Happy Thursday! On this date way back in 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure that raised the number of members in the House of Representatives from 391 to 433, with a provision to add one seat each for Arizona and New Mexico when they became states, which happened the following year. To this day, the House still has 435 seats for state representatives (along with six non-voting delegates from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia). And on this date 50 years ago, President Richard Nixon announced that he would resign the following day.
Here's your evening update.
Trump Goes on the Attack as He Tries to Reset the Campaign
Looking to recapture campaign attention and blunt a surge of support and momentum for Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump fielded questions Thursday at a hastily called news conference during which he repeatedly attacked the Democratic ticket, made numerous false and misleading statements and agreed to a September debate hosted by ABC News that he had backed out of last week. Trump also proposed two other debates next month.
Trump and his campaign have criticized Harris for not holding any press conferences or conducting formal interviews with the media since joining the race more than two weeks ago. Trump’s hastily arranged Mar-a-Lago press conference, announced Thursday morning, was clearly meant to draw a contrast, though it was the former president’s first such event in months and his first public appearance since Harris locked up the Democratic nomination earlier this week. Trump has reportedly been “unsettled” and “increasingly upset” about Harris’s rise in the polls and often glowing media coverage.
The race has shifted dramatically in the days since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, with polls showing she has erased the advantage Trump held nationally and has expanded the map in battleground states. The latest evidence: The Cook Political Report changed its ratings for Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” The Cook analysts now say it’s anyone’s race overall: "Things look a lot better for Democrats today than they did a few weeks ago, but Trump is looking stronger now than he did in 2020. This is a Toss Up."
Yet Trump argued Thursday that little had changed in the race, and he claimed that Harris isn’t as smart or as competent as Biden. “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all,” Trump insisted. “It’s the same policies — open borders, weak on crime.” He later added: “It's possible that I won't do as well with black women, but I do seem to be doing very well with other segments, extremely well.”
In often rambling remarks — watch or read them here — Trump said he would debate Harris on September 10, a debate previously scheduled against Biden. And he proposed two more debates, a September 4 event hosted by Fox News and one on NBC on September 25.
Trump also claimed that the country could be headed toward an economic depression and World War III and he again slammed Harris and her chosen running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as “radical left” leaders. He also touted his proposals to eliminate income taxes on tips and Social Security benefits, adding that he would not raise the Social Security retirement age. And he criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying that the Fed has been a “little bit too early and a little bit too late” in adjusting interest rates.
Trump has previously indicated that he would not fire Powell if he becomes president again. But on Thursday he suggested that presidents should have some say on monetary policy and interest rates, arguing against the traditional independence of the Federal Reserve’s policymakers. “I was very successful,” Trump said. “And I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
The former president also hit on some other familiar themes. He complained about media coverage of the crowd size at Harris rallies, downplaying the number of attendees she has drawn. “Nobody says about crowd size with me, but she has 1,000 people or 1,500 people and they say, ‘Oh, the enthusiasm is back.’ No, no, the enthusiasm is with me and the Republican Party because they want to stop crime. They want to stop people from pouring into our country, from places unknown and from countries unknown, from countries that nobody ever heard of. That's where the enthusiasm.”
And after Biden said in an interview with CBS News that he was “not confident at all” that there wouldn’t be violence if Trump loses in November, Trump said he expected a peaceful transfer of power next year, though he also claimed that the 2020 transfer was peaceful. “I just hope we're going to have honest elections,” he said.
Number of the Day: 233,000
The number of initial claims for unemployment benefits fell to 233,000 last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday.
The decline of 17,000 from the week before was the largest weekly decrease in more than a year, providing support for the view that the U.S. labor market is returning to normal, pre-pandemic conditions rather than spinning into a recession.
A jump in the unemployment rate announced last Friday sparked new fears about an economic slowdown and spooked markets around the world. Today’s positive news pushed back against the darkening outlook, helping investors reverse many of the losses recorded on Monday.
The eminently quotable economist Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan took a moment to poke fun at the doom-and-gloom commentators who were sure the sky was falling in the wake of last Friday’s weak employment report. “Remember that day earlier this week when everyone freaked out because stocks fell 3% (yes, the #KamalaCrash)?” he asked on X. “Stocks are up 2.3% so far today.”
More broadly, analysts said the report suggests that the economy is still in relatively good shape. “The talk of an imminent recession seems wide of the mark,” Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex, told Reuters.
Deficit Hits $1.5 Trillion in First 10 Months of Fiscal Year: CBO
The federal budget deficit was $1.5 trillion in the first 10 months of the 2024 fiscal year, according to an initial estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office released Thursday.
The deficit was $103 billion smaller than the deficit recorded in the first 10 months of 2023. Revenues were $397 billion (11%) higher this year, while outlays were $293 billion (6%) higher.
The CBO estimates that the deficit for the full 2024 fiscal year will come to $1.9 trillion. Once calendar effects are taken into account, that total is adjusted upwards to $2.0 trillion.
In the 2023 fiscal year, the deficit came to $1.7 trillion. That total was affected by the accounting for a student loan forgiveness program that never took effect; without that distortion, the full-year deficit came to $2.0 trillion.
Fiscal News Roundup
- Trump Tries to Wrestle Back Attention at Mar-a-Lago News Conference – New York Times
- 5 Takeaways From Trump’s Mar-a-Lago News Conference – The Hill
- Trump Repeats Plans to Eliminate Taxes on Tips, Social Security — but Experts Warn Each Could Have Negative Consequences – Washington Post
- Trump Complains About Campaign as Advisers Try to Focus on Attacking Harris – Washington Post
- Harris’s Rise Has Unsettled Trump, Who Is Struggling to Focus, Supporters Say – New York Times
- Trump Falsely Claims That No One Died in Jan. 6 Capitol Attack – New York Times
- Trump Wants Presidents to Have Some Say Over Interest Rates – Bloomberg
- Vance Runs a Swift Boat Attack Against Walz’s Military Service – Politico
- Biden Sketches Out a New Blueprint for Next Six Months – Politico
- Pelosi Says It’s Her Life Goal to Ensure ‘That Man’ Trump Never Steps in the White House Again – Associated Press
- Wall Street Sees End of Fed’s Quantitative Tightening This Year – Bloomberg
- Majority of US Adults Say Democracy Is on the Ballot but They Differ on the Threat: Poll – Associated Press
Views and Analysis
- Trump Compares His Jan. 6 Crowd to the March on Washington – Philip Bump, Washington Post
- Trump’s New Playbook for Attacking Harris Is the Old ‘Liberal’ Playbook, but on Steroids – Alex Isenstadt, Olivia Beavers and Irie Sentner, Politico
- How Tim Walz’s Time in the House Paved the Way for His Ascent – Catie Edmondson and Luke Broadwater, New York Times
- Will Donald Trump Blow Another Election? – Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
- Harris Has Upended a Decade of Democratic Dogma – Shadi Hamid and Aden Barton, Washington Post
- Can Fed Officials Still Nail the Landing? As Rate Cuts Near, It’s a Moment of Truth. – Jeanna Smialek, New York Times
- How to Avoid Another Recession – Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, New York Times
- Do the Math. Recession Risks Add Up – Heather Long, Washington Post
- Taxing the Superrich Is More Possible – and More Necessary – Than Ever – Gabriel Zucman, Project Syndicate