The Hill’s Morning Report — Calls for restraint after Paul Pelosi attack

With eight days until Election Day, ugly sparring between top Democrats and Republicans escalated over the weekend in markedly personal terms.

Democrats over the weekend accused Republicans of graceless and partisan comments — or objectionable silence — following a violent break-in at the San Francisco home of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi that sent her 82-year-old husband to the hospital with a fractured skull. The House leader who is second in line to the presidency was not at home when Paul Pelosi was attacked by an intruder who wielded a hammer and carried a bag with zip ties while shouting “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” (The Hill).

President Biden — who last month described “ultra MAGA” views by supporters of former President Trump as “semi-fascism” — condemned the crime on Saturday while pleading with midterm candidates to turn down the harsh rhetoric. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” called the attack “horrific” and urged Americans to “condemn political violence. It is something that should not be controversial. It is something that should not be partisan.”

▪ Fox News: Accused assailant David DePape, 42, was charged with attempted murder and assault.

▪ The Hill: Here’s what we know about suspect DePape.

▪ The Hill: On the Sunday talk shows, lawmakers point fingers over who is to blame for the Paul Pelosi attack.

▪ The Hill: Republican Rep. James Comer (Ky.) says both parties need to tone down political rhetoric, “myself included.”

The election outcome a week from Tuesday is projected in a new CBS Battleground Tracker Poll to end with a House majority (The Hill), similar to the forecasts in other recent surveys. The Decision Desk HQ now predicts that Republicans will flip the Senate to control an average of 51 seats (51.8 percent likelihood).

The Hill’s The Memo: Republicans gain momentum in midterms’ final stretch.

Leaders in both parties plan this week to fly into key states to make their final, urgent arguments to voters. Biden will travel Tuesday to Florida, a state now more red than blue, to campaign in Fort Lauderdale for gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, who is lagging in polls behind Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (The Hill).

Biden will argue in a state dominated by retirees that Democrats are protecting Social Security and Medicare from Republicans who say they want to cut the federal entitlement programs. Democrats, he boasts, enacted changes this year that will lower some prescription drug costs under Medicare beginning in 2026.

The Hill’s Brett Samuels reports why the fate of Medicare and Social Security became a midterm issue.

Former President Obama, considered the Democratic Party’s most popular and eloquent communicator to the base, told voters in the Peach State that “Georgia deserves better” than Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker (The Washington Post).

While campaigning for Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes (D), Obama told voters that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has called Social Security “the candy that the Left is giving away.” His voice rising to a thundering crescendo, Obama said Social Security is earned by workers through a lifetime of hard work.

“If Ron Johnson does not understand that, if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who have worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect, he’s not the person who is thinking about you and knows you and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin,” the former president said to shouts and applause (CNN).

Obama, who taped 25 political ads and robocalls for Democratic political committees and candidates across the country, on Tuesday will campaign in Nevada for vulnerable Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) as well as Gov. Steve Sisolak (D). On Wednesday, he’ll stump in Phoenix for Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D) and Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for Arizona governor who is secretary of state.

The Hill: Democrats scramble to push Senate candidate Lt. Gov. John Fetterman over the finish in Pennsylvania against Republican Mehmet Oz. Biden and Obama will rally in Philadelphia on Saturday to get out the vote and lend Fetterman some additional backing.

© Associated Press / Morry Gash | Former president Obama campaigns for Democrats in Wisconsin on Saturday.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill, Alexander Bolton: GOP bracing for Trump indictment by the Department of Justice soon after Election Day. 

▪ New York magazine: 2022 midterms: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the man in the MAGA middle. 

▪ The Hill: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is poised to serve as the top Biden foe in a potential GOP House.

▪ ProPublica: Churches are breaking the law by endorsing in elections, experts say. The IRS looks the other way.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ INTERNATIONAL

The United States says Russia is “weaponizing” global food supplies while blocking Ukraine grain shipments in a turnaround from a deal reached months ago (Politico). The assertion that Moscow is trying to choke Ukraine into submission follows Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s power, heat and water infrastructure, seizure of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and annexation of eastern Ukrainian territories with strategic aim at control of Black Sea ports.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday accused Russia of transforming the once-thriving port city of Kherson and the surrounding region into an exclusion zone, or “a zone without civilization” (France24 and Yahoo).

Yet the tide is turning along the front lines in southern Ukraine, according to The New York Times. Western weapons and deadly handmade drones have given Ukraine artillery superiority in the area, according to commanders and military analysts. Russia, which for months had the upper hand, lost it to Western-supplied precision-guided rockets and artillery shells, as well as homemade drones, which enable Ukrainian soldiers to take out Russia’s armored vehicles.

The Russian military remains a formidable force, however, and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to make clear his determination to win the war at almost any cost. Russia suspended its participation in a July agreement to export grain and other agricultural products from Ukrainian ports, which was intended to alleviate a global food crisis. The announcement Saturday from Russia’s Defense Ministry came hours after it accused Ukraine of launching an attack on ships from the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea that it said were participating in the grain initiative, which was organized around specific shipping lanes in the Black Sea.

▪ Reuters: United Nations Secretary-General António Gutteres on Sunday delayed planned travel in an effort to try to revive the U.N.-brokered grain transport agreement Russia rejected with Ukraine on Saturday.

▪ Bloomberg News: Turkey says defense minister in talks on Ukraine grain deal.

© Associated Press / Yoruk Isik | Grain from the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, Crimea, was unloaded from the cargo ship SV Nikolay docked in Turkey, in June.

Ukrainian officials say Iran’s aid to Russia on the battlefield should force Israel to abandon its position withholding military assistance to Kyiv, and is counting on the U.S. to aid their case, writes The Hill’s Laura Kelly.

The Biden administration has held back public criticism over Israel’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine, where Jerusalem has sided with the U.S. and international community in condemning Putin’s invasion and has delivered humanitarian support to Kyiv.

But with the war in its eighth month and with Iran’s supply of suicide drones to Russia in mind, Ukrainian officials are doubling down on their criticism of Israel’s restraint, in particular in their push for air defenses against Iranian munitions that are destroying infrastructure and killing civilians.

“The Americans are the only country that Israel is listening to,” Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, said in a phone call with The Hill from Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile in Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is set to become the next president after a tight runoff contest on Sunday.

The leftist former president, widely known as “Lula,” gained 50.9 percent of the votes, while right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro — who spent a divisive four years in office — received 49.1 percent.

Silva, a former factory worker, became Brazil’s first working-class president exactly 20 years ago. Bolsonaro’s presidency was marked by policies that accelerated the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns that he would try to undermine the country’s election systems (The New York Times).

The two had previously gone head-to-head in a first round of voting in early October, but neither gained more than half of the votes, forcing Sunday’s runoff. More than 156 million people were eligible to vote in this year’s election (CNN and The Guardian).

“Our dream is coming true. We need to be free,” Joe Kallif, a 62-year-old social activist who celebrated the win, told The Guardian. “Brazil was in a very dangerous place and now we are getting back our freedom. The last four years have been horrible.”

As of this writing, Bolsonaro has not conceded, raising concerns in Brazil that he might contest the result (Reuters). Biden on Sunday congratulated Lula on his victory, saying in a statement that “I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead” (The Hill).

The New York Times: Bolsonaro could face charges if he loses Sunday’s runoff.

Two U.S. nationals are among those who died Saturday in South Korea during a Halloween celebration crowd surge in a nightlife district in Seoul that left 153 dead and about 82 injured — the vast majority of whom were in their teens and 20s (The Washington Post and Reuters). A University of Kentucky third-year nursing student studying abroad is one of the Americans who died in Seoul (NBC News).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ SUPREME COURT

Justices will weigh the future of affirmative action in college admissions today when they hear arguments over race-conscious admissions policies at two prestigious universities, writes The Hill’s John Kruzel.

Harvard University and the University of North Carolina will be defending their use of race — as one of many admissions criteria — to attain the educational benefits of a diverse student body.

But their conservative-backed challengers, Students for Fair Admissions, argue that the universities’ approach violates constitutional protections and federal law. They want the court to prohibit admissions offices from considering applicants’ race.

Ishan Bhabha, a partner at the law firm Jenner & Block who filed an amicus brief on behalf of Ivy League and other elite schools, predicts severe repercussions for higher education if the Supreme Court takes that dramatic step.

“If you don’t have a series of divergent viewpoints … then one of the most important priorities of institutions of higher education — which is to forward knowledge, to ask difficult questions, to explore unknown concepts and have one idea clash against another to try and figure out which one is correct or which one is defensible — that is significantly hampered,” Bhabha, who co-leads his firm’s initiative on diversity, equity and inclusion, said.

The conservative-leaning court is expected to strike down affirmative action policies, with a ruling expected by next summer (Axios).

▪ The New York Times: In clash over affirmative action, both sides invoke Brown v. Board of Education.

▪ USA Today: Supreme Court weighs affirmative action case, but most college admissions won’t be affected.

© Associated Press / Elise Amendola | A tour group at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 2012.

OPINION

■ The Pelosis and a haunted America, by Maureen Dowd, columnist, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3gYjzdm

■ “Change that subject”: Biden’s economic pivot lasted 48 hours as midterms turn spooky for Democrats, by John Bennett, columnist, Roll Call. https://bit.ly/3DnjuY5

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 YOU’RE INVITED: Have a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights? The Hill has launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House meets at 11 a.m. for a pro forma session. Members are scheduled to return to the Capitol on Nov. 14. ​​

The Senate convenes at 10 a.m. for a pro forma session. Senators make their way back to Washington on Nov. 14.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 8 a.m. He will travel from New Castle, Del., to New York City to attend a private memorial service at 11 a.m. with first lady Jill Biden and return to the White House this afternoon. 👻 Biden and the first lady at 5:15 p.m. will host local children of firefighters, nurses, police officers and members of the National Guard at the White House for trick-or-treating. 🍫

Vice President Harris is in Washington and has no public events.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has no public events.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen today holds a roundtable about the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax incentives for clean energy. Later, Yellen will ceremonially swear-in Paul Rosen as the assistant secretary of the Treasury for investment security.

ELSEWHERE

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

As the number of cases of anxiety, depression and other mood disorders have increased throughout the pandemic, mental health providers around the country are reporting an overwhelming surge in demand for counseling and care.

According to the American Psychological Association, 7 in 10 psychologists with a wait list said it had grown longer since the start of the pandemic (The Washington Post).

“Our doors are getting knocked down,” Kayla Johnson, a licensed psychologist in Tomball, Tex., told the Post. “I know the need is so great, I wish I could help them, but I’m at capacity.”

▪ The Washington Post: What you need to know about COVID-19 boosters and the latest research.

▪ CNBC: The Food and Drug Administration says two studies showing omicron boosters weren’t much better than old COVID-19 shots were too small to come to any conclusions.

▪ ProPublica: COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,070,266. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,649 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

© Associated Press / Ted Shaffrey | Skelly the 12-foot skeleton outside a Pennsylvania home in 2020.

And finally … ☠️ Skelly the 12-foot tall skeleton is taking the country by storm.

The Home Depot skeleton — made up of 180 bones, or roughly 80 percent of those found in the human body — has amassed a cult following ever since the store started selling it in 2020. Now, people spend months hunting for their very own Skelly (as the skeleton has been nicknamed) to display during the spooky season. Skelly is out of stock so often that some start the search for the $299 decorative skeleton months before (The New York Times).

Lance Allen, Home Depot’s senior merchant of decorative holiday items, told Vice that his team got together in 2019 wanting to create something “larger than life.”

“At one time, it was like, ‘Ah, a 10-foot would be huge. That’d be empowering. Everybody would like 10 feet!’” Allen said. “And then it’s like, Let’s just press everything, no limits! Let’s go higher than everybody thought was possible.”

▪ Mashable: Live, laugh, LifeEyes™️: How the 12-foot Home Depot skeleton became a perennial hit.

▪ Vice: An oral history of Home Depot’s 12-foot skeleton.

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