MORNING REPORT

Monday, August 4 | By Kristina Karisch & Elizabeth Crisp

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In today's issue:

▪ How will redistricting affect 2026?

▪ Trump tries to blunt economic disappointments

▪ RFK Jr. targets childhood vaccine program

▪ Netanyahu, Putin provide foreign policy headaches

Redistricting battles heat up amid Texas showdown

Democrats are escalating their battle against Republicans' push to redraw political maps and give themselves a lift ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In Texas, Democratic legislators on Sunday took the dramatic step of leaving the state in a bid to stop their GOP colleagues from advancing new congressional maps.

The redrawn House districts would give the GOP five more pickup opportunities ahead of 2026, aiding their efforts to hold on to their slim House majority next year.

Texas Democrats blasted what they called a "corrupt" special session in Texas as they accused Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and President Trump of seeking to "rig" the midterms.

The map was set to be considered by the entire state House as soon as this week after a panel advanced a draft over the weekend, despite protests from Democrats that it would suppress minority voters' voices.

In a hearing, GOP legislators made explicit their efforts to redraw the map to advantage Republican candidates, The Texas Tribune reported.

"Different from everyone else, I'm telling you, I'm not beating around the bush," state Rep. Todd Hunter (R) said about the goal of the map. "We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance."

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Sunday praised the Texas legislators who left the state for "standing up and showing real leadership."

"And, after this fight is done, we're coming full force for the Republicans' House majority," he said.

The Texas Democrats traveled to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts to deny Republicans the minimum number of present lawmakers necessary to conduct business. They employed a similar tactic the last time the GOP pursued midcycle redistricting in 2003, and held another walkout in 2021.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), who days earlier called such a move a "last resort," joined the walkout Sunday, saying it was "time to fight back."

"Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections right before our eyes. But first he'll have to come through us," Talarico said in a post online.

Abbott informed the lawmakers late Sunday that he would have them fined and attempt to have them removed from office if they do not return to Austin to pass the new maps.

"Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate, posted on X.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said at a press conference Sunday night that the Texas state lawmakers who fled to his state will be protected.

"They're here in Illinois. We're going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them and make sure that — 'cause we know they're doing the right thing, we know that they're following the law," Pritzker said.

The fight threatens to set off a redistricting war across the country as Republicans and Democrats battle for control of the House in 2026.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is considering redrawing his state's maps, and Pritzker, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) have also left the door open to such a move.

Meanwhile, Florida Republicans are increasingly pushing to redraw the Sunshine State's congressional map. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said last week he is "very seriously" looking at making the ask of the state Legislature, arguing the 2020 census is flawed. Redistricting typically takes place every decade, with data from the decennial census.

Republicans, well aware historical precedent is against the party in power during midterms, are eager to use the August recess to work to sell Trump's now-signed "Big Beautiful Bill" to voters. The Senate over the weekend joined the House on break, and both chambers won't reconvene until early September.

The walkout is drawing more attention to the red-state Democrats' redistricting fight, but the party faces limited options, and newly imposed fines and the threat of arrest also hang over those fleeing the state, The Hill's Julia Mueller reports.

"Democrats don't have many arrows left in their quiver. There simply aren't a lot of things they can do to be able to challenge these maps in the near term," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

If the maps do get approved, "they're going to have to just fight it out on the ground and in the air" during the midterms, he said. "It's going to shift from being a legal battle to being an electoral battle."

As they look to keep up with the GOP's push to redraw House lines, some Democrats are suggesting the party go around redistricting commissions the party has long championed.

▪ The Texas Tribune: Texas's proposed congressional map dismantles districts flagged by the Justice Department, which said four districts unconstitutionally combined Black and Hispanic voters. If the proposed map passes, two will still be multiracial.

Blue states like California would likely need to change their laws for Democrats to undertake redistricting efforts similar to the GOP.

Eric Holder, chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called Texas's plan "an authoritarian move" by the White House. Holder, attorney general under former President Obama, for years led the charge among Democrats to eliminate gerrymandering. But Holder said Sunday on ABC News's "This Week" that Democrats need to "do things that perhaps in the past I would not have supported."

Martin, asked on NewsNation's "The Hill Sunday" about Democrats' prospects, said he views the redistricting effort as unconstitutional but said Democrats are ready to play what he called the Republicans' game.

"The reality is what we've seen already is a craven power grab, an unconstitutional power grab, in my mind," Martin said. "The Constitution says very clearly that we have a decennial census. We draw the lines after that. The state legislatures are allowed to do that, but it does not give them the power to essentially redraw the lines whenever the hell they want to do it. And what Texas is doing right now is a craven power grab."

3 Things to Know Today

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited Jerusalem on Sunday after postponing an Israel trip earlier this year. Johnson said it was a "moving time for us to be here" in a video posted online.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R) is running for governor of South Carolina. She's released a launch video and is set to make a formal announcement today at The Citadel, her alma mater.
Former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley will take on Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) next year, adding a high-profile GOP name to one of the midterms' most consequential contests.

LEADING THE DAY

BLS BLOWBACK: Trump and White House officials spent the weekend defending his decision to oust the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after a disappointing jobs report last week.

Trump's firing of Erika McEntarfer has sparked backlash and raised questions about whether the president is trying to swat away negative news that could sour his economic celebrations — regardless of what the stats show.

"She had the biggest miscalculations in over 50 years," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday afternoon, repeating his assertions, without evidence, that recent BLS reports were a "SCAM!"

Trump previously claimed that McEntarfer "faked the Jobs Numbers" to be more favorable to Democrats. The president on Sunday said he would announce his new pick to lead the bureau in three to four days.

"The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable," National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

"The big downward revision is something of a puzzle. I don't think it was explained very well. And I think that markets might be as much unsettled by the fact that the data are so noisy," he added on "Fox News Sunday."

"Even last year during the campaign, there were enormous swings in the jobs numbers, and so sounds to me like the president has real concerns. You know, not just based on today's, but everything we saw last year," U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview on CBS.

The latest BLS report suggested the economy and labor market are much weaker than previously thought — casting a dark cloud over the massive tariff overhaul that Trump has spent months promoting.

"Reliable economic data is a key strength of the US economy," Harvard economist Jason Furman, who chaired Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote online. "I don't think Trump will be able to fake the data given the procedures. But there is now a risk, plus an awful appearance."

McEntarfer, a Biden nominee who the GOP-led Senate confirmed in a 86-8 vote last year, said Sunday that she still regards the opportunity to hold the position for the past several months as an "honor."

"It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy," she said on the social media platform Bluesky. "It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation."

RAISING ALARM: Economist Justin Wolfers called the BLS chief's ouster "an authoritarian four alarm fire," noting the commissioner is "the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality."

"It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy," wrote Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan.

Larry Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, compared Trump's actions to former President Nixon's administration before Nixon resigned in 1974.

"This is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did," Summers said in an interview on ABC's "This Week." "I'm surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly."

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Sunday he thinks an investigation into Trump's BLS move "is certainly in order."

"That tells you a lot about their insecurity about the economy and the state of economic affairs in America because everything that they're claiming to be true is not true," he said on "Meet the Press."

▪ The Washington Post: Trump's decision to fire the official responsible for compiling the nation's jobs statistics drew condemnation from economic experts who served in Republican and Democratic administrations.

▪ The New York Times: Trump's tariffs have started to generate a significant amount of money for the federal government — a new source of revenue that American policymakers may start to rely on.

▪ The Hill: Trump's plans for a $200 million White House ballroom is angering critics.

GOP SET TO GO 'NUCLEAR': Senators left Washington for their August recess after a push for a deal on nominations collapsed Saturday.

When they return next month, Republicans facing a Democratic blockade are intent on moving forward with a rules change to limit the length of time spent on individual nominees to more quickly confirm Trump's picks.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) were unable to seal the deal on a package that would have allowed roughly two dozen nominees to be approved before the monthlong break.

In exchange for allowing the group of nominees to be approved, Schumer had been pushing for billions of dollars of restored funding in foreign aid and for the National Institutes of Health. Trump, however, made clear that he would not throw his weight behind that agreement, referring to Democrats as "extortionists" and praising congressional GOP leadership.

Senate Republicans are expected to go "nuclear" on nominees once they reconvene in September by moving to change the rules with 51 votes needed.

"Donald Trump didn't get his way," Schumer said at a press conference Saturday night. "Again, this shows us. He bullied us, he cajoled us, he called us names and he went home with nothing."

EPSTEIN LATEST: Republican lawmakers are cautioning Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) to be skeptical about a potential pardon or commutation for Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years behind bars for sex trafficking minors.

Maxwell was recently relocated from a federal prison in Florida to a lower-security site in Texas, after two days of meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the DOJ's No. 2 official. Her attorneys are seeking clemency from Trump in exchange for details she may offer about Epstein's crimes and other people involved.

But GOP lawmakers argue that pardoning Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021, would be unseemly.

"It's ridiculous that he would consider shortening a sentence for somebody who aided and abetted sexual trafficking as she did," said a Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on the sensitive topic. "She's trafficking underage children. I can't imagine anything she could say could nullify her heinous crimes."

▪ The Hill: Trump railed against Charlamagne tha God on Sunday after the radio host predicted the Epstein saga would pave the way for traditional Republicans to take back the GOP from the MAGA base.

▪ The Hill: Trump weighed in on actor Sydney Sweeney's controversial American Eagle ad, saying if she's a Republican "I think her ad is fantastic."

WHEN & WHERE

Trump will have lunch with Vice President Vance at 12:30 p.m.
The House and Senate are on recess until Sept. 2.
Morning Report's Alexis Simendinger will return next week.

ZOOM IN

VACCINES: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is targeting the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a little-known but crucial initiative that underpins all childhood vaccinations. Kennedy took to social media and conservative activist Charlie Kirk's show last week to rail against the program and pledge significant changes.

Attorneys and other experts say Kennedy is right that the program, which was created in 1986 in order to give quick payouts to families who can prove a child was injured from a vaccine, is badly in need of modernization.

"There's a lot of low-hanging fruit that [Kennedy] can act on that would immediately alter the course of the vaccine program for the better," said David Carney, a vaccine injury attorney in Philadelphia and president of the Vaccine Injured Petitioners Bar Association.

But they fear Kennedy will tear it down entirely, at the risk of driving drugmakers from the market and threatening access to childhood shots.

▪ CNN: COVID-19 vaccine policy changes raise questions and concerns for U.S. adults as summer wave ramps up.

▪ The New York Times: Why Republicans think that insurance should be tied to employment — and that it's not essential to have at all.

▪ The Washington Post: Despite Trump's campaign pledge to help parents struggling to conceive, the White House has no plan to mandate insurance coverage of IVF care.

FITNESS: Health experts and school leaders are thrilled with Trump's revival of the Presidential Fitness Test, but they are hoping for substantial revisions to the program, which was first deployed nearly 60 years ago. Advocates say the test, which hasn't been used since 2012, will need a makeover.

Kayce Solari Williams, past president of the American School Health Association and a professor at Purdue University, hopes the test will switch from the old standard to really considering "overall health and performance" and linking expectations to certain age groups.

Williams stressed she has to see "what the format" and "requirements" will be as we "know more about taking better care of the body and doing some prevention, along with strengthening and increasing endurance and flexibility" than we did in the past.

▪ NBC News: The Trump administration is launching a new program that will allow Americans to share personal health data and medical records across health systems and apps run by private tech companies.

ELSEWHERE

FOREIGN POLICY: Two key foreign leaders — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have become headaches for Trump. The president is irked by Putin's refusal to do more to end the war in Ukraine, while imagery of starvation in Gaza is ramping up global criticism of Netanyahu, with whom Trump has long had a volatile relationship.

In The Memo, The Hill's Niall Stanage writes that each of them has complicated the political calculus for Trump on the world stage, owing not only to the suffering they have imposed on Ukrainians and Palestinians, respectively, but also to their reluctance to change course.

RUSSIA: Trump on Sunday confirmed two nuclear submarines have been positioned at an unspecific region near Russia in response to "highly provocative statements" from Moscow. The move comes as the president said he was imposing an Aug. 8 deadline for a ceasefire, which Moscow has reacted to with a shoulder shrug.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's top adviser urged the U.S. to "strangle" Russia's economy by imposing secondary sanctions on Moscow's trading partners, as the White House's push for a ceasefire appears to languish.

Republican senators left Washington over the weekend without advancing a major sanctions bill against Russia, giving Trump sole discretion over whether to follow through on his threats against Putin. While Senate Ukraine hawks wanted to see their sanctions bill pass before the break, they ultimately left the decision in Trump's hands.

"I think he's going to be very careful about what he does," Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said when asked by The Hill if Trump can be trusted to impose costs on Putin. "But I think he is clearly disappointed in Putin and I think he is now coming around to recognizing that many of us were right."

▪ The New York Times: Ukrainian authorities arrested a number of officials on suspicion of corruption in relation to what they called a "large scale" bribery scheme involving military procurement.

▪ The Washington Post: Long before Russia's 2022 invasion, war simmered in eastern Ukraine and these three families found a way to survive at home — until Moscow decided to seize Donbas for good.

ISRAEL: With peace talks between Israel and Hamas at an impasse, U.S. and Israeli officials appear to be changing their tone by signaling that they will push for a comprehensive deal to end the war in Gaza, rather than a temporary ceasefire. But the two sides remain far apart, and analysts said this new approach would also face steep challenges.

"President Trump now believes that everybody ought to come home at once — no piecemeal deals. That doesn't work," special envoy Steve Witkoff told hostage family members in Tel Aviv. "Now we have to get all the 20 [live hostages] at the same time... we think that we have to shift this negotiation to all or nothing so that everybody comes home. We think it is going to be successful and we have a plan around it."

The shift comes as the Israeli government faces increased domestic pressure to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli government faces mounting international criticism over the mass hunger that has spread through Gaza's population of about 2 million people, following Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid delivery.

▪ BBC: Some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, wrote to Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.

▪ Reuters: Hamas says it will allow aid for hostages if Israel halts airstrikes and opens permanent humanitarian corridors.

The winds are also shifting in congressional attitudes toward Israel.

While U.S. support for its closest Middle Eastern ally has historically galvanized both parties, that backing has eroded on Capitol Hill as Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza has dragged on and the Palestinian casualties have soared.

The pushback is surfacing in different forms, from votes to block U.S. weapons sales and resolutions to recognize a Palestinian state, to accusations of genocide and other statements of public condemnation. Unlike debates past, some of the harshest rebukes are coming from conservative Republicans who have traditionally been stalwart defenders of Israel's military exploits.

▪ NBC News: How much aid has made it into Gaza since Israel said it was easing restrictions?

▪ The Washington Post: Israel's support for clans in Gaza puts tribal strongman in spotlight.

OPINION

Why Trump's meddling in the Bureau of Labor Statistics matters, by George A. Akerlof, guest essayist, The New York Times.
How foreign policy could crash Republican midterm prospects, by Mark Weisbrot and Justin Talbot Zorn, opinion contributors, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🔭 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched Phoenix, an uncrewed space probe, 18 years ago today. It touched down on the surface of Mars on May 25, 2008 — becoming the first successful NASA Mars landing since the Viking 2 mission 32 years earlier.

According to NASA's mission summary, "The Mars Phoenix lander was designed to uncover the mysteries of the Martian arctic, studying the history of water and searching for complex organic molecules."