House Dem groups rake in $230M

0:00Good morning, I'm Anna Palmer. And I'm Jake Sherman. And welcome to the Daily Punch Brought to you by Punchful News. It's Thursday, October 1st, 2026. Let's get into the mix here. Are your Washington headlines of the day? Number one, big fundraising news plus inside Chuck Schumer's thinking. Number two, the Senate's last gas before the election. And number three, permitting reform the slog. What's next? All right, Jake. Happy to be back in the Daily Punch seat. I was in Jersey City yesterday for an event with Governor Mikey Sheryl. Jersey City. Never been highly recommend. Yeah, it's a nice spot. It's an alternative to New York City. And it's a suburb, I guess. But listen, there's no suburb in the New York area quite like Stanford. Good news. And that's just, I mean, you could choose to live in Jersey or you could not, you know,

1:03all right. I'm big on Jersey. I like Jersey. I'm kidding. I did. I was very good energy. Good vibes. A lot of kids, a lot of people. And I will say, you know, Mikey Sheryl might think the pinnacle of her career is being governor. But oh no, she was in the house. So, you know, I think we did speak about that. Because we had had her on Sticage, actually, when she was a house member. I don't remember that, but I'm sure we did. He did. He did. I don't think we were up on stage with her. I think I was. But let's talk about Congress. We are 33 days until the election. And we have a ton of news for you this morning. Let's start with the fundraising. Wow, a big money boost. House majority pack and house majority forward. The House Democrats, chief outside groups. And they raised a staggering $230 million in Q3 in their best quarter ever, according to President Mike Smith, that's a lot of doj. Yes, this is a huge boon for Democrats. And listen, I got to say at this point, overall, according to Add Impact, Democrats are

2:05narrowly outspending Republicans. That will change, of course, because Republicans always have more money. They'll have someone come in at the end and drop $200 million on their heads and, you know, all that stuff. You know, this keeps them in the game. And they have CLF and AAN are used to be the only competition for Democrats. But now Maga Inc. And it's $400 million of war chests. And, you know, I don't know how much Donald Trump will park with that. They are, they have a lot of money too. HMP as Ali writes this morning is the biggest spender in house races so far. They have said they will spend more than 291 million on ads before November 3rd. Mama Mia, that's a lot of dough. That is indeed. All right. Then the number two news we've got this morning. We've got Ohio ad buy. Defend the vote. A Democratic pack is dropping $7 million on TV ads in Ohio, criticizing Senator John

3:08who said the Republican from Ohio over data centers. This is a, I mean, Democrats have just been bashing him over data centers. I mean, the ads are earning statewide between now and October 12th. This seems to be one of the issues where I was clearly shared by Brown Support, saying they have a salient point to hit the Republican. They ran a great, this is a good ad. They ran a great digital ad yesterday. We had in the mid day edition of just the home of a data center and some for 15 seconds. I think it's just on digital. They should put that on TV. It's probably one of the better ads I've seen the cycle. But I don't run any political organization, Republican or Democrat. Also third, Anna Chuck Schumer. He spoke to Andrew and Laura and he said it is neck and neck. If he had to sum it up, he would say can a huge Republican money advantage be to huge Democratic advantage in candidates and political climate? I think they can't. This is his message going into election day.

4:09We'll see. We are 33 days out. Larry Burge, number, Patrick Ewing's number. We are close. What do you think about Schumer? Listen, he's got to feel good that we're even having this conversation. For a long time, he was on the drum beat. We did interviews over the past six months saying we're expanding the map. We're doing all these things and playing in states like Iowa and Texas and other places. Where we're set a Democrats at the beginning of a cycle. We're not even really contemplating in a serious way. I think the question is going to be can they keep this at what perceived momentum going into the closing arguments and the closing days of this campaign. But if you're Chuck Schumer, this has got to be as good of a position as he could have expected. God, I mean, when he was saying to us and everybody earlier this year, last year, I am, you know, we're going to win the majority.

5:09I thought he was nuts, but, you know, he's, they're right in, they're right in place right now. I mean, it doesn't mean they're going to win the majority, but they are, they're right within striking distance, Anna. Also probably not surprising. Schumer continues to decline away and on his plans for 2028 and whether he will run for reelection. It's a question that he gets asked a lot. We've asked him many times and he says, I want to win period. I'll think of the other things later. We shall see. RJ, let's move on to the number two story of the morning, the Senate finally left town Wednesday night for a month of campaigning. There was a ton of activity. Not a lot got done, but they did strike a deal to speed up the confirmation vote of acting labor secretary Keith Sonderling to give it the GOPA final win on nominations before the midterms probably not something they're going to be running on back home though. No, and, and by the way, just 89 people were there for that vote. So they didn't really care that much either. But we expect the people to leave because who wants to stay until like 11 o'clock for

6:11Keith Sonderling's nomination. But listen, they are, they're out of here. So both chambers are out of session. They're out of, they're out of Washington and they tried to come back this week to pass that data center bill to pass congressional stock trading bill to give themselves some momentum. Thune said John Thune, Senate majority leader. If we could stay focused, talk about the future and the two paths over the course the next several weeks. Based on our record of accomplishment, things we've got done, things we still need to do. We've got a great argument. It's a tough environment out there, but great candidates well resourced. Stay on message, get the vote out. That is his view. And there is, there are some unhappy people in the Senate Republican conference. John Kennedy said, here we are the day before we have to make decisions about all these bills. I don't know the slightest idea what we're doing. I'm tired of being treated like a child just to tell me what the plan is. There's a lot of frustration in these last couple days. I think nerves are raw and people just want to get out of town and they got out of town.

7:14Well and they're going to have a lot jam coming back after the election, right? I mean government funding, farm bill, reconciliation 3.0, other non-spackages, crypto, permitting reforming. There's going to be a lot of potential things in this lame duck and just I think this was instructive of how tough it is to get anything done right now. All right, let's move to the number three story of the morning. We have got our new reporter, Josh Segal, bringing a ton of news this week on permitting reform. What is happening? What's not happening right now? They have finally the negotiators landed their big deal. But of course now the hard part comes. They punted the vote until after the election. This feels like it is a long way from totally secured. Yes, it is. And Josh who's been doing such a great job makes this point. I mean, he basically says that like, they have now a month of lobbying and there will be

8:17people who say he says the utility sector is likely to push for changes to provisions giving the federal government more power to cite interstate lines. It's a cleric, carry clean energy. An environmentalist or expected to contest a provision that would sharply limit court ability to remand or vacate agency decisions under DEPA. The house has problems. I mean, there's a lot going on here. But a deal is a deal in the Senate only. It's not only going to be in the house. And also, Sheldon White House said that a manager's amendment could come together, which would change the bill further. And we're going to see if people have the appetite to do this in the lame duck or if Democrats are like, if they win the majority, they're like, wait, we just won the majority. So we're going to actually punt this until next Congress. We'll see. Pressure will be very high to do something. It will be. It will be. Certainly from the industry and a lot of the outside groups. I mean, they've been negotiating this for a long, long time. Yeah. All right. We are going to leave it there. One quick thing I do want to mention, Jake, we're going to California next week. We have our first ever tech summit on October 7th at 9 AM.

9:18With love for those of you who listen out in San Francisco to join us in person, you can also stream in on the live stream. We are having representatives Brett Guthrie, the Republican from Kentucky and Ted Lu, the Democrat from California on stage, as well as a FireSide chat with American Edge projects, CEO Doug Kelly. And we have a live taping our first of fly out day featuring Senator Adam Schiff. So a lot going on there. We're excited to be out on the West Coast. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day and stay safe, everybody.