| | | | |  | | By Calder McHugh | | | |  New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu speaks onstage at the 2023 TIME100 Summit on April 25 in New York City. | Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME | PRIMARY ANGST — For a time, a straightforward, one-on-one presidential rematch featuring two heavyweights, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, seemed all but inevitable. Now, the 2024 landscape looks anything but static, with a handful of hopefuls announcing their bids just this week. It’s a sign of the deep discomfort in both parties with their frontrunners. On the Democratic side, there is no real threat to Biden. But polls reveal a palpable sense of unease with the prospect of nominating the 80-year-old president to another four-year term: A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS shows Biden with just 60 percent of support from Democrats, with Robert F. Kennedy receiving 20 percent and Marianne Williamson at eight percent. Today, scholar Cornel West — who served on the committee that drafted the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform and voted for Biden in 2020 — announced that he’s running for president as a third-party candidate on the People’s Party line. On the Republican side of the ledger, the apprehension surrounding Trump has led to a spasm of activity — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his bid two weeks ago, former Vice President Mike Pence filed paperwork to run today and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are expected to join the race in the coming days. By the end of this week, more Republican candidates will have launched their bid for president at this early stage of the race than in any previous cycle in the history of the party, according to analysis from Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota. Today’s biggest news wasn’t even who’s running — it’s who isn’t planning to run. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced he won’t be entering the Republican primary, largely to avoid the prospect of a splintered field that enables Trump to win the nomination again. “The stakes are too high for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35 percent of the vote, and I will help ensure this does not happen,” Sununu wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. “We must not be complacent, and candidates should not get into this race to further a vanity campaign, to sell books or to audition to serve as Donald Trump’s vice president.” In an interview with CNN, Sununu, a moderate Republican, said that “given where the polls are right now, every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out, and getting out quickly, if it’s not working.” The “stop Trump by shrinking the field” strategy isn’t catching on, though. Burgum released a video preview today ahead of his expected Wednesday announcement that he’s running for president. In it, Burgum didn’t mention Trump, but he did bash the left with a line that nodded to DeSantis’ culture war playbook: “I grew up in a tiny town in North Dakota. ‘Woke’ was what you did at 5 a.m. to start the day.” In November 2024, we might still be staring down the barrel of a Biden vs. Trump rematch. But it’s looking like a messy road to the general election, marked by constant reminders of Biden’s weakness and the GOP’s lack of confidence in a Trump-led ticket. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh.
| | A message from Citi: Doing business abroad can be complicated and costly, especially at the beginning, so it's worth taking a look at how some key players are doing it. Citi, for example, is well-positioned to take advantage of evolving global trends with an extensive, worldwide network that's paired with local expertise in 95 markets. With that kind of network available, Citi can help connect today's ideas with tomorrow's opportunities. Learn More. | | | | | — Democratic Senate hopeful claims primary residence in Arizona — and D.C.: When Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego bought a house near Capitol Hill last year, he claimed the Washington property as his primary residence as part of a special mortgage rate afforded to military veterans. But Gallego and his wife also say a home they own in Phoenix is their primary residence. The loan documents for the Washington property, obtained by POLITICO, confirmed he counts D.C. as his primary home even though his campaign maintains he resides in Arizona. Politically, it means the Democratic congressman aiming to take out Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) in a hotly contested race next year may have to explain why he declared he was primarily a resident of the nation’s capital. — House GOP tees up contempt vote for FBI director as Biden probe heats up: House Republicans are escalating their standoff with the FBI over an unreleased document that they say ties then-Vice President Biden to a “bribery scheme” — without sharing key details about the explosive allegation behind it. The Oversight Committee will vote Thursday on holding FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress over the bureau’s decision not to give lawmakers a copy of the document, Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said today after a closed-door meeting with FBI officials. — SEC sues Binance, world’s largest crypto exchange: The SEC filed more than a dozen charges against Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao today stemming from what the agency called the company’s “blatant disregard” for U.S. law as it grew into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. In a 136-page complaint, the Wall Street regulator alleged that Binance, its American affiliate, Binance.US, and Zhao have been operating unregistered U.S. financial institutions, misleading investors about the companies’ risk controls, inflating trading volumes and mixing “billions of dollars of investor assets” and sending them to a third-party entity owned by Zhao.
| | | | GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | | PENCE IS IN — Mike Pence filed paperwork today to run for president, setting up an unprecedented contest between a former vice president and a former president of his own party for the nomination. His largest task will be attempting to win back Republicans who largely cast him aside following Donald Trump’s presidency, writes POLITICO’s Adam Wren. SUNUNU IS OUT — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu will not run for president in 2024, the Republican said today. But, writes POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky, his decision was also a warning: A crowded field could lead to former President Donald Trump’s renomination and doom the party in 2024. “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working. And I can be more candid about that as the governor of the first-in-the-nation primary [state], in calling candidates out,” Sununu said today on CNN. “There are 12 people in the race. I don’t think all 12 of them firmly believe that they can be president, I think a lot of them just want to audition to be in the Cabinet or vice president. And at this time, there’s no place for that.” CULTURE CLASH — Joe Biden vowed in 2020 to work “like the devil” to energize Hispanic voters. His success — then and now — has been mixed. Biden flew to Florida seven weeks before Election Day in a specific effort to excite Hispanic Florida voters. But as he stepped to the podium at a Hispanic Heritage Month event near Disney World, Biden declared, “I just have one thing to say” and used his phone to play part of “Despacito.” It was meant as a salute to the singer of the reggaeton hit, Luis Fonsi, who had introduced Biden and cried, “Dance a little bit, Joe.” Still, the gesture triggered swift online backlash from some Hispanics, who saw it as playing to belittling stereotypes — proof that while outreach is important, failing to strike the right cultural tone can undermine such efforts. Democratic candidates won 57 percent of Hispanic voters during the 2022 midterms, a smaller percentage than the 63 percent of Hispanic voters Biden won in 2020 and the 66 percent of Hispanic voters supporting the party in 2018. Now, the Biden campaign has to wrestle with how to reverse those trends. Biden is hardly the first politician to strike a sour note trying to connect across cultural lines, but, the Associated Press reports, the blowback he encountered illustrates a bigger challenge facing the president and his party as he seeks a second term next year.
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Face masks depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, owner of private military company Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin, center, and Chechnya's regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov, left, are displayed among others for sale at a souvenir shop in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday. | Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo | NOT SO FRIENDLY FIRE — The feud between the mercenaries of the Kremlin-connected Wagner Group and the ordinary Russian army appears to be escalating, amid reports of exchanges of friendly fire, writes Nicolas Camut. Russian soldiers shot at Wagner paramilitaries near Bakhmut — the eastern Ukrainian town which has seen brutal attritional battles for territory — destroying a truck, the mercenary group claimed Sunday evening. In response, Wagner claimed to have detained the commander of the Russian army’s 72nd brigade, today releasing a video of him appearing to confess to giving the order to fire on the mercenaries’ vehicle, claiming he did so while drunk because he personally disliked the group. The officer, who introduced himself as Lieutenant-Colonel Roman Gennadievich Venivitin, appeared to have been roughed up by his captors. The video came after Wagner released a statement, signed by a “commander” of the group, stating that he had received information that members of the official Russian army had been seen “mining the roads in the rear zone” of Wagner’s positions around Opytnoye and Ozarianovka, two towns in the Bakhmut area, on May 17. POLITICO has not been able to independently verify this information.
| | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW. | | | | | | | | | | $1.5 trillion The amount of money that will come due in mortgages across America in the next two years, a potential time bomb as higher interest rates and spiraling office vacancies push down property values. A commercial real estate market slide could be particularly perilous given that 70 percent of bank-held commercial mortgages are on the balance sheets of regional and smaller lenders that could be more vulnerable to smaller swings in the market. | | | | GLOBALIZING LOCAL — Local food’s original purpose was to combat climate change and source regional products, but the term swiftly morphed into a marketing tactic for many supermarkets and vendors, Whitney Bauck reports for The Guardian. While nearly two-thirds of customers believe that locally sourced food is more environmentally friendly, the parameters for what qualifies local food as local is vague. At a Union Market in Brooklyn, Bauck writes, cartons marked “local eggs” were sourced from farms ranging from 17 miles away to 270 miles away. Bauck explores the term’s origins, inconsistencies in its usage and what it tells us about the current state of the food system.
| | | | |  On this date in 1989: Chinese students carry a funeral wreath during a march along New York's 42nd Street to protest the slaughter of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators by government forces in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, a day earlier. The crowd, estimated at 2,000, pushed against the gates of the Chinese Consulate and later marched crosstown to a plaza near the United Nations. | Robyn Beck/AP Photo | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
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