The freebie phase of the 2024 campaign: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior political reporter Jonathan Allen breaks down the freebies Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are pitching as part of their campaign platforms. Plus, a bombshell CNN report about Mark Robinson rocks the North Carolina governor’s race.

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Trump’s tax reversal punctuates a flurry of freebies defining the 2024 election

By Jonathan Allen

As president, Donald Trump slashed a lucrative tax break enjoyed by coastal donors and suburban swing-state voters. Now, he’s promising to give back the deduction — if only they will put him back in the Oval Office.

Trump aides say he isn’t ransoming a hostage or even flip-flopping on the $10,000 annual limit he placed on the federal deduction taxpayers can claim based on their state and local taxes — the “SALT cap,” in Washington talk. Instead, a campaign official said, Trump is responding to new economic realities as he pursues a “two track” solution. The first is promoting pro-growth policies, and the second is adopting tax positions that would allow people to keep more of their money.

What shifted more than the economy is Trump’s needs, said Caroline Bruckner, managing director of American University’s Kogod Tax Policy Center.

“The change in the limitation on the deductibility of state and local taxes was an easy play to target revenue flowing to blue states,” Bruckner said of the 2017 law, which used the SALT cap as a budget offset to pay for other tax cuts. “Now it appears that higher-income taxpayers in swing states have been able to successfully plead their case to Trump.” 

The reversal is one of a flurry of freebies that Trump and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, are offering voters in the stretch run before Election Day. Together, they are promising the equivalent of a tax break in every pot.

Both candidates vow to block taxes on tips for service industry workers. Trump says he would spare seniors from taxes on Social Security payouts. Harris is pumping steroids into Biden administration proposals to expand the child tax credit and subsidize first-time homebuyers. She’s also offering a deduction of up to $50,000 in the first year for small-business startups.

There are big-spending promises, too, like Trump’s announcement — the details of which remain to be fleshed out — that he would provide free in vitro fertilization treatments for people who are trying to conceive.

“It’s the silly season, when everything is free,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., who was a leader among GOP moderates in Congress.

Read more →

Mark Robinson vows to stay in N.C. governor race following report he made inflammatory comments on a porn site

By Adam Edelman and Alexandra Marquez

Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, vowed Thursday to remain in the race following a report that he made dozens of lewd and inflammatory comments more than 10 years ago on the message board of a pornography website.

The report, published by CNN, said Robinson, in posts to a pornographic website called Nude Africa, called himself a “black NAZI,” expressed support for bringing back slavery, said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and recounted sexually graphic stories, including one about his memory of “peeping” on women in gym showers when he was 14. The posts were made under the username “minisoldr” from 2008 to 2012, CNN reported, before Robinson, who was elected lieutenant governor in 2020, entered politics.

In a video posted to X ahead of the story’s publication, Robinson denied the report, calling it “tabloid trash.”

“Let me reassure you: The things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson. You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before,” he said in the video.

“We are staying in this race, we are in it to win it, and we know that, with your help, we will,” he added.

The report was the latest blow to Republicans in the critical battleground state race, in which Robinson, who is backed by Donald Trump, has struggled against Democratic candidate Josh Stein. North Carolina has also taken on increased importance in the presidential race following Kamala Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket. 

Read more →

Black swing-state voters overwhelmingly back Harris — with key divides on age and gender

By Stephanie Perry and Curtis Bunn

An overwhelming majority of Black likely voters in battleground states said they’ll vote for Kamala Harris in November — though she needs to close the deal with some skeptical undecideds to reach Joe Biden’s 2020 margins among Black voters.

The data, from a new Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion poll of 963 Black likely voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the seven core battleground states in the election — show 82% say they’ll vote for Harris, while 12% say they’ll vote for Donald Trump. Another 5% are undecided, and 1% plan to pick another candidate. 

According to the 2020 exit poll results across the same battleground states, 89% of Black voters supported Biden, compared with 9% for Trump. 

While Black swing-state voters are largely lined up behind Harris, there are some important differences among subsets of the Black vote.

Among Black voters over 50, 89% said they back Harris, but for those under 50, that figure drops to 75%. 

Among Black men under 50, Harris had a 50-point advantage, compared with her 78-point lead among men 50 and over. Among young women, the margin for Harris is 65 points, but among older women, it’s 84 points.

Meanwhile, Black swing-state voters with college degrees support Harris over Trump by 73 points, while Black voters who aren’t college graduates support Harris over Trump by 68 points. The poll finds that younger and less-educated voters are more likely to support Trump.

Read more →

 🗳️ GOTV: The NAACP told NBC News it plans to spend $20 million mobilizing Black voters across 12 states this fall. Read more →

📊 Survey says: Mark Murray makes sense of the slew of national and battleground state polls that have come out over the past 24 hours. Read more →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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