The Hill’s Morning Report — Trump nets special master win; what’s on fall agenda?

The battle between presidents current and former took center stage again on Labor Day as former President Trump notched a key legal win against the Department of Justice and President Biden sought to separate the reasonable Republicans from the unreasonable ones during his holiday travels.

A federal judge on Monday granted Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review materials that were seized by the FBI during its search of his Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8. In the process, District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, blocked prosecutors from continuing to review the seized documents until the special master completes their review (The Hill).

“The Court is mindful that restraints on criminal prosecutions are disfavored, but finds that these unprecedented circumstances call for a brief pause to allow for neutral, third-party review to ensure a just process with adequate safeguards,” Cannon wrote in her 24-page order.

Cannon asked the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys to submit a joint filing by Friday that includes a proposed special master candidate list. In the interim, she added that the documents will not be returned to the former president.

A Department of Justice spokesman said that it was reviewing the decision but did not indicate if it might appeal the decision.

Cannon added in her ruling that the special master appointment “shall not impede” the intelligence community’s review of the records that is attempting to determine whether Trump’s possession of top-secret items was harmful to national security (Politico). However, her decision also means that Trump’s lawyers will also be able to review what the special master will see.

She also shed new light on the search, writing in the order that included in the records and documents seized by the government were some of Trump’s “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information” (The New York Times).

Trump’s legal team did not comment on the decision.

The news came two days after the former president held his first campaign rally since the Mar-a-Lago search, which included an extended screed against the Justice Department and the ongoing investigation into his actions.

Meanwhile, Biden on Monday used Labor Day to campaign for Democratic candidates in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two important swing states, while backing unions that helped get him elected, hailing strides since 2021 on his watch and warning audiences that extremist Republicans are putting America’s future at risk.

The president returned late Monday to Pennsylvania for the third time in less than a week and just two days after Trump staged his own rally in the state. Just outside Pittsburgh in a county he won in 2020 by more than 20 points, Biden spoke mostly off the cuff at a union hall.

“If I have to be in a foxhole, I want John Fetterman in there with me,” he said of Pennsylvania’s Democratic lieutenant governor who is running against Republican Mehmet Oz for an open Senate seat.

The president, speaking as if he and Trump are combatants atop 2022 ballots, told union workers that “the former defeated president” poses a test for every voter who does not want to journey down “this sliding path of oblivion.”

“It’s clear which way he wants to look. It’s clear which way the new MAGA Republicans are. They’re extreme. And democracy is really at stake,” he said. “You can’t be a democracy when you support violence when you don’t like the outcome of an election. You can’t call yourself a democracy when you don’t, in fact, count the votes that people legitimately cast and count that as what you are. You can’t be a democracy and call yourself one if you continue to do what they’re doing.”

In Milwaukee at a union event called Laborfest earlier on Monday, the president also took aim at “MAGA Republicans,” referring to Trump’s presidential campaign slogan (The Hill and Politico).

“Not every Republican is a MAGA Republican,” Biden clarified (Reuters). “Not every Republican embraces that extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with mainstream Republicans my whole career. But the extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress have chosen to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division.”

Trump used a fundraising email on Monday to repeat a Saturday broadside against Biden, calling the president “an enemy of the state.” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted on Labor Day that Biden “is the most anti-worker president in modern history,” noting that high inflation had taken a bite out of American wages, income and savings (The Associated Press).

▪ The Washington Post: In Milwaukee on Monday, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), the party’s Senate nominee, steered clear of Biden’s event.

▪ The Associated Press: Red wave crashing? GOP momentum slips as fall sprint begins.

▪ The New York Times: As midterms near, election rule raises a dilemma for Trump inquiries.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill’s Max Greenwood takes a look at seven November contests that could determine control of the House next year.

▪ Bloomberg News: Biden accuses Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of targeting Social Security benefits.

▪ The New York Times: An illustrated guide to what the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago, according to the Justice Department’s detailed inventory.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Elizabeth II, who is vacationing in Scotland, today is expected to formally appoint British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, 47, as prime minister, succeeding Boris Johnson, who stepped down under pressure this summer and today will deliver his resignation to the queen (Reuters). Truss will be the 15th prime minister to serve during Elizabeth II’s long reign.

Truss was the choice on Monday of a majority of Conservative Party members who voted for their new party leader. Her challenges ahead: recession risks, energy shortages and rising consumer prices, which she campaigned to resolve (The Associated Press). For instance, she has vowed to deliver tax cuts (Reuters). This afternoon, Truss is expected to make her first speech as leader of a nation of 67 million people (The Associated Press).

▪ The Guardian unpacks Truss’s victory speech and four things she said and what she may have meant.

▪ Politico Europe: How Truss won.

▪ CNN: What’s next for Johnson? Many believe the ex-prime minister is not done with politics.

Russia is keeping its main gas pipeline to Germany shut, triggering fear and uncertainty throughout Europe, including in financial markets. In Ukraine, the government made its boldest claim yet of success on the battlefield in its week-old counteroffensive against Russian forces in the south (Reuters).

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency today will report their findings after inspection of the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, Europe’s largest such facility, currently occupied by Russian forces. The agency plans to brief the U.N. Security Council about its report today (The New York Times). Repeated shelling over the past month damaged all of the plant’s connections to four high-voltage external power lines, forcing it to use a lower-voltage reserve line to power the cooling equipment needed to prevent meltdowns, the Times reported.

On Monday, the plant’s working reactor was disconnected from its lower-voltage reserve power line. Energoatom, the state nuclear company, reported the dangerous disruption.

“Today, as a result of a fire caused by shelling, the [last working] transmission line was disconnected,” Energoatom said in a statement (Reuters).

The IAEA is leaving a two-person team of inspectors at the plant for the foreseeable future, the agency’s chief Rafael Grossi said last Thursday (The Wall Street Journal).

Biden, asked Monday evening as he returned to the White House if Russia should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism, responded to reporters with a single word: “No.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday warned that the plant is “one step away from a radiation disaster” because of near constant Russian shelling.

“Today the last power transmission line connecting the plant to the energy system of Ukraine was damaged due to another Russian provocative shelling. Again — this is the second time — due to Russian provocation, the Zaporizhzhia plant is one step away from a radiation disaster,” Zelensky said during a presidential address (The Hill).

▪ The Associated Press: Russia sanctions 25 more Americans, including Sean Penn, Ben Stiller.

▪ Reuters: U.S. says Russia is buying artillery ammunition from North Korea.

China experienced a 6.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday in which 46 people were reported killed and 16 were missing in the province of Sichuan (CBS News). The quake triggered landslides and shook buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu.

The Israeli military said Monday following an investigation that veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in May while covering Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank, was likely mistakenly shot to death by an Israeli soldier. No charges are expected (Politico).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ CONGRESS 

Senators return to work this afternoon facing a deadline to keep the government funded and a push by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to pass an energy-permitting bill that he demanded as a condition for supporting the Democrats’ recently approved climate, health care and tax law, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Democratic lawmakers will turn their immediate attention to confirming more of Biden’s judicial nominees. By the end of the month, Congress must also pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown and reauthorize the Food and Drug Administration’s user-fee agreements for prescription drugs, generic drugs and medical devices, the Journal reports.

A vote on a bill to codify same-sex marriage, which passed the House in July and has drawn some GOP support in the Senate, remains up in the air. Some senators also want to take up changes to the Electoral Count Act, a bipartisan effort that aims to clarify how presidential election disputes are resolved.

The White House also asked Congress for an additional $47.1 billion in emergency funding to combat COVID-19 and the monkeypox virus and to back Ukraine in the war with Russia, as well as spending for natural disasters. Many Republicans have balked at continuing to use emergency funding that adds to the deficit to address the pandemic. A deal to continue to fund the government’s pandemic response fell apart in April.

Between now and Election Day, senators are scheduled to be back in Washington for four weeks, then gone a week and then tentatively back for two weeks in October, according to the Journal and the Senate’s calendar.

Politico: Democrats weigh gay marriage vote in pre-election sprint.

➤ ADMINISTRATION

With distractions during Labor Day weekend, Morning Report recaps personnel changes of note in the West Wing and abroad.

John Podesta — a savvy strategist during the Clinton and Obama administrations, a former White House chief of staff, a campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 White House run against Trump, and a wonk when it comes to climate policy — is back in the West Wing.

He’ll join Biden’s team as the senior adviser for clean energy innovation and implementation, overseeing the federal disbursement of new clean energy investments while also expanding the reunion of veterans in the West Wing who first teamed up in the 1990s and have rotated in and out of Democratic politics and governance for decades (Ron Klain, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, Susan Rice, Gene Sperling and Neera Tanden, to name a few).

National climate adviser Gina McCarthy will leave her post Sept. 16, a long-expected move that comes after the passage this summer of a historic climate law (The New York Times). McCarthy deputy Ali Zaidi will succeed her. (Her departure date coincides with a planned White House extravaganza with lawmakers and invited guests to celebrate the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act.)

OIRA: Biden announced he will nominate environmental law expert Richard Revesz to lead his Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget, an important post that some in his party believe has taken way too long to fill. Republicans competing in midterm contests and on Capitol Hill, as well as state officials, criticize what they assert are overzealous and costly federal regulations under the Biden administration. Revesz, who founded the think tank Institute for Policy Integrity, spent years on some of the Environmental Protection Agency’s advisory panels and was in the running to lead the agency before the job went to Michael Regan (E&E).

NASA: Artemis I, the unmanned U.S. rocket that is supposed to carry the Orion capsule to the moon, encountered hydrogen leaks and other problems that twice kept it grounded amid criticism that the project is too expensive (Florida Today). NASA this week may decide to wait until later this year to try again (CNN).

State Department: John Sullivan on Sunday became a former U.S. ambassador to Russia after nearly three years in Moscow that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations. His retirement from government service comes amid Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as U.S.-Russian disputes over detained Americans. His exit had been expected this fall but was accelerated because of a family medical issue (The Associated Press).

OPINION

■ Abortion and Trump are giving Democrats a shot, by Michelle Cottle, editorial board member, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3wVmU1F

■ Can Britain’s conservatives find their way again? by Gerard Baker, editor at large, The Wall Street Journal. https://on.wsj.com/3epAa8C

■ Why Liz Truss may surprise us, by Sebastian Mallaby, contributing columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3RFBYc0

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session and return to work in the Capitol on Sept. 13.

The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. and will resume consideration of the nomination of John Lee to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the 7th Circuit.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. He will lead a meeting of his Cabinet at 1:15 p.m.

Vice President Harris will participate in the Cabinet meeting this afternoon.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at noon.

🖥  Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ STATE WATCH

At least 12 mass shootings took place nationwide over Labor Day weekend, leaving at least 14 people dead, according to Gun Violence Archive. The mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed, took place in cities including Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago and Norfolk, Va. The deadliest shooting took place in Saint Paul, Minn., where three people died and two others were injured on Sunday (The Hill).

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

The jobs market kept humming along, according to the August jobs report released on Friday. However, the labor force participation rate remains 1 percentage point below its February 2020 level, representing roughly 1.6 million people. As The Hill’s Sylvan Lane reports, part of that discrepancy could be due to the thousands or millions of Americans who remain on the sidelines due to long COVID-19 symptoms that have left them too sick to work.  “We don’t know what proportion of people are having very debilitating symptoms with a lot of certainty,” said Julia Raifman, an assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

China imposed new COVID-19 lockdowns that impact some 60 million people, daily life and the collective exhaustion of China’s population. The New York Times reported with a closeup view from Chengdu, which entered mandatory stay-at-home orders on Friday. “The longer a lockdown goes, the more problems emerge, and the harder it is to tolerate it,” said Matthew Chen, a white-collar worker in his 30s, who noted that the Chengdu government had not given a timeline for reopening.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,047,563. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 407, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

➤ CYBER RISKS

Companies are increasing their investments in cybersecurity and seeking to hire more cyber professionals due to a rise in cyberattacks over the past year but are having trouble doing so amid a shortage of cyber workers across industries. The Hill’s Ines Kagubare spoke to several security experts and industry leaders in the financial, health care and energy sectors to gauge how those critical industries are seeking to keep their networks secure amid the growing number of cyberattacks.

THE CLOSER

And finally … Beautiful elkhorn coral once dominated the watery blue Caribbean, but just like other vital coral species around the world, it has been so decimated by environmental hazards that it is rarely seen alive these days.

Scientists at the Florida Aquarium say they made a breakthrough to reproduce elkhorn coral using aquarium technology, which they say is a historic step that could help revitalize Caribbean ecosystems and offer land dwellers some extra ocean fortification from the fury of hurricanes (CNN).

“This is a critical step to preventing elkhorn coral from going extinct,” said Keri O’Neil, the senior scientist that oversees the Tampa aquarium’s spawning lab. “As these reefs die, they begin to erode away and we lose that coastal protection as well as all of the habitat that these reefs provide for fish and other species,” she said.

Bravo!

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