Former President Trump took a double-digit lead in the betting odds over Vice President Kamala Harris for the first time since July, signaling potential momentum for the former president as Election Day draws near.

Trump opened up a 10-point lead in the Real Clear Politics betting average on Sunday, his largest lead over Harris and the largest lead any candidate has enjoyed since the former president’s 10-point lead on July 31.

The lead comes as some in Democratic circles have attempted to quell panic within the ranks after recent polling that has seemingly trended toward Trump, with David Plouffe, who served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and now serves as a senior campaign adviser for Harris, appearing on the ‘Pod Save America’ podcast Sunday to argue that the fundamentals of the race have not changed.

‘I think the freakout is because there were a bunch of polls I’d say in the last month that showed a lead for Kamala Harris that was not real, it’s not what we were seeing. We’ve seen this thing basically be tied, let’s say, since… mid-September. So this is the race we have, it’s the race we expected, I don’t think it’s going to open up for either candidate,’ Plouffe said.

But the betting odds have also continued to move in Trump’s favor, perhaps indicating solid momentum for the former president outside typical public polling.

Trump at one point enjoyed an over 48-point lead in the Real Clear Politics betting average over President Biden on July 15, but that lead quickly began to evaporate after the president’s announcement that he would drop out of the race and Harris’ quick elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket.

Harris eventually took the betting lead in the race on Aug. 8 and saw that lead peak at 8.8-points a week later. The two candidates have since traded the lead multiple times and no candidate has enjoyed a lead as large as Trump’s Sunday advantage.

Harris’ last lead in the Real Clear Politics average was on Oct. 5, with Trump steadily gaining more momentum in the race on his way to the 10-point Sunday lead.

Trump himself has touted his betting advantage in recent days, telling Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that the betting odds were ‘through the roof’ in his favor.

The Real Clear Politics betting odds average tracks seven different platforms that release odds; Betfair, Betsson, Bovada, Bwin, Points Bet, Polymarket and Smarkets. None of those platforms show Harris with a lead in the race. Trump enjoys his largest lead of 12 points on Points Bet.

Neither the Trump nor the Harris campaign immediately responded to Fox News Digital requests for comment.

It’s not every day that a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus sits down to meet with the Democratic commander in chief, but national crises have a way of creating strange bedfellows.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital she was not expecting a call late last week when her phone screen flashed with an unknown Washington, D.C.-based government number. When she answered, it was President Biden’s voice on the line.

‘Well, I did not expect that. So I talked to him on the phone for about 10 minutes. First thing that he asked me was, what did I need for my constituents, and how did I fare with the storm. And then [we] moved forward into talking about the issues that we’re having with FEMA,’ Luna said.

The first-term Republican, whose district was hit hard by Hurricane Milton last week, said she also met with Biden when he surveyed storm damage in Florida over the weekend.

The pair met for an ‘extensive’ discussion on a number of disaster aid reforms, Luna said. 

It’s not uncommon to see political foes work together after a natural disaster, but the congresswoman’s praise for Biden is a stark contrast from her fierce criticism of his administration – which she herself noted to Fox News Digital – including spearheading efforts to hold members of his Cabinet in inherent contempt of Congress.

‘I have obviously been very critical of President Biden in the past, but I will say that him stepping in and taking control of the situation to assist for the right reasons was very honestly kind of shocking for me,’ Luna said.

‘Obviously, you know, we’re still going to be holding FEMA accountable… But as far as I am seeing, FEMA has been very helpful, and I’ve been in direct communication with them. And they’re absolutely going to assist, because President Biden has told them to do so.’

Asked about their in-person conversation, Luna said they talked about the situation in Georgia and North Carolina after Helene battered the American Southeast, as well as Florida’s recovery after both storms.

‘The one thing that I really wanted to hammer home was obviously, you know, FEMA getting debris cleared and really not holding the cities accountable for not being able to move debris in time,’ Luna said. ‘So we sorted that out.’

She also advocated for reforming the National Flood Insurance Program, which Luna said has been largely unchanged since its inception in the 1960s.

In both of their conversations, Luna said Biden agreed with her that FEMA’s $750 upfront payment to disaster survivors was inadequate.

‘He said it was a ‘bunch of malarkey,’ which is 100% true, and that $750 was not enough,’ Luna said.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for further comment.

Her measured response to federal relief efforts is notable, given the torrent of GOP-led criticism of the administration’s response efforts.

It’s worth noting that Biden also saw praise from the Republican governors of South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia after the storms.

On the federal level, Luna is among the bipartisan chorus of lawmakers calling for Congress to return for an early emergency session to deal with disaster relief – something Biden has also voiced.

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has signaled on multiple occasions that he’s unlikely to convene the House before their scheduled return the week after Election Day.

Johnson, who has criticized the Biden administration’s response, argued that the $20 billion that Congress freed up for FEMA last month would be enough to meet immediate needs, and that lawmakers could do little until a formal damage assessment and cost estimate was provided.

Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., whose district was among the hardest hit by Helene, echoed Johnson in an interview Friday.

‘I believe that what we’re seeing right now with the calls to come back into session to pass funds is more of a distraction from the administration for their inept reaction to getting folks here to help western North Carolina,’ Edwards said.

Years before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and started the latest war in the region, the terror group plotted other assaults, including a scheme to blow up a skyscraper in Tel Aviv while pressuring Iran to assist in its battle against the Jewish state, according to documents found by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, the Washington Post reported.

The documents seized from Hamas command centers uncovered planning for the attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots, according to the newspaper. The 59 pages of documents include an illustrated presentation detailing possible options for an attack as well as letters from Hamas to Iran’s top leaders in 2021 requesting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and training for 12,000 additional Hamas fighters.

‘Hamas is so determined to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map that it managed to drag Iran into direct conflict — under conditions that Iran wasn’t prepared for,’ an Israeli security official who has reviewed the letters and planning documents told the Post. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents seized by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The move to release the documents comes as Israel could possibly retaliate against Iran after the Islamic Republic launched nearly 200 missiles on Oct. 1 in response to the killing of Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group. 

In the letters written in 2021, Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar appeals to several senior Iranian officials, including the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, for additional financial and military support, pledging that, with Iran’s backing, he could destroy Israel completely in two years.

‘We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it takes us toward achieving this sacred goal,’ states a June 2021 letter with apparent signatures by Sinwar as well as five other Hamas officials.

Iran initially declined to directly involve itself in the war between Hamas and Israel after Oct. 7. However, the conflict has expanded as its proxies continue to attack Israel on multiple fronts. 

In a statement to Fox News Digital, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran accused Israel of spreading false information. 

‘We regard the Israeli regime as a mendacious criminal, anti-human entity and place no credence in their illusions,’ a spokesman for the mission said. ‘They have a long history of spreading falsehoods, fabricating already-counterfeit documents, and conducting deceptive psychological operations.’

Some plans seized by the Israel Defense Forces include a computer slide presentation showing a Hamas outpost in northern Gaza with options and scenarios for attacking Israel, with targets ranging from military command centers to shopping malls.

Another described plans to destroy the Moshe Aviv Tower, a 70-story building in Tel Aviv that is Israel’s second tallest, as well as the Azrieli Center complex, which comprises three skyscrapers,a large shopping mall, train station and a cinema, according to the Post report. 

‘Working to find a mechanism to destroy the tower,’ the plan states. 

Other plans of attack included targeting Israel’s rail system and resurrecting horse-drawn carriages of antiquity as conveyances for fighters and weapons, the report said. 

Sources close to the White House report an ongoing rift between President Biden and his staff and Kamala Harris and her staff – with issues tracing back to the initial weeks following Harris’ nomination by the Democratic Party. 

The squabbles have ranged from whether Biden’s main surrogates should continue going on TV or be replaced with new Harris surrogates, to debates over whether Biden is undermining Harris’ messaging. Other issues have included complaints from the Harris camp that the White House has not moved quickly enough to add staff to the vice president’s office to help deal with the bigger workload. The revelations surfaced in a new report Axios published Sunday.  

‘Everyone from the president on down knows how important the election is, and we always anticipated a number of staff would want to transition from the administration to the campaign for the final stretch,’ a White House official told Axios. However, simultaneously, the White House has been frustrated over the Harris camp’s rules around who can be moved to her office and when, other sources inside the White House told Fox News.  

Meanwhile, Biden staffers have also reportedly felt dejected over Biden’s exit from the race, sources said, forcing them to play second fiddle to the vice president. 

‘They’re too much in their feelings,’ a Harris ally close to the campaign, told Axios.

One example of Biden not adequately coordinating his message and schedule, cited by Harris campaign aides, came on Friday. Biden held an impromptu press conference from the White House to update the American public on the government’s hurricane relief efforts. Meanwhile, Harris was campaigning in Michigan at the same time, and the dueling events served to effectively lessen the number of eyes on Harris.

Biden was supposed to be out of the country that day, but he reportedly felt it imperative to stay back and oversee response efforts to Hurricanes Milton and Helene.

The infighting did not stop there, either. Last week, Harris criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for playing political games and not doing what was best for the American people, after she claimed that the Sunshine State governor ignored her calls to discuss hurricane relief efforts. On Friday, when Biden was supposed to be overseas, he undercut Harris’ narrative about DeSantis when he praised the Florida governor’s work in the wake of the storm, calling him ‘cooperative’ and acknowledging he was doing a ‘great job.’ 

Sources inside the White House told Fox News that Harris creating a rift with DeSantis was a ‘dumb thing for her to do,’ adding that Biden’s team feels like it has done everything it can to provide Harris with opportunities to demonstrate leadership, but she has fumbled them. At least one source who spoke to Fox News said the Harris campaign’s poor messaging on this was due to its own poor planning, not the White House’s. 

The Harris campaign declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital. But, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, extolled Biden’s continued support for Harris in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

‘President Biden endorsed Vice President Harris immediately after leaving the race, rejecting other approaches that would divide the party, and has attested to her leadership abilities and continually made clear his support for her,’ Bates said. 

‘While ensuring that all critical White House functions are fully staffed, we have made significant changes to guarantee the Vice President’s team has all of the support and resources that they need,’ Bates said. ‘This builds on a strong, trusting relationship between both teams, which has been critical to successfully executing an unprecedented transition to a new candidate.’

Voters in storm-ravaged parts of the Southeast could face new hurdles at the ballot box this year following the destruction wrought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, back-to-back disasters that have sparked a flurry of new outreach from states, parties, and even campaigns themselves in a bid to expand voters’ access to the polls and ensure their votes are counted.

Though the efforts in the hurricane-hit southern states have taken very different shapes, the shared goal is to increase engagement and participation in the 2024 presidential race, in which candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain locked in a virtual dead heat with less than a month until Election Day.

In North Carolina, efforts have been focused on helping displaced residents access polling locations in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which barreled onto shore last month as a Category 4 storm, killing more than 220 people and causing billions of dollars in destruction.

The bulk of the storm’s destruction was concentrated in western North Carolina and in Georgia, two competitive states that could play a key role in determining the next president. Roughly 17% of North Carolina’s registered voters reside in the counties that were designated as disaster areas in the aftermath of Helene, Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, previously told Fox News.

To that end, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted last week to approve changes for 13 counties in the region, whose access to infrastructure, polling locations and postal services is believed to remain ‘severely disrupted’ through Election Day. State election officials also announced coordination with FEMA and North Carolina Emergency Management to set up portable restrooms, generators and trailers to support the more than 500 polling places in the state’s western region — and an area of devastation that spans some 25 counties.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign also hinted at new efforts to help transport voters to the ballot boxes in hurricane-hit states. Speaking to Fox News in an interview Monday, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the campaign has been in contact with state and local election officials in the Southeast to survey the damage and ensure voters have access to the ballots.

The campaign leadership, she said ‘has sent a letter ‘to state and local officials on the ground in North Carolina saying, ‘You need to provide as many accessible voting locations as possible on the ground,” Leavitt told Fox News, adding: ‘Our campaign is reviewing how we can possibly provide transportation for voters who need to get to the polls and ensuring they have access to the ballot box.’

In Florida, which was battered by both Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order granting election officials in hard-hit counties additional flexibility to alter their election procedures — including polling locations and requests for mail-in ballot addresses to be changed at the last minute.

Meanwhile, Democrats suffered a blow in Georgia last week after a federal judge ruled that she will not order the state to reopen its voter registration process or extend its voter registration deadline in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, rejecting arguments from the Georgia conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition of the People’s Agenda, and the New Georgia Project, which said disruptions from the storm had unfairly deprived them of their right to register.

The ruling could have a major impact in Georgia, a key battleground state that narrowly selected Biden by just 12,000 votes in 2020. (A federal judge in Florida also rejected a similar request brought in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, filed by the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters.) 

Federal judges in both states claimed that voters had ample time to register for the November election.

It is unclear what — or if — the Harris campaign is providing in terms of transport or options for voters in North Carolina or other states that were impacted by the natural disasters, or what specific actions might be taken by Trump’s campaign.

Campaign officials did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

The Kamala Harris campaign rocket, which soared to dazzling heights when she got into the race, is losing altitude.

Despite raising a billion dollars, despite overwhelmingly positive coverage by the mainstream media, she has failed to deliver a compelling message and is especially struggling to win over Black and Latino voters. There’s no question that many Democrats, who grew accustomed to reading stories about who’ll be in the Harris Cabinet, are panicking.

Now you could look at the glass as half-full and say it’s remarkable that a relatively unpopular vice president, in a short period of time, is running neck and neck with Donald Trump. She is tied nationally in a new NBC College poll. But that’s a drop of five points for Harris since the last survey in September.

Trump is the ultimate Teflon candidate. The press may jump on him for refusing to release his medical records (as Harris just did) but demanding she take a cognitive test; for using incendiary language against illegal immigrants, or for vowing to protect women when it’s his Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. 

It doesn’t matter. MAGA loyalists can’t stand the media, and they’re not going to change their minds at this late date. He has the advantage of having held the job. They remember Trump’s presidency with growing fondness, particularly for a strong economy and greater limits at the border, and brush aside any negative developments, especially Jan. 6. 

Harris has certainly made policy proposals and done a bunch of softball interviews. But she made a big mistake on ‘The View,’ saying she couldn’t think of a single thing where she’d differ from Joe Biden. It was not intended as a gotcha question.

How can she grab the mantle of the change candidate and, with that sentence, cast herself as Biden 2.0? 

If she feels loyalty to Joe, it’s misguided. As a veteran pol, he would understand if she said he did a good job but here’s several areas where I disagree with him and would do things differently–no word salad allowed.

Axios and others are reporting tension between the Harris and Biden camps – she’s replaced the president’s top strategists and spokesmen – precisely the kind of leaks that mark a sputtering campaign.

When people complain that they don’t really know Kamala, they’re really saying they’re not yet prepared to trust her with the nuclear codes. She still has to pass the commander-in-chief test. But she also has to seem warm and approachable. That’s a daunting challenge in a country that, unlike much of the world, has never elected a female president.

Here’s some British invective from Andrew Sullivan on his Substack:

‘The more I listened to her in these interviews, the more worried I became that she doesn’t actually believe in anything…

‘Her team either fears or knows she may not be up to it. And this is bleeding obvious. A presidential campaign where you rarely face the press, never deal with a hostile interview, and never hold a presser is a campaign defined by fear. You can smell it from miles away.’

Andrew, by the way, is voting for Harris, mainly because he’ll do anything to keep Trump out of the White House. 

Kamala keeps talking about being the underdog, but she’s run a very cautious campaign. The anxiety about making a mistake should be outweighed by the need to make news, at a time when Trump is back to dominating the news. Many days go by in which she’s a minor TV presence compared to the ratings-boosting Trump.

It’s smart that she’s now agreed to several network town halls, but she should have been doing these from the start, rather than reciting the same stump speech at rallies. Drinking beer with Stephen Colbert doesn’t quite cut it.

And who would have thought that the woman of color would be lagging behind the usual Democratic margins among Blacks – particularly Black men – and Latinos?

Things reached the point where Barack Obama had to scold Black men for sexism, accusing them of not being comfortable with voting for a woman.

The battleground polls are tight, so obviously Harris can still win. But she basically needs to camp out in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin rather than trying to pick off these Sunbelt states. 

In fact, if she had put aside any personal friction and picked Josh Shapiro, she’d probably have more of an edge in his state. Instead, she went with Tim Walz, who’s not helping the ticket much no matter how many pheasants he hunts. He has, however, done well in two straight interviews with ‘Fox News Sunday.’

A major step forward: Harris agreeing yesterday to an interview with Fox anchor Bret Baier, on Wednesday in Pennsylvania. Some headlines are calling this a risky move, but Bret has vast experience with such interviews and will absolutely be fair. The upside for her: reaching the largest audience by far in cable news.

Bret said on the air that he believes there’s ‘a sense that they have inside the campaign, their strategy has to change, they’ve got to change. They’re losing Black males… I think that the campaign realizes they have to do more outreach.’  

Maybe this is all too much to lay on Kamala’s shoulders. Maybe she’s doing the best she can against a former president whose message is clear and simple: Stop illegal immigration, mass deportations, combat inflation, end wars in the Middle East. And an incumbent is always subject to the counter-charge: Well, why haven’t you done it already?

The vice president simply hasn’t been able to generate the excitement that surrounded her initial campaign launch. Three weeks is a long time in politics, but whether Harris can reenergize her candidacy remains an open question.