By Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels

With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine

ONE WEEK OUT — “This year’s vote count will be faster, but it still might take time to know who won,” by Zach Montellaro: “Fewer votes will be cast by mail compared with during the pandemic, and some states have tweaked their laws to speed up the count. The single biggest factor that will determine when Americans know the winner is, however, out of the control of election workers: the margin of victory in key states.”

DON’T LOSE THAT NUMBER — “As Democrats court Haley supporters, the former UN ambassador is still waiting to hear from Trump,” by AP’s Meg Kinnard

Former president Donald J. Trump concludes his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27, 2024. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO

TRUMP VS. PUERTO RICO — Two days after his Madison Square Garden rally went off the rails thanks to racist jokes about Latinos and a crack about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage,” DONALD TRUMP today heads to Allentown, Pennsylvania — a majority-Latino city home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans.

Trump will hold a news conference at Mar-a-Lago at 10 a.m. — where he’ll no doubt be asked about this issue if he takes questions — before flying to the Keystone State for the 7 p.m. rally.

It won’t be a warm welcome: The derogatory comment about the island by comedian TONY HINCHCLIFFE has “spread like wildfire” in Pennsylvania, as one local Democratic official told our colleagues Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Holly Otterbein. Puerto Ricans — some of whom had been indifferent about which candidate to support — are now furious with Trump, providing an 11th-hour jolt to KAMALA HARRIS’ campaign efforts there.

Some are planning to protest Trump’s visit, which happens to be smack in the middle of a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Allentown schools will be closed for the day “out of abundance of caution,” per the Morning Call. And the DNC, Otterbein reports, is erecting billboards around the town and other parts of Pennsylvania highlighting the inflammatory comments.

“If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” VICTOR MARTINEZ, an Allentown resident who owns a Spanish-speaking radio station, told our colleagues.

There are signs the uproar is breaking through more generally. As Nate Silver observed yesterday , Google searches for Trump spiked to the highest point since the second assassination attempt. (And it definitely wasn’t a good sign that yesterday, more people were Googling Tony Hinchcliffe than TAYLOR SWIFT.)

On the island itself, both the Catholic archbishop and the head of the Puerto Rico Republican Party yesterday called on Trump to apologize. “It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize,” Archbishop ROBERTO GONZALEZ wrote in a letter to Trump. “It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments.”

We spent much of last night trying to get a readout on how Trump plans to stanch the bleeding today. His team has gone quiet on that question — apologies, personal or otherwise, are not Trump’s thing, of course — though one senior GOP official told us Trump needs to rebuke Hinchcliffe’s remarks in some fashion. (The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo had a banger yesterday on how the debacle came about — and on the debate inside the campaign about how hard to push back.)

Any retreat would break with how his own running mate downplayed the comments yesterday: “We’re not going to restore the greatness of American civilization if we get offended at every little thing,” JD VANCE said, telling reporters that “maybe it’s a stupid racist joke” or “maybe it’s not.”

But plenty of other Trump-supporting Republicans spent the better part of the past 36 hours bemoaning what they saw as an avoidable final-week blunder. Conservative radio host JOHN FREDERICKS told our colleagues that having Hinchcliffe and radio host SID ROSENBERG onstage was “asinine,” calling them “two obscure people that have nothing to do with this election.”

“Whoever thought he was good to book, they misjudged the room,” said DAVID URBAN, Trump’s 2016 campaign advisor, about Hinchcliffe.

Related read: “Trump rally comedian workshopped racist Puerto Rico line at NYC comedy club the night before,” by NBC’s Nicole Acevedo and Ignacio Torres

HARRIS VS. THE BEDWETTERS — VP KAMALA HARRIS , meanwhile, heads to the Ellipse today to deliver the closing message of her campaign. The physical backdrop is the exact spot where, on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump encouraged his followers to take their protests to the Capitol, essentially triggering the deadly riot.

The political backdrop, however, is the simmering anxiety among Democrats who fear that Harris has chosen the wrong message to close out her campaign with. As Lisa Kashinsky found in southwest Michigan , there’s no shortage of second-guessing of her late focus on fascism. “We can’t keep campaigning on modes of fear,” one former state rep told her.

But Harris world appears to have gotten the message: Her speech won’t explicitly focus on democracy or the storming of the Capitol, our colleague Myah Ward reports this morning.

Instead, expect an extended version of her favorite new riff: contrasting Trump’s “enemies list” with her own “to-do list.” She’ll present her own positive vision of the country and pitch her plans to lower costs for working families, campaign sources tell Myah — all while promising to turn the page on Trump, arguing he cares only about himself and his personal grievances.

“The closing message — and the high stakes for Harris to strike the right chord — speaks to the crux of the challenge she’s faced in her campaign,” Myah writes. “She will work to tie together a number of issues for Americans — from the economy to individual freedoms and democracy — while delivering a broader message that both speaks to Americans driven by concerns about a second Trump administration, and other undecided voters still yearning to learn more about Harris and her agenda.”

Related read: “Harris reaches for a big moment in her closing argument for ‘turning the page’ on Trump,” by AP’s Zeke Miller

Good Tuesday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels.

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SPEAKING OF JAN. 6 — Trump whisperer and MAGA hardliner STEVE BANNON walked out of federal prison in Connecticut early this morning after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. “I’m not broken, I’m empowered,” he told NYT’s Jeremy Peters outside FCI Danbury. He’s planning a news conference in NYC this afternoon.

His absence has left “a void in the right-wing messaging machine,” NYT’s Ken Bensinger wrote yesterday — one that he is planning to quickly fill with the election just a week away. “Bannon will come out of prison a week before the election like a roaring caged lion,” Trump ally MIKE DAVIS told him.

“From what I'm told, he feels he's got a lot left to accomplish now,” his prison consultant, SAM MANGEL, told ABC News. Said Bannon this morning, per Peters: “If people think American politics has been divisive before, you haven’t seen anything.”

BEZOS SPEAKS — After a weekend of turmoil sparked by his late and lightly explicable decision to cease making presidential endorsements, WaPo owner JEFF BEZOS published an op-ed last night — one you can assume he is hoping will quell the turmoil inside One Franklin Square (three employees quit the editorial board yesterday, though not their jobs, per NYT) and stanch the titanic revenue loss he precipitated (subscription cancellations have exceeded 200,000, per NPR’s David Folkenflik).

Here are some excerpts that have been especially popular, if that is the word, inside Postie group chats:

Poor planner: “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”

Le sigh: [T]he chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand.”

Muscle man: “Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles.”

NEWS FROM HQ — Three big moves this morning from POLITICO’s transatlantic Global Security team: Veteran defense reporter Paul McLeary will lead Pentagon coverage, with a focus on the policy, personalities and politics surrounding the projection of American military power around the world. Jack Detsch joins POLITICO from Foreign Policy to take on Paul’s former role covering defense programs as well as the five service branches. And Sam Skove joins from Defense One to relaunch the astropolitics beat — covering everything from NASA to Space Force to private rocketeers, hypersonic missiles, AI and more.

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On the Hill

The Senate and the House are out.

What we’re watching … FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Preparations for the planned Jan. 6, 2025, certification of the presidential election are already underway: Today a coalition of legal and advocacy groups aligned with Democrats is launching a Congressional Election Certification War Room, meant to coordinate key players, provide messaging guidance and mobilize the public to ensure electoral votes are counted fairly and peacefully. The effort — which includes Indivisible, the Center for American Progress and the League of Conservation Voters, among others, and follows the earlier House Accountability War Room project — is backed with an eight-figure media campaign budget and has the backing of Rep. JOE MORELLE (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the elections-focused House Administration Committee.

At the White House

Biden will travel to Baltimore where he will deliver remarks on his “Investing in America” agenda. Later he will return to Washington and participate in a virtual campaign call.

On the trail

Harris will deliver her closing argument address at The Ellipse at 7 p.m.

Minnesota Gov. TIM WALZ will appear on “The Dan Le Batard Show.” Later, Walz will speak at two rallies in Georgia.

Trump will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. from Mar-a-Lago. Later, he will hold a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at 7 p.m.

Vance will deliver remarks in Saginaw, Michigan, at 12 p.m. Later, Vance will hold a campaign rally in Holland, Michigan.

A protestor holds up their hands in protest while US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at Burns Park on October 28, 2024 in Ann Arbor, Mich. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN — One week out from Election Day, there are dueling reports about how the Harris and Trump campaigns are weighing their chances

Rising confidence … As the Harris campaign continues to barnstorm swing states with appearances ahead of next Tuesday, aides are growing increasingly confident that their efforts could pay off in a narrow victory for the VP, NYT’s Reid Epstein, Lisa Lerer and Maggie Haberman report . Though polls remain extraordinarily tight across all seven battleground states, “now Ms. Harris and other party leaders have begun to discard their winking warnings that she is the underdog.” While some Democrats close to the campaign feel that Harris is holding strong in the “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, they say her weaker states remain Arizona and North Carolina. Still, “Harris’s aides believe the argument tying Mr. Trump to fascism is helping her sway moderate Republicans.”

Versus measured skepticism … Though some recent polling has bolstered the confidence of Trump’s campaign, it’s also sowing doubt amongst some aides, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports . While some staff say data looks more promising for Trump than in 2016 and 2020, “there’s a persistent fear that some factor they haven’t spotted, from a polling error to unexpected turnout issues, might swing the race. … Advisors, who have different opinions on which external data is the best, have compared publicly available polls to their internal figures, which one person said are slightly ‘more positive.’”

RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

HARRIS’ WESTERN WILD CARD — With the polls neck and neck in Arizona and Nevada, a win for Harris in both battleground states could come down to whether her campaign can get Gen Z voters to turn out at the polls, The New Republic’s Grace Segers reports.

KNOWING JD VANCE — In a new profile of Trump’s VP hopeful, the New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells details Vance’s path from small-town Ohio to Silicon Valley, and eventually becoming the “most effective spokesman for Trumpism as an ideology.”

The 30,000 foot-view: “Vance’s partnership with Trump, whom he once derided, represented his shift to a more tribal politics. … His sudden rise to power would not have been possible without the scorched-earth Trump wars that took out a whole generation of conservatives ahead of him.”

ON THE MONEY — While inflation has fallen over the last year, the future of borrowing costs and price increases could hinge on the outcome of Election Day — with some economists concerned that a second Trump presidency could further “stoke the embers,” WSJ’s Nick Timiraos reports.

RACE FOR THE HOUSE

BACON’S BALANCING ACT — As he fights to keep his vulnerable House seat, Nebraska GOP Rep. DON BACON finds himself struggling to hang on to the centrist voters he’s long catered to, Jordain Carney reports from Omaha, Nebraska . In a district where Democrats have invested millions for Harris, Bacon must balance between distancing himself from Trump while also hoping the former president can bring out his base: “Bacon needs the presidential race to stay close enough, hoping he only needs to climb out of a tiny electoral ditch rather than a six-foot-deep hole.”

“GOP leaders seem to understand Bacon is in a particularly tough bind. … But [House Speaker MIKE] JOHNSON sidestepped a POLITICO question about whether he’d pushed Trump or the campaign to spend more money here, saying Trump ‘understands how important Don Bacon is to us,’ and that he has spoken to him directly about how critical the race is.”

RACE FOR THE STATES

BALLOT BATTLES — The RNC and the Pennsylvania GOP are asking the Supreme Court to overrule the Pennsylvania high court’s decision requiring elections officials count provisional ballots cast by voters who made errors in mail-in ballots, Josh Gerstein reports: “Democrats in Pennsylvania tend to vote by mail at much higher rates than Republicans, meaning a court ruling allowing would-be mail voters another option to get their votes counted would likely be of greater benefit to Democratic candidates.”

BALLOT BATTLES PART DEUX — “Nevada’s high court allows counting of mail-in ballots without postmarks,” also by Josh: “All seven justices on the state Supreme Court said the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee were not entitled to an injunction preventing such ballots from being tallied.”

NEW SERIES — “One in four: How abortion access shapes America,” via MSNBC

POLL POSITION

National: Tied, per TIPP … Michigan: Trump +1, Dem Rep. ELISSA SLOTKIN and MIKE ROGERS tied at 48%, per InsiderAdvantage. … Pennsylvania: Trump +1, BOB CASEY and DAVID McCORMICK tied at 47%, per InsiderAdvantage. … Wisconsin: Trump +1, per USA TODAY/Suffolk University. … Texas: Trump + 10, Sen. TED CRUZ +5, per ActiVote. … Kansas: Trump +7, per Kansas Reflector 

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AMERICA AND THE WORLD

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 8, 2022. | Susan Walsh/AP

KNOWING AVRIL HAINES — In a series of frank conversations with Erin Banco, Director of National Intelligence AVRIL HAINES spoke about the limitations of the government to deal with the war in Gaza and her personal future in government. Though Haines never directly criticized the U.S. response to the war, friends and colleagues say Haines is “personally rattled by the rising death toll and continued suffering of Palestinian civilians trapped inside the war zone.”

“Haines is widely considered to be a candidate for even higher office in a second Democratic administration … But would she take the job now if a President Harris offered it? . … ‘I'm cynical enough to realize that it is very easy to think you are making something better — perhaps particularly in government work,’ Haines said in one of our interviews, ‘and it turns out, you are not improving the situation; you might even have made it worse.’”

Latest on the ground … While negotiators from Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the U.S. continue to hold discussions in Doha this week, Israel Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU is reportedly “waiting to see who will succeed President Biden before committing to a diplomatic trajectory,” NYT’s Patrick Kingsley and Hiba Yazbek.

More top reads: 

• “Treasury finalizes regulations for U.S. investment in Chinese tech,” by WaPo’s David Lynch 
• “Who is Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's new leader?” by Reuters

TRUMP CARDS

Members of the media are assembled for live television broadcasts outside of Trump Tower, on Jan. 11, 2017 in New York City. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Six alums from “The Apprentice” are out with a letter endorsing Harris and denouncing Trump, the show’s host and co-producer. The authors, including former contestants KWAME JACKSON, TARA DOWDELL, RANDAL PINKETT and SURYA YALAMANCHILI wrote how they witnessed “first-hand how [Trump] demanded one-way loyalty, the trail of his broken promises, his willingness to lie and take advantage of people, and how virulently he lashed out,” adding “America needs stable leadership, achieved through actual character rather than world-class TV editing.” Read the letter 

INSIDE THE SLOW WALK — After a two-year legal effort, newly unsealed court documents show that Trump was repeatedly warned against delaying his federal election subversion case unnecessarily, with one judge railing against the former president’s “obvious pattern” of dilatory tactics, Kyle Cheney reports . Though the documents remain “significantly redacted,” Kyle writes, “[w]hat emerges is a clear portrayal of the former president trying frenetically to prevent former top aides from disclosing details of their conversations about Trump’s bid to reverse his defeat in the election.”

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CONGRESS

WATCH THIS SPACE — The State Department’s Global Engagement Center has helped combat disinformation campaigns in other countries, but if Republicans hold the House after election day, its chances of survival remain slim to none, Joseph Gedeon reports. Several GOP lawmakers, including House Foreign Affairs Chair MICHAEL McCAUL (R-Texas) and Rep. BRIAN MAST (R-Fla.), have criticized the center for what they claim are “attempts to censor conservative viewpoints in America.”

POLICY CORNER

MUSK READ — “Musk Wants $2 Trillion Cut From US Budget. It’d Be Difficult,” by Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis: “His target, mentioned at Donald Tru