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DRIVING THE DAY
IT’S ONLY JULY, so it seems silly to say that this is the last opportunity for a productive month in Washington before the election, but guess what: This is the last opportunity for a productive month in Washington before the election.
WASHINGTON is about to begin a four-week sprint that will include the House Democratic leadership and the Senate GOP leadership wrestling over another coronavirus relief package. Republicans have laid their marker -- Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL has said the next package needs to protect kids, protect jobs and reform liability laws so entities can’t get sued. DEMOCRATS have pushed for state and local government relief, additional unemployment insurance and direct payments and bolstering testing.
TIME IS SHORT, of course, and this will go down to the wire. Both sides agree that a package will get passed by the end of the month. With MCCONNELL saying that liability reform is his red line, the question becomes: What does he have to give up to Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Senate Minority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER to get it?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and the White House are still making noises about a payroll tax cut -- their only idea, it seems. Keep your eyes on chief of staff MARK MEADOWS. We expect he -- not Treasury Secretary STEVEN MNUCHIN -- will be the chief negotiator this time around.
120 DAYS until Election Day.
THE TRUMP SWAMP … NYT, A1 … KEN VOGEL MICHAEL LAFORGIA and HAILEY FUCHS: “The Swamp Is Coming From Inside Trump’s Campaign”: “The chief executive of the arms maker Raytheon, under pressure to overcome a congressional hold on major sales in the fall of 2018, wanted to sit down with one of the few people who could solve the problem — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“But the State Department would not schedule the meeting. So Raytheon turned for help to David Urban, perhaps the best-connected lobbyist in President Trump’s Washington. … It is not known precisely what Mr. Pompeo discussed with the Raytheon executive, but in a few months, the State Department had issued an emergency waiver that circumvented the congressional hold on the arms deals, allowing billions of dollars in Raytheon missiles and bombs to be sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. …
“Consider the examples of eight lobbyists and operatives with ties to lobbying firms, including Mr. Urban, who are now assisting Mr. Trump’s campaign in various paid and unpaid capacities, like fund-raising and strategy. Those eight have been paid a total of nearly $120 million through their firms to influence the United States government from the beginning of 2017, as Mr. Trump prepared to take office, to the end of March, according to an analysis of congressional and Justice Department filings.
“The scale of those revenues is especially striking given that several of the lobbyists — including two of the top three earners, Brian Ballard, a veteran lobbyist from Florida, and Jeff Miller, an operative from Texas — had not lobbied at the federal level before Mr. Trump’s election.”
BIG PICTURE … WAPO’S DAN BALZ: “The politics of race are shifting, and politicians are struggling to keep pace”: “[W]hen 2 in 3 Americans now say they support the Black Lives Matter movement; when thousands upon thousands of Americans march in the streets of big cities and small towns; when the National Football League reverses its position on players’ kneeling during the national anthem; when Mississippi eliminates the Confederate symbol from its flag; there seems little question that for now, this is a materially different moment.
“What will come of the gathering call for action? The civil rights movement produced landmark legislation, but black people continue to face discrimination in virtually all aspects of life. Economic gains for many black Americans are undeniable, yet huge disparities in jobs, housing, income and wealth still exist. …
“Under President Trump, who has used racist messaging continually as president and before, Republicans are ill-positioned to respond fully to the moment that has arisen this summer. The party is captive to his rhetoric and actions, which exacerbate rather than reduce tensions. A part of the GOP coalition has moved in a more progressive direction on issues of race, but overall the party is on the wrong side of public opinion and stymied as to how far it can go.”
FRONTS: NYT, with the headline “D.C.’s Swamp Has New Aim: Another Term” on the aforementioned Vogel, LaForgia and Fuchs story … WSJ … N.Y. POST
Good Monday morning.
CORONAVIRUS RAGING …
-- WAPO: “7-day average case total in U.S. sets record for 27th straight day,” by Derek Hawkins, Marisa Iati and Jacqueline Dupree: “Thirteen states reported new highs in their seven-day case averages, with Montana, Delaware and Alaska experiencing the biggest percentage change from their past records. West Virginia also set a record number of daily cases, with 130. …
“South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California reported record numbers of current covid-19 hospitalizations. The country’s seven-day average of new deaths fell to 485, down from 562 on June 28, but health experts cautioned that the count of infections would soon drive the number back up.”
-- LAT’S LAURA NEWBERRY: “Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday reported 7,232 more cases of COVID-19 and 30 related deaths, numbers that account for Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week. On Friday alone, 3,187 new cases of COVID-19 were reported — the highest daily total since the pandemic began, officials said.”
-- TEXAS TRIBUNE: “Several Texas cities worry hospitals may run out of beds in two weeks or sooner,” by Valeria Olivares: “Local officials and experts in Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth have expressed concerns in recent days that increasing coronavirus hospitalizations could overwhelm their intensive care capacities, with some saying it could happen in less than two weeks.”
-- NYT: “The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus,” by Richard Oppel Jr., Robert Gebeloff, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Will Wright and Mitch Smith: “Early numbers had shown that Black and Latino people were being harmed by the virus at higher rates. But the new federal data — made available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — reveals a clearer and more complete picture: Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups.
“Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, according to the new data, which provides detailed characteristics of 640,000 infections detected in nearly 1,000 U.S. counties. And Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, the data shows.”
-- “Western fire season could raise stakes in battle against Covid-19,” by Ximena Bustillo
AP’S JONATHAN LEMIRE and CALVIN WOODWARD: “Trump’s bluster doesn’t beat a virus, calm a restive nation”
NYT’S MICHAEL CROWLEY: “‘Strategic Empathy’: How Biden’s Informal Diplomacy Shaped Foreign Relations”: “Mr. Biden is a foreign-policy pragmatist, not an ideologue; his views have long tracked the Democratic mainstream. For a decade before the Iraq War, he was known as a hawk, but more recently he has become a chastened skeptic of foreign intervention. In lieu of grand strategy, he offers what more than 20 current and former American officials described in interviews as a remarkably personal diplomacy derived from his decades in the glad-handing, deal-making hothouse of the Senate.
“It is an approach grounded in a belief that understanding another leader — ‘what they want and what they need,’ in the words of James Rubin, a former Biden aide who later served as the State Department spokesman — is as important as understanding his or her nation. ‘It’s very Lyndon Johnson-esque,’ said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington who attended many meetings with Mr. Biden.
“Yet Mr. Xi has clearly tested the limits of that approach. Mr. Biden’s record is short on public warnings that the Chinese leader could become the ‘thug’ that the presumptive Democratic nominee calls him today. And as American relations with China slide from bad to worse, Mr. Biden is facing uncomfortable questions about why he didn’t do more to stiffen Obama administration policy toward Beijing — about why his strategic empathy didn’t come with more strategic vision.” NYT
VEEPSTAKES -- “Duckworth emerging as a contender to be Biden’s running mate,” by WaPo’s Sean Sullivan: “As Joe Biden pushes ahead with his search for a running mate, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) has quietly emerged as a serious contender, according to three people with knowledge of the selection process, one of several developing dynamics as the search enters its final weeks.
“Duckworth is a Purple Heart recipient and veteran of the Iraq War, the only finalist with military combat experience -- and as a woman of Thai and Chinese descent, one of several candidates of color under consideration. While she has a lower profile than some rivals, she is being taken seriously by Biden’s team, according to the people with knowledge of the search, one of whom said she has lately received strong consideration.” WaPo
STAFFING UP … MATT DIXON in Tallahassee, Fla.: “Biden unveils Florida leadership team”: “Biden named Jackie Lee, veteran Orlando-based consultant who has been working for the campaign since October 2019, as his state director. Lee, who helped the campaign regain its balance after [a] huge primary loss in Iowa, is credited with fending off a $30 million Florida ad blitz from billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s short-lived presidential campaign. …
“Brandon Thompson will work as the Biden campaigns coordinated director. He is coming from Organizing Together 2020, a key player in the Democrat’s 2020 Florida ground game effort. … Florida Democratic Party executive director Juan Peñalosa was named a Biden senior adviser, though the presidential race has already been an all-hands-on-deck focus for the party he leads. Karen Andre, an attorney who comes from Organizing Together 2020, was also named a senior adviser. Her resume includes working for 2018 Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum’s successful primary campaign.” POLITICO
TRUMP’S MONDAY -- The president will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at 11:30 a.m. in the Oval Office.
PLAYBOOK READS
DOWN BALLOT -- “A Trump-Backed Senate Candidate’s Hedge Fund Disaster,” by NYT’s Danny Hakim: “President Trump’s favored Senate candidate in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is known for his career as a college football coach. But he also had a brief stint as co-owner of a hedge fund. It did not go well.
“A little more than a decade ago, after departing from Auburn University where he was head coach, Mr. Tuberville entered into a 50-50 partnership with a former Lehman Brothers broker named John David Stroud. Their ventures, which included TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners -- T for Tuberville and S for Stroud -- turned out to be a financial fraud. Mr. Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Mr. Tuberville was sued by investors, who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments; he reached a private settlement in 2013.
“The episode has been seldom discussed in Mr. Tuberville’s Republican primary campaign for the Senate, in which his opponent in the July 14 runoff is Jeff Sessions, the former senator and attorney general who became an object of Mr. Trump’s ire after recusing himself from the Russia inquiry. The winner will face Doug Jones, considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the battle for control of the Senate.
“Asked about the hedge fund venture on the campaign trail in February, Mr. Tuberville described himself as ‘an investor like the rest of them,’ much as he had in media reports at the time of the accusations.” NYT
FOR YOUR RADAR -- “U.S. Shows Off Its Firepower to Beijing in South China Sea,” by WSJ’s Alastair Gale: “Strike fighters and electronic-warfare jets took off day and night from two U.S. aircraft carriers in the South China Sea to simulate sustained attacks on enemy bases as Washington put on one of its biggest displays of naval power in a potential flashpoint for conflict.
“Throughout the weekend, the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz completed hundreds of launches of jets, surveillance planes and helicopters in some of the largest military drills in recent years in the disputed South China Sea, the leading edge of Beijing’s move to expand its regional sphere of control.
“China held its own large-scale drills around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea through Sunday, where it has built missile bases, radar facilities and an airfield. Vietnam and Taiwan also claim the Paracels.”
THE FRIENDLY SKIES -- “Next Boeing 737 MAX Government Test Flight Scheduled for Coming Days,” by WSJ’s Andy Pasztor: “The next challenge for bringing Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX jets back into service is slated to play out as early as this week, with another government test flight assessing the safety of software fixes.
“Called an operational readiness review, it is among a series of test flights anticipated over the next several weeks featuring federal pilots along with airline crews from around the world, all intended to vet changes to the fleet’s flight-control system, according to people familiar with the details.
“Among the goals of the impending airborne checks and ground-simulator sessions is to determine how well average airline pilots globally will be able to handle emergencies using the revised software. The coming test is a previously scheduled follow-up to three days of formal certification flight tests performed by Boeing and Federal Aviation Administration pilots last week.” WSJ
PLAYBOOKERS
Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at [email protected].
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Danny Sepulveda, SVP for policy and advocacy at MediaMath and an Obama State Department alum. What he’s been reading: “I read ‘Never Split the Difference,’ which is a book on negotiation by a former FBI hostage negotiator. … I think our party has to be prepared to negotiate a reconciliation of the nation’s leaders in order to reconcile the country after this election is over. But we have to do it without compromising the opportunity to make historic change, so we can’t just split the difference to get there.” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Former President George W. Bush is 74 … POLITICO’s Anita Kumar … John Dickerson, correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes” and contributing writer at The Atlantic, is 52 … WaPo’s Glenn Kessler … Apple’s Nick Ammann … Ron Fournier, president of Truscott Rossman, is 57 (h/t Teresa Vilmain) … Sarah Morgan, VP at Targeted Victory … Josh Elliott is 49 … Christyn Lansing, senior director at Narrative Strategies … CNN national correspondent Athena Jones … Jennifer Duffy … Richard Benedetto … Jill Zuckman … Kimberly Dozier … Laura Peavey, comms director for the House Financial Services GOP (h/t David O’Brien) … Chris Paulitz … Susan Ford Bales is 63 …
… Tyler Pager, national political reporter at Bloomberg News … Mark Tomb … Cloe Axelson … Caleb Orr, projects director for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), is 26 … Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel … Zachary Karabell is 53 … Cynthia Keyser (h/t Jon Haber) … ACLU’s Gabriela Meléndez Olivera … Cora Swanson … Netflix’s Storm Horncastle … Kara Gainer … William L. Roper (h/t Fred Graefe) … Judah Ginsberg … Stephen Carter, senior comms manager at Microsoft … Kaylan Schreffler … Patrick Hanley … Thomas Mucha … Randall K. Benjamin II … Bryan Goettel … Sean Maroney … Hilary Bombard Resta … Ken Opin … the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is 85
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