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MORNING REPORT

PRESENTED BY THE ALLIANCE FOR AGING RESEARCH

Wednesday, June 26

by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch

Rough primary night for progressives, Trump

In Tuesday's primaries, one of the most progressive House incumbents lost in New York, one of the country's most conservative House incumbents won by switching districts in Colorado and a moderate Republican trounced the rest of Utah's Senate primary field, including a candidate backed by former President Trump.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party suffered a major blow when Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) lost by 17 points to Westchester County executive George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist running in the most expensive House primary ever. Meanwhile, Trump's near-perfect endorsement track record this cycle took a hit almost everywhere, while Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a Freedom Caucus firebrand, all but ensured her survival in Congress in November.

You do not need a campaign ad to tell you who George Latimer is; you have seen who I am," Latimer said Tuesday night. "I have never seen an election as a blank check. It is a promissory note from me to you."

Bowman, a member of the far-left House "squad," lost the primary amid a storm of controversy that included criticism of his representation of his district, his anti-Israel positions after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 and the staggering $14.5 million spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated super PAC to defeat him.

The Hill: Trump, progressives have a rough night: Five takeaways.
Politico: Trump's endorsement is starting to show its limits.

Boebert is expected to take on Ike McCorkle, the likely Democrat winner in the conservative Colorado 4th Congressional District. Trump won there by 19 points in 2020, making Boebert the heavy favorite to win.

Establishment-backed Republican candidate Jeff Hurd won the GOP primary for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District, according to a projection from Decision Desk HQ.

The Hill: Trump-backed Colorado GOP-chair loses a House primary.

In Utah's GOP primary in a race to succeed retiring Senate Republican Mitt Romney, Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) cleared a field of four. He will be a heavy favorite to succeed Romney.

Also in Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox (R) won the state's GOP gubernatorial primary, defeating Phil Lyman, pardoned by Trump in 2020 and the favorite of the Utah GOP earlier this year.

Find all of Tuesday's primary results, including in South Carolina, at The Hill/Decision Desk HQ's Election Center HERE.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

Biden today will create a pathway to pardon potentially thousands of LGBTQ military service members who were discharged or prosecuted because of their sexual orientation with the aim of clearing their records and restoring eligibility for veteran benefits.
Today the administration announced $1.8 billion in grants for 148 infrastructure projects across the U.S.
An overheating wheel bearing caused the February 2023 Norfolk Southern freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday. Its determinations will be weighed by Congress.

🗳 Where do President Biden and Trump stand as they plunge into the general election season and the first of two debates? According to aggregations of polls, the upshot remains a persistently close contest with a wider lead by Trump (a point or two) in states that will determine the Electoral College winner, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. (Trump's slightly more pronounced margins over the incumbent emerge in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, according to The New York Times and poll analyst Nate Cohn).

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ have a presidential polling average HERE.

The RealClearPolitics average for the presidential race is HERE.

Leading the Day

Congress

SENATE REPUBLICANS hoping to win full control of Congress and the White House are crafting an ambitious legislative package that would go far beyond extending Trump's tax cuts. The bills, being drafted for reconciliation rules that would sidestep a Senate filibuster, would need to win the support of all elected Republicans to become law. That could be a difficult prospect, The Hill's Al Weaver reports. Both parties, when they've had control of the House, Senate and White House, have had difficulty unifying all their members around mammoth packages. As recently as earlier in Biden's first term, Democrats had to lower their goals when centrist Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) balked at their ambitious plans. But GOP leaders are undaunted.

"You have to be realistic about what you can get," said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), one of two Republicans hoping to be Senate majority leader next year. "But I do think you want the bill to be as robust as possible and to accomplish as much as you can in terms of the agenda."

Meanwhile, House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a bill to fund the departments of Commerce and Justice, as well as science agencies, for fiscal 2025, legislation poised to be at the center of one of the most contentious spending battles this year. Conservative Republicans in the lower chamber have zeroed in on a bill to go after the Justice Department in the wake of Trump's conviction in his Manhattan hush money trial and as his three other prosecutions proceed. Notably, the 160-page bill does not mention special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading investigations into Trump, or seek to limit the powers of a special counsel more broadly (The Hill).

Politico: Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) is pushing a spending amendment that declares in vitro fertilization (IVF) "morally wrong." His effort complicates many Republicans' attempts to reassure voters they support the practice.

THE JOCKEYING FOR LEADERSHIP posts in the Senate GOP after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) retirement as leader later this year has sparked a battle between moderate and mainstream Republicans who fear their conference could transform into its dysfunctional counterpart in the House.

Now some are calling to decentralize or break up the powerful fundraising network aligned with McConnell, The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports, which has given him an enormous amount of influence even though the GOP leader does not legally control the outside groups that are pivotal in Senate battleground states.

"I think the idea that a leader would use outside money, much of it dark money, to try and intimidate or threaten members of the caucus is frankly corrupt. And I think it's a corrupt practice that has gone on for far too long, and it needs to end," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said of McConnell's affiliation with the Senate Leadership Fund, which is run by his former chief of staff, Steven Law.

The Hill: It would be up to Congress to heed a call from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to mandate warning labels on social media platforms. But his advocacy last week for minors under 18 has largely been met with a shrug.

MORE IN POLITICS

THURSDAY'S PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE will lay out the clear contrast between Biden and Trump's approaches to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, writes The Hill's Laura Kelly. Biden's pitch for unity among allies offers a stark difference from Trump's tough talk and transactional foreign policy. Even as Russia's war in Ukraine and Israel's war against Hamas fall low on the list of priorities for American voters, they dominate headlines and contribute to a sense of chaos and instability in the world. And the future of both wars is deeply linked to which president will lead in 2025.

"I think it's one of the issues that there is a really big difference between Biden and Trump, and I think it's a really important one for [the debate moderators] to draw out because it could really change America's standing in the world and how our allies think about us," said Dina Smeltz, vice president of opinion and foreign policy, at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "There's such a stark difference between their worldviews."

2024 ROUNDUP

Trump is stepping up efforts to encourage voters to cast their ballots early and by mail after years spent railing against the practice, but there are risks he could fail to stay on message in what could be a deciding factor in November.
Miriam Adelson long operated in the shadow of her powerful husband, Sheldon Adelson. Now, after his death, she is playing in politics as a solo practitioner for the first time, working to reelect Trump.
Deep, generational skepticism is influencing the 2024 race. While young Americans aren't overly pessimistic about the future, they do perceive how the system is stacked against them.
Policy! Want to know what Trump and Biden say they'd support in 2025 and beyond, if elected, on six major policy issues? Here are some Cliff Notes, courtesy of The New York Times. NewsNation tracks their respective records HERE. Trump's economic policies would fuel inflation, 16 leading economists said in a letter Tuesday.

Where and When

The House will meet at 9 a.m.

The Senate will convene at noon Friday for a pro forma session. Senators return to Washington July 8.

The president is at Camp David. He will receive the President's Daily Brief at 10 a.m.

Vice President Harris is on the West Coast. She plans to headline a political event in Bradbury, Calif., at 6:45 p.m. PDT.

First lady Jill Biden will host a Pride Month celebration on the White House South Lawn at 6 p.m.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will join a roundtable with Angel City Football Club on gender equity and equal pay in women's sports in Thousand Oaks, Calif., at 12:30 p.m. PDT. He will headline a campaign fundraiser at 6 p.m. PDT in Inglewood, Calif.

Zoom In

COURTS

Amid a bruising presidential contest wrapped in campaign rhetoric about criminality and elections, the Supreme Court's pending decision about presidential immunity is bound to ignite howls of bitter opinions. If the ruling appears today or ahead of Thursday's debate between Biden and Trump, each candidate will have large audiences attentive to their views. The high court agreed in February to hear a case that has lingered until the final days of the term and through the Justice Department's prosecution of Trump for alleged election interference, in limbo before Nov. 5.

The Hill's Niall Stanage explains in The Memo why some legal experts speculate that the high court, with its conservative majority, will agree at least in part with Trump and his lawyers that some official decisions and actions by presidents enjoy protection from criminal prosecution — including after they leave office.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder (D) told MSNBC that such logic suggests "a president can violate the American criminal law, if he or she is doing something in their official capacity." Such a ruling would be "an absurd and dangerous conclusion," Holder added.

Justices during oral arguments in April appeared skeptical of a federal appeals court that rejected Trump's claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal charges based on his official acts as president (SCOTUSblog). Some of the court's conservative justices expressed concern that if former presidents do not have immunity, federal criminal laws could be used as political weaponry. Although there was some agreement that private acts could be prosecuted, the justices wrestled to sort ou t presidents' official and private acts.

The Biden campaign Tuesday was intent to cast the former president as a self-involved felon. "The American people deserve better than a white-collar crook who's only in it for himself," Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. "That's why they fired Donald Trump in 2020, and it's why Joe Biden will beat him again in November."

The Hill: Separately, another looming Supreme Court decision could curtail federal agency powers.

Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith disclosed photos in a new court filing Monday showing clearly marked "secret" and classified materials stored haphazardly in jumbled cartons at Trump's Florida club after he left the White House.

A New York judge Tuesday partially lifted a gag order imposed on Trump in his hush money criminal trial. The terms allow him to resume speaking about trial witnesses and favorite targets, including his former lawyer Michael Cohen and adult film star Stormy Daniels. The move would allow Trump to be more vocal during Thursday's debate with Biden (The Hill).

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped what would have been the first publicly funded religious charter school in the U.S., turning back conservatives and the state's GOP governor who have welcomed religious groups into taxpayer-funded public education.

Content from our sponsor: Alliance for Aging Research

Elsewhere

INTERNATIONAL

LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS from Kenya began arriving in Haiti on Tuesday, more than year and a half after the prime minister there issued a plea to other countries for help to stop the rampant gang violence that has upended the Caribbean nation. The officers are part of a United Nations-coordinated deployment from eight countries who will fan out across the capital of Port-au-Prince to try and take control of the city from dozens of armed gangs that have in recent months attacked police stations, freed prisoners and killed with impunity.

Biden on Tuesday said the Kenyan-led police force will provide "much-needed relief" to Haiti, where "rampant gang violence" has killed or wounded thousands, left more than half a million people displaced and forced nearly 5 million to face severe food insecurity (The Hill and The New York Times).

IN KENYA, police fired on demonstrators trying to storm the Legislature on Tuesday. At least eight protesters were killed, with sections of the parliament building set ablaze as lawmakers inside passed a bill to raise taxes. They vowed to hold more protests today. Auma Obama, a Kenyan activist and half-sister of former President Obama, was tear gassed while speaking to CNN during the protests.

Politico: Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister, will be NATO's next secretary-general, taking the post at a critical point for transatlantic security as Russia wages war on Ukraine. He starts in October.
CNN: After a series of mishaps, trucks of humanitarian aid are now beginning to roll onto the U.S. military pier off the Gaza coast at a steadier pace. Delivering them is still fraught with challenges.

Opinion

The debate and his VP pick are watersheds for Trump, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Hold Boeing criminally accountable, by Andy Pasztor, opinion contributor, The Hill.

The Closer

And finally … 🏳️‍🌈 Today marks the nine-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling to legalize same-sex marriage.

Writing for the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted that the right to marry is a fundamental right "inherent in the liberty of the person" and is therefore protected by the due process clause. That evening, the White House was illuminated with rainbow colors and people flocked to Lafayette Square to celebrate.

TODAY: When Jim Obergefell met John Arthur: The heartbreaking love story behind the historic Supreme Court case.