The '24 Seven - 3/14/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
Hello, and welcome to The ‘24 Seven – 24sight’s daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the race for the White House. If you see something we missed or have suggestions, drop us a note - info@24sight.news.
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1 Blue Wall maintenance
Following protest votes a few weeks back that showed 13% of Democratic primary voters in Michigan choosing “uncommitted” to ding President Joe Biden as he wrestles with the polarizing Israel-Hamas war, administration officials are responding with fresh outreach.
CNN reports that senior White House aides – including intergovernmental affairs director Tom Perez and National Security Council chief of staff Curtis Ried – are huddling Thursday with Arab-, Muslim- and Palestinian-American community leaders in Chicago. The strategy session comes as progressives on both sides of the U.S. Capitol and Democratic supporters in battleground states call for ceasefires and additional humanitarian aid in the war-torn Gaza strip.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is shining a spotlight on women’s rights in a post-Dobbs landscape by touring an abortion clinic in Minnesota. The historic visit marks the administration’s latest effort to keep abortion on voters’ minds after the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and a recent Alabama ruling threatening in vitro fertilization treatments sent some Republicans scrambling.
2 When Trump’s worlds collide
House Republicans reportedly wanted presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to join them at their ongoing retreat in West Virginia, but the timing didn’t work out.
Rather than brainstorming ways to build on their shrinking majority, the embattled former president is tied up in court today trying to get Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss the federal case charging him with mishandling classified government documents.
As he has in the three other high-profile cases still winding their way through the courts, Trump maintains he did nothing wrong with regard to the trove of presidential records recovered from Mar-a-Lago.
3 The new fake news
When Trump doesn’t like something, he dubs it fake.
So it should surprise no one that he blamed AI for the montage of head-scratching moments House Democrats compiled from his 7-plus years in the political hot seat.
“Artificial Intelligence was used by them against me in their videos of me. Can’t do that Joe!” Trump fumed on social media.
The only problem is Gizmodo says it reviewed and verified every “brain fart” in the blooper reel — and they’re all legit. Judge for yourself.
4 Firming up
In polling shared with 24sight News in advance of its wider release, pollsters at Cygnal tested the attitudes of battleground state voters and found a handful of big trends as the race continues to shape up — including party splits on which issues dominate, extremism for Dem voters and immigration for R voters, and voter attitudes starting to firm up as November nears.
Cygnal, led by a group of longtime pollsters including Brent Buchanan, quizzed folks in a series of House swing seats across the country from California to New York and in critical battleground states including Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Among their findings, a presidential race which seems to be firming up fast, test case: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The black sheep of the Kennedy clan continues hurting Biden more than Trump on hypothetical ballots (including potentially swinging the election in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona) AND it appears that voters in these swing districts are slowly making up their minds — see the modest decline in undecideds from Cygnal’s January survey to the March survey (1,500 general election voters, +/- 2.5%).
5 Yass
Bloomberg News reports that GOP mega-donor and major stakeholder in TikTok, Jeff Yass, is being considered for Treasury secretary if Trump retakes the White House. Trump recently flipped his position on TikTok saying he opposes a measure that would force the company to divest its ties to China, which in turn sparked a flipping by other Republicans including South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace. The House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan measure to force divestment in TikTok in order for it to keep operating in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Treasury secretary from Trump’s time in the White House, Steve Mnuchin, is putting a together a team of investors to possibly buy TikTok, CNBC reports.
6 Dirty work
RFK Jr. is set to announce his running mate in Oakland on March 26th. Speculation is rampant about which celebrity he may go with, but at least one, “Dirty Jobs” maestro Mike Rowe hinted it may not be as serious as it appears on the surface. In a statement to ABC News, Rowe detailed their initial conversations.
7 Slice of life
For those unfamiliar with the food writing world, Pi Day pitches are REAL.
The math-related “holiday” gives restaurants/chefs/neighborhood bakers a chance to show off their pastry skills, while us regular folks get to gorge on deep dish-ified everything.
And while this Huffington Post report on Google Trend recipe searches surrounding the event show tastes diverge all over the country, there’s also glimpses of ways we can maybe come together.
Let’s take a page from winter wonderland Alaska and heat wave-prone Texas and split a hunk of hearty chicken pot pie.
Or look past red and blue battle lines, like tomato pie lovers in South Carolina (Trump +12) and New Jersey (Biden +16).
Because if surf-obsessed Hawaiians and land-locked Missourians can collectively rally around custard pie, perhaps coalition building is best handled around the kitchen table.