About those documents
While it’s not clear who will occupy the White House next year, one certainty is that President Joe Biden will be leaving. Once again, Biden will have to pack up his office and prepare to exit public life, returning to his home in Delaware.
However, unlike the last time he stepped off the public stage, the president should expect a more thorough search of his bags on the way out the door.
The Washington Examiner has undertaken a series this week examining the fraught politics of presidential transitions. Transferring power between presidents, especially bitter rivals from opposing parties who have spent the last year stirring up negative feelings about each other, is fraught. But in 2025, there will be an increased focus not only on who is entering — we’ve taken looks at what that will look like for both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — but on who is exiting as well.
Biden’s mishandling of classified documents when he exited the role of vice president came back to haunt him earlier this year. While Trump was battling with the Department of Justice and FBI because of a protracted fight about whether and how he mishandled classified documents when he left the White House, Biden had to fess up to scampering off with files of his own.
Supreme Court Reporter Kaelan Deese is up with a piece this morning reminding everyone that skipping town with classified material has been a common thread among essentially everyone who has lived or worked in the White House and how that reality could throw a wrench in the works next year.
“Although Biden earlier this year announced the formation of the Presidential Records Transition Task Force to address what his administration described as a long-standing problem of mishandling classified documents during transitions, the effort has been scantly discussed since its formation,” Kaelan wrote.
Biden’s Presidential Records Transition Task Force is being led by Obama administration alumna Katy Kale and is supposed to work with actors from a slew of agencies — the General Services Administration, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Security Council, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — but it’s unclear how much groundwork the team has laid to help with a smooth transition in January.
When Kaelan spoke with experts to learn more about the task force and what Biden’s plans are to avoid repeating his previous mistakes, several people told him they hadn’t even heard about the group.
And while it might not hurt Biden to have questions swirling about how thorough the task force is about checking his luggage, if any classified material does make it out, a reinstated President Donald Trump is sure to make hay after he has spent the last year going round and round with Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith.
Click here to read more about Biden’s transition out of the White House.
Doubtful Democrats in Detroit
With three weeks left until Election Day, Harris is struggling to keep her momentum rolling in the states and cities where she needs to run up the score. The landscape is more or less unchanged today from when Biden was the nominee and then when Harris successfully supplanted him.
Most of the country knows how it will vote. The entire contest will rest on which direction a handful of states lean, and neither Trump nor Harris has shown they are on an easy path to victory. Both candidates are working overtime to turn out their base voters. Harris is trying to run up the score in urban, metro areas, while Trump is investing time in those same Democratic strongholds in an attempt to keep his losses there to a minimum while he barnstorms through the rural districts.
This strategy has been particularly problematic for Harris in Detroit, where Congress and Campaigns Editor David Sivak has been talking with dozens of voters and local leaders. Despite Michigan’s solid blue voting record, residents there are telling David they fear Harris is repeating the mistakes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made when she took the state for granted and ceded it to Trump in 2016.
“Democrats in Detroit have described gaps in her strategy, including a failure to involve Detroit leaders whose influence and organizing ability could shift votes in her favor. Others say she is still finding the right message and surrogates to appeal to the black community,” David wrote.
“In a state Clinton lost by 10,000 votes in 2016, Detroit leaders are cautioning that turnout in their communities could decide whether Harris becomes the first black female president,” he wrote.
There’s no doubt Harris will win in Detroit. But her campaign is also signaling it understands she is failing to win over black voters, black men in particular, and part of the problem is how she has gone about courting them.
Harris has made it a point to connect with heavy hitters in the city, including Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, but her campaign isn’t reaching down deep enough to convince smaller communities she is thinking about them.
“I think because it’s a national campaign, we get overlooked,” Carol Banks, the vice chairwoman of the Nile Group, told David. “And I think because they feel that they know better than us, but who knows your community better than the people who live in it?”
There has also been a messaging problem for Harris, whom voters want to support but are struggling to be convinced that she’s the best fit for them. While Trump throws new policy plans and proposals out left and right, Harris has mostly said she plans on continuing down the roads Biden has set the country on. Her most concrete message is that she isn’t Trump, which isn’t enough for some voters.
“I’m a Kamala supporter, and the only message I have is how bad Trump is,” LaMar Lemmons III, who served on Detroit’s school board, told David. “It’s Project ’25, but the message I want to be able to take — this is what we’re going to do for people in your socioeconomic strata.”
Click here to read more about Harris’s struggles in Detroit.
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For your radar
Biden will deliver a eulogy for Ethel Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle at 1 p.m. Later, he and first lady Jill Biden will deliver remarks at an Italian American Heritage Month reception at 5:30 p.m.
Harris will speak at a campaign event in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, at 3:40 p.m.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at noon.
Trump is holding a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago before participating in a Univision town hall event that was postponed earlier this month. His all-women town hall event with Fox News will air at 11 a.m.