| | | | |  | | By Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels and Rachael Bade | | | With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | NEW NBC NEWS POLL — Key numbers, among registered voters:
- Wrong track: 74%
- JOE BIDEN’s job approval: 43%
- Biden vs. DONALD TRUMP: 49% - 45%
- Biden vs. Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS: 47% - 47%
A big warning sign for Biden: Sixty-eight percent of registered voters have major or moderate concerns about Biden “not having the necessary mental and physical health to be president,” up from 51% in October 2020. (That number is 55% for Trump, up 4 points since October 2020.) Key numbers, among Republican primary voters:
- Trump vs. DeSantis: 60%-36%. That’s a commanding post-federal indictment lead. BUT …
- While 49% of primary voters say “the Republican Party should continue to be led by Donald Trump,” 21% say “Donald Trump was a good president, but it is time to consider other leaders,” and 29% say “[t]he Republican Party needs a new leader with better personal behavior and a different approach.”
Full poll results (PDF) … NBC’s Mark Murray’s write-up
|  In a sign of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s weakness, Yevgeny Prigozhin was neither detained nor defeated on the battlefield. | Russian Presidential Press Service via AP Photo | RUSSIAN CRISIS AVERTED … OR POSTPONED? — YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN halted his band of mercenaries’ advance on Moscow some 125 miles outside the capital, averting a potential civil war in Russia. But in a sign of President VLADIMIR PUTIN’s weakness, Prigozhin, whom the Kremlin ordered arrested for “organizing an armed rebellion” after he attacked several Russian aircraft, killing some dozen Russian soldiers and occupying military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a key city for Russian war planners, was neither detained nor defeated on the battlefield. Instead, the longtime ally of Putin — who, without mentioning Prigozhin by name, condemned him for “treason” in an address to the nation yesterday — will be given safe passage to Belarus. Prigozhin’s forces have been publicly offered amnesty. “There was a higher goal: to avoid bloodshed, to avoid an internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable consequences,” DMITRI PESKOV, the longtime Putin spokesman said, adding that Belarusian President ALEKSANDR LUKASHENKO personally negotiated the deal. The WSJ notes that all the key Russian players looked weaker at the end of the episode: Putin, who promised to crush Prigozhin and then offered him exile; Prigozhin, who abandoned what he called “march for justice” to Moscow; and the Russian military, which seems to have been unable or unwilling to confront Prigozhin and his men. NYT: “[T]he short-lived uprising suggested that Mr. Putin’s hold on power is more tenuous than at any time since he took office more than two decades ago. … And by making a deal with Mr. Prigozhin only hours after threatening to crush him, Mr. Putin reinforced the reality that he no longer has exclusive control over the use of force on Russian territory.” Some big unanswered questions:
- Does Putin fire any of his military leaders, specifically Russia’s minister of defense, SERGEI SHOIGU, whom Prigozhin targeted for removal, as part of the deal?
- Does Prigozhin truly leave the stage, or does he simply regroup and return for a future confrontation? Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO KURT VOLKER told the Times: “Don’t trust the reversal. This is positioning. Prigozhin wants to be seen as a hero for Russians while he lines up more support and makes demands. The state will go after him and that can be his excuse for ‘reluctantly’ defending himself.”
- When will Putin address the crisis, and what will he say? He hasn’t been heard from since his address yesterday morning.
- Does the conflict translate into a military advantage for Ukraine?
Per the WSJ, “SERGEI MARKOV, a former Putin adviser and a political analyst in Moscow,” had this to say on Telegram: “The entire world has seen that Russia is on the brink of the most acute political crisis. Yes, the putsch failed now. But putsches have fundamental reasons. And if the reasons remain, a putsch will happen again. And it could be successful.” Jonathan Lemire and Alexander Ward report that the Biden administration is predicting/hoping the drama will help Ukraine: “U.S. officials engaged in multiple interagency meetings Friday night and Saturday morning to assess its potential impact. They arrived at a preliminary consensus that the Wagner mercenary group’s insurrection would occupy the Kremlin’s attention. That would provide Ukraine with a much-needed opportunity to reverse the fortunes of its sputtering counteroffensive.” Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN made a round of appearances on the Sunday shows and said that the events this weekend showed “cracks” in the facade of Putin’s leadership. “I suspect that this is a moving picture, and we haven’t seen the last act yet.” Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.
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Explore more possibilities with the metaverse. | | | BACKSTORY — “Behind the Scenes of Justice Alito’s Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Pre-buttal,” by ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger and Stephen Engelberg TOP-ED — MICHAEL LUTTIG, the conservative former federal judge who Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) once championed for a spot on the Supreme Court and whom MIKE PENCE relied upon for legal advice on Jan. 6, writes a blistering new piece for the NYT condemning the GOP’s continued embrace of the indicted Trump: “Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning. … “If the indictment of Mr. Trump on Espionage Act charges — not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the president on Jan. 6 — fails to shake the Republican Party from its moribund political senses, then it is beyond saving itself. Nor ought it be saved.” While Luttig has been increasingly vocal about the GOP’s post-Jan. 6 embrace of Trump, this piece includes his most scathing comments, and he specifically calls out Pence, DeSantis and Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY, accusing them of “completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.” OLD WASHINGTON — Hollywood mogul JEFFREY KATZENBERG “has joined with other advisers in counseling President Biden to ‘own’ his age and turn it into an asset,” report WSJ’s Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey. “If HARRISON FORD, 80 years old, can star in a new Indiana Jones movie and the Rolling Stones’ MICK JAGGER, who turns 80 next month, can strut around a stadium stage, Katzenberg says, then Biden should lean into his longevity as a sign of wisdom and experience while offering a sense of humor about it.” NEW WASHINGTON — “Interrupted by the pandemic, D.C. summer interns are back in person,” by WaPo’s Joe Heim SUNDAY BEST … — Blinken on takeaways from this weekend in Russia, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “What we’ve seen is extraordinary. … We’ve also seen rise to the surface profound questions about the very premises for this Russian aggression against Ukraine, that Prigozhin surfaced very publicly, as well as a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. So, I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian facade. It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there. But certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.” — Blinken on whether he agrees with Biden that Chinese President XI JINPING is a dictator, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “The president speaks clearly, he speaks candidly — I’ve worked for him for more than 20 years — and he speaks for all of us.” — Sen. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn.) on the HUNTER BIDEN plea deal, on “Meet the Press”: “That decision was made by an independent prosecutor, who is a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, who had 10 years of experience, well respected. … He looked at the facts and evidence and made that decision. And by the way, if that’s what the Republicans want to run on, in the coming election, good luck.”
| | | | A message from Meta:   | | | TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
- “Why the 2024 GOP Primary Isn’t Like 2016,” by Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter
- “To Stop Trump, His Republican Rivals Need a Debate, and They May Not Get One,” by Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher
- “Stop Pining for the ‘Good Old Days,’” by The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg
- “Dobbs changed abortion politics. One year later, it’s still potent,” by WaPo’s Dan Balz
- “The Government Must Say What It Knows About Covid’s Origins,” by NYT’s Zeynep Tufekci
- “The New Breed of Republicans Is Nothing of the Sort,” by National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke
- “Is There Any Twinge of Regret Among the Anti-Abortion Justices?” by NYT’s Linda Greenhouse
- “Five Reasons Why Democrats Should Focus Obsessively on Working-Class Voters,” by Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira
- “The Forgotten Element of Strategy,” by The Atlantic’s Nadia Schadlow
- “The Legal Foundation of Women’s Sports Is Under Fire,” by NYT’s David French
- “The Trump Divide that Should Have Republicans Terrified,” by Rich Lowry for POLITICO Mag
- “‘Life of the Mother’ Abortion Laws Are Still Risky,” by Bloomberg’s Sarah Green Carmichael
- “How to make Social Security more progressive and more conservative,” by WaPo’s Ramesh Ponnuru
- “Hunter Biden Got Special Treatment — Especially Harsh,” by Renato Mariotti for POLITICO Mag
- “Go Ahead. Debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” by NYT’s Ross Douthat
| | BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The president will leave Camp David to return to the White House.
VP KAMALA HARRIS’ SUNDAY — The VP has nothing on her public schedule. | | | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | PHOTO OF THE DAY
|  Mike Pence addresses a Celebrate Life Day rally by the Lincoln Memorial yesterday as both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights demonstrators gathered in Washington. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Trump was the star attraction at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference yesterday, where he got a standing ovation for touting his pivotal role in helping to overturn Roe v. Wade, AP’s Michelle Price and Will Weissert report. Yet he notably declined once again to get very specific about what abortion restrictions he supports or whether he would back a national abortion ban, saying more vaguely that the government has a “vital role” in opposing the procedure. Still, he got a more enthusiastic reception than many other candidates at the conference. And he echoed a recent DeSantis line in saying he would appoint justices like CLARENCE THOMAS and SAMUEL ALITO. 2. ONE YEAR SINCE DOBBS, CONT.: News coverage has been pouring in all week examining how abortion access — and America — has changed in the past year since the Supreme Court’s historic decision. Three angles that caught our eye today:
- The court itself: Josh Gerstein has a major examination of how the Supreme Court has struggled to restore trust internally and externally, thanks to a variety of disruptions “that have rocked the institution itself, undermined relationships on the bench and fundamentally altered the way it is viewed by the public and treated by the media. … Some of the longtime observers, looking back on a term that was nearing its end, could only wonder: Can a fractured court put the pieces back together again?” Josh also has juicy and newly reported details on how the justices reacted to the disclosure of the Dobbs draft opinion and more.
- Crime: In his Dobbs decision, Alito wrote hopefully that ending the Roe era might decrease abortion-related extremism on both sides of the debate. But over the past year, abortion-related crimes have skyrocketed to record levels, Betsy Woodruff Swan reports. There have been at least 30 federal prosecutions of anti-abortion activists — and, for maybe the first time, multiple federal prosecutions of abortion rights supporters, too.
- Congress: Hill Republicans are pushing forward with under-the-radar moves to restrict abortion access further, via riders on government funding bills, AP’s Farnoush Amiri reports. Some members see this approach as politically preferable to high-profile roll call votes on abortion policy.
3. THE NEXT MEMBER OF CONGRESS?: In an upset, Utah Republicans tapped CELESTE MALOY at a convention to replace Rep. CHRIS STEWART in an upcoming special election, The Salt Lake Tribune’s Bryan Schott reports from Delta. Maloy, a former Stewart staffer, triumphed over former state House Speaker GREG HUGHES, a prominent Trump supporter. If elected in the fairly red district, Maloy would be the first member of Congress ever from Southern Utah. 4. FOLLOWING THE MONEY: “As Legal Fees Mount, Trump Steers Donations Into PAC That Has Covered Them,” by NYT’s Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman: “The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills … and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch. When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America. … Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations.”
| | | | A message from Meta:   | | | 5. THE BRAVE NEW WORLD: “A.I.’s Use in Elections Sets Off a Scramble for Guardrails,” by NYT’s Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers: “What began a few months ago as a slow drip of fund-raising emails and promotional images composed by A.I. for political campaigns has turned into a steady stream of campaign materials created by the technology, rewriting the political playbook for democratic elections around the world. Increasingly, political consultants, election researchers and lawmakers say setting up new guardrails, such as legislation reining in synthetically generated ads, should be an urgent priority.” 6. PAC IT IN: “The super PAC frenzy redefining campaign operations,” by Jessica Piper and Sally Goldenberg: “Super PACs have been growing in strength for more than a decade, but this cycle are swimming in more money than ever. They have started earlier, with more than $14 million in independent expenditures in the primary already … compared with around $950,000 at this time in 2015. The groups are also taking new approaches, deploying staffing at campaign events, paying for door-knocking operations and even sending fundraising texts on candidates’ behalf. Some of the new strategies could test the legal limits on coordination between campaigns and super PACs.” 7. ONE TO WATCH: “The Weird Sleeper Issue Biden Is Betting on for His Re-Election,” by The Daily Beast’s Ursula Perano: “Yes, abortion will motivate many Democrats to vote. Of course many moderates remain repulsed by Trump. But junk fees? Democrats are betting Republicans won’t have a good answer why they think you should face a surprise cost when you want to, say, book a vacation. And more than just winning over voters because they’re trying to save consumers a few bucks, Democrats think the issue can actually be revealing of the GOP’s pro-corporate ideology … It’s niche, but it’s tangible—and his allies say that’s by design.” 8. THERE’S JUST ONE LITTLE PROBLEM: “Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional,” by CNN’s Steve Contorno: “[B]ack in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.” 9. BATTLE FOR THE BALLOT: “GOP state legislatures seek greater control over state and local election offices,” by AP’s Christina Cassidy in Atlanta: “Attempts by Republican legislatures to expand their power over how elections are run have soared since the 2020 presidential election, spurred by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.”
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Jill Biden swung by Twin Cities Pride and Nashville Pride. Steve Kornacki’s horse came in at the Royal Ascot. Lori Lightfoot hung out with Bill Murray at a Chicago Cubs game in London. Chris Licht’s much-ballyhooed rebranding of CNN’s on-screen graphics is being ditched in favor of the old look. The USS Carl M. Levin was officially commissioned. SPOTTED: conservative media personality and former Fox News host Dan Bongino getting forcibly removed from Cucina Palm Beach by several restaurant employees close to midnight on Friday. Pic Asked for comment, Bongino texted Daniel Lippman: “That’s an absolutely FASCINATING take on what really happened. Does Politico support physical violence against women? You’ll have to tune in to my podcast on Monday for the real story.” Bongino, who had earlier ordered bottle service at Cucina, didn’t respond to a follow-up question asking how “physical violence against women” related to him getting thrown out of a restaurant. Cucina didn’t respond to a request for comment. OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a buffet supper hosted by Juleanna Glover yesterday celebrating Danielle Coffey’s new role as president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance: Kate Bennett, Ephrat Livni, Clark Judge, Maryam Mujica and Ali-Reza “A.R.” Vahabzadeh, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, Nina Rees, Matt Stoller, Indira Lakshmanan, Mark Paustenbach, Kevin Chaffee, Jamie Kirchick, Amy Swonger and Elena Postnikova. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Justice Sonia Sotomayor … CNN’s Betsy Klein … Alan McQuinn … POLITICO’s Hank Hoffman, Olivia Olander and Willa Plank … Annika Christensen of the Senate Homeland Security Dems … John Randall of BCW Global … Abbie Sorrendino … Danielle Doheny … Matt Felling of Sen. Angus King’s (I-Maine) office … Dan Meyers of APCO Worldwide … Ryan Long … Trice Jacobson ... Bully Pulpit Interactive’s Scott Zumwalt … Ned Monroe of the Vinyl Institute … former Reps. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) … Corbett Daly … Kamran Daravi … John Fisher … Jackie Bradford … Lissie Diringer … Narrative Strategies’ Patrick O’Connor … Josh Lahey … Brian Wynne of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Setota Hailemariam and Bethany Irvine.
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