Principals

☞ White House: President Biden will use an event at the White House to launch the second phase of his “Investing in America” tour where he’ll announce $40 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law that will go towards expanding access to high speed broadband. The White House sent a memo to congressional Democrats arguing that Biden’s economic agenda — “Bidenomics” — helped spawn a strong recovery and a manufacturing boom. “‘Made In America’ is no longer empty rhetoric. It’s a reality,” it states. 

☞ Senate: Supporters of Julie Su have grown frustrated as her nomination to be Labor secretary stalls in the Senate. “Keeping it hanging out there is good for nobody — not for the country, not for her, not for us. Let’s have a vote,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. told The Hill.

☞ House: Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested that Republicans would launch impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Merrick Garland if claims by two IRS whistleblowers that prosecutors mishandled the tax investigation into Hunter Biden are true.

☞ Outside the Beltway: Antisemitic demonstrations took place outside of two synagogues in Georgia over the weekend, prompting condemnations from the state’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and other political leaders.

The Coast Guard launched an investigation into the implosion that killed the five men onboard the Titan submersible week. The goal of the probe is to determine the cause of the accident and whether any misconduct, incompetence, or negligence was involved; the investigators can recommend civil or criminal penalties.

Republicans weren’t thrilled with the 10-page declassified report on the origins of COVID-19 that the Office of Director of National Intelligence released on Friday evening, arguing it fell short of the law Congress passed earlier this year directing the government to declassify and release more information about the pandemic’s beginnings. “This is not sufficient,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio said on CBS. The report says that the intelligence agencies are still divided over whether the virus sprung from a lab leak or jumped naturally to humans from an infected animal. It also says that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sick in fall of 2019 but that they weren’t diagnosed with COVID-19.

Donald Trump has tightened his grip on the GOP nomination in the wake of his federal indictment, according to a new NBC News poll that shows 51% percent of Republican primary voters would pick the former president as their first choice while 22% said Ron DeSantis. The poll found majorities of voters have concerns about the mental and physical health of both Biden and Trump.

Federal prosecutors asked that Trump’s trial on charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s investigation be delayed until December, saying that additional time is needed because of the involvement of classified material and the need for defense attorneys to receive security clearances.

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: McCarthy’s tweet about impeaching Garland is notable given he’s previously “adopted a more cautious tone” when it comes to impeaching Biden officials, Punchbowl writes.

Playbook: Politico writes that Biden’s event today represents a pivot to a new campaign message centered on the “Bidenomics” pitch.

The Early 202: With ethics questions swirling around the Supreme Court, The Washington Post takes a look back at a time the Rhenquist court wrestled over when justices should recuse themselves from cases.

Axios: Amazon is recruiting small businesses like florists and coffee shops to help deliver packages to customers in order to expand its “last mile” delivery network.

Trump still isn’t backing a national abortion ban — and evangelicals don’t care

THE SCENE

On Saturday night, Donald Trump told religious conservatives that he saw “a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.” He didn’t get more specific — and he didn’t face much pressure to do so, at an event celebrating one year since Trump’s Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade.

Trump joined 10 other Republican presidential candidates at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual “Road to the Majority” conference, where some activists and lawmakers urged the party to embrace a ban on abortion after 15 weeks. He didn’t commit to the legislation, avoiding a topic that’s tripped up some Republicans in the first post-Roe election. But he was greeted like a rock star, as new polls confirmed that his indictments in Florida this month didn’t affect his formidable primary lead.

DAVID AND SHELBY’S VIEW

No candidate has yet figured out how to pry away the religious conservative voters who were skeptical of Trump in 2016 but make up some of his most loyal supporters now. This isn’t complicated: Trump won when the media said he couldn’t, then ended Roe with his court appointments, delivering what preacher and conference speaker John K. Amanchukwus called “the fetal emancipation proclamation.”

Trump knows this: On Saturday — even while he remained vague on what specific role the federal government could play on abortion should he take office again — he sought to highlight his own role in making a reality what conservatives had been vying for for 50 years.

“Conservatives have been trying for 50 years, exactly 50 years … but I got it done,” Trump told the crowd. “I’m proud to be the most pro-life president in American history.”

Trump’s openness about the issue’s tricky politics — he argued Saturday that politicians “have to learn to talk about this issue,” even as he’d rather avoid it — has frustrated activists and rivals. “I don’t believe his commitments are reliable,” Asa Hutchinson told reporters outside the ballroom where the candidates spoke. Lindsey Graham, who has endorsed Trump, used his speech to promote his own 15-week ban bill, which he said the party could defend and win with.

“To those who believe there’s no role for the unborn in Washington, you are wrong,” said Graham. “Our Constitution does not require me, a United States senator, to sit on the sidelines and not be able to say anything about a baby being aborted in California in the ninth month.”

But no opponent directly challenged Trump on the question. Nikki Haley’s remarks on Saturday morning marked a repeat of what she’d said at SBA Pro-Life last month: A federal abortion ban wasn’t going to happen.

“We haven’t had 60 Senate votes in over 100 years,” Haley said. “We might have 45 pro-life senators. So let’s start talking about how we can come together on what we can agree on.” She was promoting her own campaign, but that approach has given cover to the frontrunner.

Mike Pence, his former running mate, criticized Trump unsparingly at the launch of his own campaign this month. At the conference, he quoted skittish comments that the former president had made about abortion politics, but didn’t mention Trump by name. He also tried to set the baseline on the topic, calling the 15-week ban the “minimum nationwide standard” for any nominee.

“We’ve not come to the end of our cause,” Pence said from the ballroom stage of the Washington Hilton. “We’ve simply come to the end of the beginning.”

But most discussion of abortion — on and offstage — was less about the commitment needed from a new nominee and more about what could be banned in states.

“Our pro-life movement is now entering this Walls of Jericho phase,” North Carolina Sen. Brad Overcash told a room of activists on Friday, referring to a Biblical story of Israelis marching around a besieged city until their faith in God collapsed its defenses. “We have to keep marching, put one foot in front of the other, because we never know when the next step will be the seventh time on the seventh day.”

Ralph Reed, the the Faith & Freedom Coalition founder and president, told reporters during a private lunch that Trump likely doesn’t want to head into the general election “with Joe Biden being able to go up on the air in every battleground state, the day I secure the nomination, saying I favor a federal abortion ban.”

“That’s obviously the cul-de-sac he’s trying to avoid driving into, right?” he argued.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Lila Rose, an anti-abortion activist and founder of “Live Action,” suggested to Fox News last week that Trump, despite his past efforts on abortion, isn’t the leader best qualified to push the movement forward this time around.

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Putin is weakened. Now what?

After the brief-but-stunning mutiny in Russia over the weekend, the general consensus in Washington is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a weakened position. But there are still plenty of unknowns following the public break between Putin and his one-time confidant, Wagner mercenary group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Will Ukraine capitalize?

Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested on CBS that the “distraction” created by the crisis within Russia could be an opening for the Ukrainian forces to gain more ground. Russia will lose at least some of Wagner’s 25,000 troops, which were supplementing the Russian forces and played an outsized role in seizing Bakhmut.

The Ukrainians, who just started their long-awaited counteroffensive, continue to press for more air defense and other weapons from the U.S. There aren’t signs yet of any significant shift in Ukraine’s strategy following the mutiny.

“We keep going,” Maria Mezentseva, a Ukrainian member of parliament, told Semafor. “The whole world saw how weak Putin’s regime is.”

What’s in Prigozhin’s deal?

Prigozhin abruptly agreed to turn his forces back and under a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will apparently be exiled to Belarus and will avoid arrest and prosecution. But analysts suspect there may be more to the agreement than meets the eye (or that the Russians are disclosing), whether it’s secret provisions, hidden motives, or some unknown form of leverage that forced Prigozhin to abruptly end his insurrection. “I doubt he’s going to just lounge in Belarus,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general for United States Army Europe, told Semafor.

Top Russian officials have all been notably quiet since hostilities ended, though Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown speaking to troops in a video released by the government Monday. Adding to the intrigue, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported Monday that the criminal investigation into Prigozhin had not been closed.

Will China’s support for Russia wane?

China’s foreign ministry offered words of support for Russia’s actions to “stabilize” the country and Chinese diplomats held meetings with Russia’s deputy foreign minister over the weekend. But U.S. officials have consistently spoken of signs of China’s discomfort with the way Russia has struggled in its war in Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s nuclear rhetoric. Some suggest the recent events could drive a wedge between the two allied countries.

“His closest ally Chairman Xi is probably having second thoughts about this alliance he made with Putin,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas said on Fox News.

What does it mean for Wagner?

The Wagner Group, which is sanctioned by the U.S. as a “significant transnational criminal organization,” has been fighting alongside the Russian forces in Ukraine. The group is also trying to grow its influence in Africa, something that has increasingly worried U.S. officials in recent years, and its role fighting insurgencies in Mali and Central African Republic with Russian backing is now in question. That could give the U.S. and other western countries a wedge to try and disrupt its operations on the continent, where members have been accused of war crimes.

— Morgan Chalfant

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With the Supreme Court expected to decide the fate of President Biden’s massive student debt forgiveness plan this week, supporters of the proposal say they’re feeling more optimistic it might survive, thanks to two of the justices’ rulings in other cases this term.

The court’s conservative majority expressed deep skepticism toward the forgiveness plan, which would wipe up to $20,000 of debt for millions of borrowers, during oral arguments earlier this year. But advocates are pointing to a pair of recent opinions by justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh as reason for hope.

In both cases, the court tossed out challenges brought by states to a federal law or Biden administration policy, after finding the states had failed to show they’d been harmed by it.

Progressive groups say those rulings might be setting the stage for the court to toss out the two student loan cases on similar standing grounds, since the suits were brought by states that have had some trouble demonstrating they would be directly hurt by the proposal. One was filed by the state of Missouri on behalf of a functionally independent student loan servicer that reportedly had no involvement in filing the case.

“I think there is a path forward for this case,” Persis Yu, policy director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, told Semafor.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats mostly held back from speculating on how the high court might rule or the White House’s fallback options. “If the Supreme Court follows the law, then 43 million people will have the student loan debt relief the president promised them,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told Semafor on Thursday.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Will Hurd is a former CIA officer and Republican member of Congress from Texas who is running for the GOP nomination for president in 2024.

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, according to data from our partners at Ground News.

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: Some participants at New York City’s annual Drag March chanted “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children,” prompting outrage among some figures on the right. As our own David Weigel noted, it’s another recent instance of satire and in-jokes in LGBT circles being interpreted as genuine outside of them.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Conservative retired judge J. Michael Luttig sharply criticized Republicans as “spineless” for supporting Trump for the past two years since the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in a New York Times op-ed.

• Republicans are beating the drum on unverified allegations against Biden — the exact same behavior they’ve accused Democrats of doing with the Steele dossier, Jordan Weissman wrote.
• RFK Jr. is running for president of podcastland. Dave Weigel looked at how the Democratic candidate is getting his message out without traditional media.
• A new generation of data centers being built in Africa’s smaller economies are fueling a $5 billion market opportunity, Alexis Akwagyiram reported.