence. The sentences will run concurrently.

---

ELSEWHERE

TWO SENIOR ADVISERS to Biden will travel to Israel tomorrow to try to close a deal that would end the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and allow displaced civilians from both sides of the border to return to their homes, Axios reports. If Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk strike a diplomatic deal, it would significantly de-escalate the regional war in the Middle East for the first time since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

Meanwhile, an Israeli strike on a residential building in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Tuesday. It’s the latest attack to cause mass casualties in the area since Israel renewed its offensive against Hamas in the north. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 93 people were dead, including 25 children. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller called the strike “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and said the Biden administration had contacted the Israeli government to ask what happened.

Miller also said the U.S. is “deeply troubled” by Israeli legislation banning UNRWA — the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians — from operating and will “engage with the government of Israel in the days ahead about how they plan to implement” the ban. Miller reiterated that its implementation could result in “consequences under U.S. law and U.S. policy.”

▪ NPR: Hezbollah has chosen cleric Naim Kassem to lead the militant group after the killing of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike in September.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: How Yemen’s Houthis went from ragtag rebels to a global threat. The war in Gaza has allowed the Iran-backed militants to broaden alliances.

▪ The Hill exclusive: The bipartisan leaders of the U.S. Helsinki Commission are calling on Biden to greenlight NATO member-ally Poland to extend its air defense to Ukraine’s skies, helping shoot down Russian missiles under the guise of self-defense.

▪ The Washington Post: As many as 10,000 North Korean soldiers are being trained in Russia and some have already been deployed in the war against Ukraine.

▪ Axios: Canada's deputy foreign minister alleged Tuesday that Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, drove plots targeting Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.

---

OPINION 

■ Trump’s closing argument: Vulgarity, by The Washington Post editorial board.

■ I worked for Kamala Harris. Here’s what I learned about her, by Jeff Rabkin, opinion contributor, The Hill. 

---

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🎃 It’s spooky season! With Halloween a day away, it’s time to revisit All Hallow’s Eve.

The origin of the holiday dates back about 2,000 years ago to pagan Ireland and the ancient festival of Samhain — which marked the end of harvest and the start of winter. During this period, the Celts believed they were “closest to the underworld,” according to Tourism Ireland, and because such a thin veil separated the underworld from Earth, spirits were able to freely roam the surface. 

It’s believed people put out treats to appease these wandering spirits and masked and costumed themselves to confuse any evil Earth wanderers.

Even the color scheme — black and orange — can be traced to the Celts. Black symbolized entering darkness and winter, while orange signified the end of a productive harvest.

Two millennia later, children worldwide attend parties or spend the evening of Oct. 31 going from house to house dressed as movie and cartoon characters to trick-or-treat amid jack-o'-lantern-lined streets. 

Note: Experts point to vehicles and allergies as prevalent safety risks for youngsters on Halloween.

Boo! 👻

---

Stay Engaged 

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger (asimendinger@thehill.com) and Kristina Karisch (kkarisch@thehill.com). Follow us on social platform X: (@asimendinger and @kristinakarisch) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

  Save story