Politics

• Biden to address the nation tonight: Beginning at 8 PM this evening, Joe Biden will finally make his first public address following his decision last Sunday to end his reelection bid. After his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, in which his diminishing mental acuity was on full display, Biden insisted that he would not be dropping out. However, following a concerted pressure campaign from Democrat leadership, it appears Biden’s hand was finally forced. Given his diminished state, Republicans have been calling for him to step down from office immediately. Yet in a phone call with campaign staff on Monday, Biden stated, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna be out there on the campaign with her, with Kamala. I’m going to be working like hell, both as a sitting president, getting legislation passed, as well as in campaigning.”

• Kamala Harris and Joe Biden met in person only six times this summer (RCP)

• Boycotting Netanyahu’s address to Congress: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be addressing a joint meeting of Congress today at 2 PM. This will be his first address to Congress since the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel. Netanyahu will seek to emphasize Israel and America’s longtime friendship, alliance, and common cause. Meanwhile, at least 30 Democrat lawmakers plan to demonstrate their anti-Israel prejudice by boycotting Netanyahu’s address. This includes Kamala Harris, who has a preplanned commitment in Indianapolis, an excuse that House Speaker Mike Johnson called “inexcusable.” Johnson also called for her to be “held accountable” for missing it.

Update: Around half of Congress’s Democrats skip Netanyahu speech (Axios)

• NY Times rates Harris least electable among 10 Democrats: Kamala Harris is enjoying her honeymoon, having raked in $81 million in a recent 24-hour period and having received the endorsements of both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, but all this masks a grim reality for the Democrats: Almost anyone else would’ve been a better candidate to take on Donald Trump. Indeed, a group of eight New York Times opinion columnists rates Harris as the least electable among 10 Democrats. The second-least-electable is California Governor Gavin Newsom, while the most electable is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, followed closely by Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Here’s how one of the Times’s scribes, house conservative Ross Douthat, assessed Harris: “A mediocre politician from a deep-blue state with low national approval ratings, she may find a way to win, but she would be nobody’s top choice were she not the top choice of the president. Relief at Biden’s exit will generate a lot of professed enthusiasm, but it will be fake.”

• Bob Menendez to resign from Senate amid Democrat pressure after guilty verdict (Fox News)

Policy

• Trump and Vance vow to take on the drug cartels: The math is grim: Each year, some 70,000 Americans are dying from fentanyl overdoses. And the Biden administration simply shrugs its shoulders, refusing to hold responsible either Communist China, which manufactures the base elements and sends them to Mexico, or the powerful Mexican drug cartels, which assemble those elements and smuggle the drugs into the U.S. Asked during an interview with Fox News’s Jesse Watters whether strikes against the Mexican cartels were still on the table, Trump said: “Mexico’s gonna have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is ‘Absolutely.’ They’re killing 300,000 people a year with fentanyl coming in. … You know, China has the death penalty for drug dealers … and I said, they’re drug dealers. [China] agreed with me. [Chinese President Xi Jinping] agreed with me: death penalty for drug dealers, death penalty for people that send fentanyl into our country.”

• Federal agents instructed to clear streets of migrants and put on a “show” for “border czar” Kamala Harris’s only trip to border (NY Post)

• Commie-la wants to raise corporate taxes into Venezuela territory: When it comes to tax policy, Democrats clearly can’t stand prosperity. The numbers are in, and Donald Trump’s 2017 cut of the corporate tax rate from an oppressive 35% to a more competitive 21% did indeed pay dividends. But that reality isn’t likely to stop a President Kamala Harris from hiking those rates right back up from whence they came. As Americans for Tax Reform writes, “Vice President Kamala Harris backs hiking the current 21% federal corporate income tax rate to 35%, higher than socialist Venezuela’s 34% rate.” The Harris plan is also more onerous than Joe Biden’s plan, which was to hike the corporate rate to 28%. As ATR continues, “The Harris 35% rate would saddle America with one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, ten points higher than Communist China and tied with communist Cuba.” Venezuela, here we come.

• Biden-Harris admin doles out $400 million in EPA grants to its own environmental justice advisers (Washington Free Beacon)

Culture

• Joy Reid’s “You ain’t black” moment: MSNBC host Joy Reid, the homophobic liar and fake hacking conspiracy theorist, no doubt senses the unpopularity of her party’s likely presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, and is sending out a warning to a crucial voting bloc that views her with suspicion. Yesterday, Reid opined that black voters will look “real weird” if they don’t hold their noses and vote for Harris in November. “Given the, just, stratospheric entrance of Vice President Kamala Harris into the presidential campaign,” Reid patronizingly said, “and she has now secured enough delegates to become the nominee, you’re going to look real crazy being on the other side of that line, particularly as a person of color, but really as anyone who claims to have any connection to the culture.” So, she says, black folks had better fall in line behind the Bay Area progressive of Jamaican-Indian descent who grew up in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners … or else have their blackness called into question.

• BLM rejects Harris nomination: Leftist group Black Lives Matter is labeling the Democrat Party the “party of hypocrites” following the widespread endorsement by party leadership and lawmakers of Kamala Harris. BLM called on the DNC “to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates.” A statement from the group noted that “a 24-hour process of talking to party bosses is not democratic, nor is it a process Democrats should be proud of.” The statement continued, “We do not live in a dictatorship. Delegates are not oligarchs. Installing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee and an unknown vice president without any public voting process would make the modern Democratic Party a party of hypocrites… Democratic Party elites and billionaire donors are attempting to manipulate Black voters by anointing Kamala Harris and an unknown vice president as the new Democratic ticket without a primary vote by the public.” BLM added that it had “no idea where Kamala Harris stands on the issues.” This is a legitimate and stinging rebuke from BLM, but it will likely not matter to the DNC.

• Harvard Corporation reverses course, awards degree to Rhodes Scholar and 10 other leaders of anti-Israel encampment (Washington Free Beacon)

Economy

• GM follows Ford in backing off planned EV expansion: Last week, Ford announced that it was changing its previous plans for expanding its EV production operation, citing continued high market demand for gas-powered trucks. It appears that General Motors is running into the same market reality, as the company announced on Tuesday that it was pulling back and delaying its plan to retool a Michigan plant to produce all-electric trucks until mid-2026. This decision means GM will not meet its previously touted production capacity of one million EVs by 2025. The reason for this change is obvious: Not enough people are buying EVs. GM CEO Mary Barra alluded to this when she told investors, “We are committed to growing responsibly and profitably.” Even though GM has increased the rate of its EV production by 40% over this time last year, EVs only accounted for 3.2% of its total second-quarter sales this year.

National Security

• The FBI chief will face questions over the Trump assassination attempt as he returns to Capitol Hill (AP)

• Video shows Thomas Crooks dead moments after Trump assassination attempt, confirms Secret Service was warned (NY Post)

• Secret Service urges halt to Trump’s outdoor rallies after assassination attempt (RedState)

• House Republicans raise renewed concerns for Supreme Court justices’ safety (Daily Signal)

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