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THE TOP
PBN live at the 2024 TribFest
Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News this week — a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included a few of our favorite outside reads from the week.
Now take it away from Austin…
We were thrilled to once again host a day of programming at the annual TribFest here in Austin, a wonderful multi-day conference put on each year by our friends at the Texas Tribune.
It was fun — and newsy! But the best part was getting to connect in person with loyal Punchbowl News readers who live far outside the Beltway. We like to think of ourselves as a news community, and traveling the country is one of the many ways we get to interact directly with our audience.
And it wouldn’t be a Punchbowl News event without some swag, so we had postcards, kettle corn and portable fans for our new sign-ups.
On a personal note, this was my first TribFest, and I had the pleasure of interviewing Arati Prabhakar, who serves as President Joe Biden’s top adviser on science and technology.
Prabhakar and I talked mostly about artificial intelligence — the dominant issue in her portfolio, by far — and how the Biden administration is approaching the regulation of a constantly evolving technology that, as of late, has Congress’ full attention. And ours!
We had an interesting back-and-forth about Congress’ role in all of this as it relates to what she’s doing in the executive branch. Her appearance at TribFest drew a ton of interest. Every seat was filled, and dozens of people were standing in the back and sitting along the walls. The audience was among the most engaged I’ve had as a moderator, and there were long lines at the mics for the audience Q&A portion.
It was a microcosm of the American public’s heightened awareness of and interest in the rise of artificial intelligence, which will impact every single one of us — if it hasn’t already. Americans are looking to Congress to mitigate the potential harms of AI while allowing its benefits to be fully realized, and the audience questions made that crystal clear to me.
Gonzales goes full YOLO: You don’t often hear a member of Congress publicly predict that their party is going to lose the House, especially so close to an election. But that’s exactly what Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) did during an on-stage conversation with our Jake Sherman.
Gonzales’ comments prompted gasps among the in-person audience and set off a firestorm within the House GOP leadership almost immediately, as we wrote in the Thursday Midday edition.
What struck me about Gonzales’ assessment was that it came as Republicans are privately fretting over their prospects in House races as well as Senate races, amid a staggering Democratic cash advantage fueled in part by Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket.
House Republican leaders might not have liked what they heard from Gonzales on Thursday. But privately, many of them are thinking the same. Gonzales just said it out loud.
Aguilar shares a Jan. 6 committee anecdote: House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar sat down with our Melanie Zanona to cap off our TribFest programming. You can read more about it in our Friday AM edition.
But I wanted to share something else Aguilar said — a moment he revealed for the first time on Thursday.
Aguilar was a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, which put out its final report on the Capitol attack in December 2022. Shortly after the report was released, Aguilar said, committee members gathered via Zoom to debate whether they wanted to take the report on the road — in other words, travel the country to explain and answer questions about the final product.
The committee members were a close-knit group and spent hundreds of hours together during their year-plus investigation. And that meant they were kind of sick of each other by that point, Aguilar joked.
“It kind of felt like camp,” Aguilar said. “And you just needed some time alone.”
What I’m reading: OK, this was bizarre. Several advertisements popped up at bus stops in Philadelphia this week suggesting that America’s Football Team, the Philadelphia Eagles, had endorsed Harris. The ads caused a fervor online, and the Eagles eventually released a statement saying the posters were fake and that the organization had nothing to do with them.
Well, it turns out that, according to the company that administers the placement of the signs, the fake ads were placed throughout the city by vandals who somehow picked the locks on the bus shelters and inserted the Harris-Eagles ones.
Just a truly weird story.
— Andrew Desiderio
You can find The Readback in your inbox every Saturday at 8 a.m. And don’t hesitate to reach out to readback@punchbowl.news with feedback. Enjoy The Readback.
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Congress is finally coming back
I may regret saying this, but I cannot wait for Congress to come back into session next week.
They were gone for an incredibly long time, even by congressional standards. The so-called “August recess” is always misleading anyway, since it usually includes a week or two in September.
But this time, the break was even longer, since House Republican leadership sent everyone home a week early in July amid their struggles to pass spending bills. Plus, members were anxious to get back home and campaign after a rather tumultuous stretch in politics.
It’s much harder to do our jobs when lawmakers are away from the Capitol. Members in competitive districts are busy campaigning at home. A lot of lawmakers also use the break to vacation and spend quality time with their families. And there are a ton of CODELs as well.
In other words, lawmakers are busy, and they welcome the reprieve from us reporters. Getting them on the phone is a far more tedious task than grabbing them in the hallways. Sources also tend to open up more during in-person conversations versus a telephone interview.
By far, one of my favorite things about being a Capitol Hill reporter is how accessible the lawmakers are. There are 535 members and senators roaming the halls, and we pretty much have the unlimited ability to approach them and ask questions. It doesn’t always mean they’ll answer, of course. But I can’t think of many other beats where you have such easy access to your sources.
The upcoming three-week sprint is going to provide plenty of news to cover. Government funding and the potential for a shutdown (although we think highly unlikely!) is going to dominate the news cycle over the next few weeks.
But we’ll also be using these final work weeks to pick lawmakers’ brains about the battles for the House and Senate. Since Congress won’t come back again until after the November election, it will be our last chance to gather string and quotes for stories we want to write in October.
And by the end of the busy three-week stretch, I’m sure I’ll be saying, “I can’t wait for them to leave!”
What I’m reading: HBO’s “Industry” has quickly become my new favorite obsession. It’s like “Euphoria” but set in the London banking world. Plus, Kit Harington joined the cast this season!
— Melanie Zanona
More from all our tax chats
I’ve had a string of interviews recently with some key voices in the 2025 tax fight, so we’ve got some extras for you from our stories this week.
From our Q&A: The latest installment in our series of Q&A’s with tax writers on the 2025 tax fight was with Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Boyle has some notable priorities in the tax fight, including his push to address the debt limit, provide tax deductions for labor union members and tax the wealth of the richest households.
In our conversation, Boyle also said there are key pieces of the Build Back Better Act that passed the House but didn’t make it through the Senate last Congress that he wants Democrats to revive.
“One is on child care. I do think that this will be an opportunity for us to finally address our child care crisis and that needs to be a priority. The second is making sure that we expand the child tax credit.”
He’ll find plenty of allies in his party for those goals. Boyle added that he’s hopeful that, at least in the House, a CTC expansion could be bipartisan in 2025.
About that CTC expansion: We also brought you our interview with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a long-time advocate for expanding the family benefit, about Democrats’ agenda for the CTC.
We talked with DeLauro about how Democrats balance a lot of big priorities in 2025 when it comes to the tax code. She hit us with a long-used cliche on Capitol Hill.
“You can walk and chew gum at the same time,” DeLauro said. “There are a lot of issues to face, and I think we have an energy to be able to tackle them… I think the tax fight will be a big fight, and I think Democrats will be united on where they want to go in this effort.”
Chamber’s view: Last but not least, we caught up with Neil Bradley from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how the lobbying group for U.S. companies is delving into the 2025 tax fight.
During our interview, we asked Bradley about rising concerns about debt and deficits and how it could affect the tax debate, particularly for the GOP.
“I think it is certainly going to be part of the discussion,” Bradley said.
Bradley made the case that a “pro-growth tax code” would offset revenue loss, and that it’s spending — largely mandatory spending for programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that’s the real culprit, not tax cuts. Those aren’t uncommon views on the Hill among Republicans, of course.
What I’m watching: I started Love is Blind UK while visiting a friend and just finished the new season. Great for that reality TV fix!
– Laura Weiss
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What the House campaign ads tell us
Labor Day has passed, which means it’s crunch time in campaign season. So expect ads — lots and lots of ads — for the next two months.
This week, I spent a lot of time digging into television advertisements that are running in the most competitive races in the country.
This is one of my favorite ways to cover election season because it tells us what campaigns see as their most effective messaging to swing voters.
We went deep looking at what Democrats are talking about on the airwaves this fall. We honed in on two interesting findings.
First off: Democrats are prioritizing abortion rights messages above all else. Abortion was a winning message in 2022 and Democrats are continuing to hammer Republicans on the issue in 2024.
I get pitched a lot of ads from campaigns all across the country, but what stood out to me this week was the confluence of abortion messaging in Democratic ads. We highlighted this in our Wednesday AM edition.
In separate House seats in New York, Nevada and California, Democrats were painting their opponents as “MAGA extremists” who want to take away a woman’s right to make their own health care decisions.
Democrats are betting the offensive on abortion will cause independent voters to sour on the GOP. It’s not a bad strategy, considering ballot measures supporting abortion rights have passed in traditionally red territory like Ohio and Kansas in the years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Second: We noticed a trend of Democrats hugging themselves as closely as possible to law enforcement.
Democrats have come a long way since the ”defund the police” movement swept the nation in 2020 following the police murder of George Floyd. After getting hit by Republicans as ” soft on crime” for a number of cycles, Democrats don’t want to be seen as vulnerable on this issue.
That leads to ads like this one from Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), which stood out to me because it literally includes a close-up of a “thin blue line” flag. This is the emblem of the pro-police, Blue Lives Matter movement. Still pretty wild to see in Democratic messaging!
What I’m watching: I’m glad the NFL season is back! We got a great glimpse of what this season can offer when the Chiefs narrowly beat the Ravens on Thursday. Plus, T. Swift is back!
I’m hoping Daniel Jones can show his best self this year for the Giants. I’m still skeptical.
– Max Cohen
Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.
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