| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Democratic Party's nomination for an unprecedented third term. | | |  | The big idea | | We can't fully judge Biden's Saudi visit until Aug. 3 — that's when OPEC+ could boost supply |  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Biden gesture as they stand for a family photo ahead of the Jeddah Security and Development Summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 16. (Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS) | | | President Biden just wrapped up a trip to Saudi Arabia during which he won no public concessions on boosting oil production or respecting human rights. The Saudis, however, got an apparent return to "business as usual" with America, for which they were plainly eager. How eager? Biden's controversial fist-bump greeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence says was behind the murder of U.S. resident and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, was broadcast by Saudi state television shortly after it occurred, reported my colleagues Tyler Pager and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. (Notably, whether by design or by accident, the news media "pool" that follows Biden everywhere arrived after that interaction.) Here's more from Tyler and Cleve that makes clear exactly what Riyadh wanted from Biden's visit — global rehabilitation — and what they got. | - "Beyond the fist bump, photos quickly emerged of a bilateral U.S.-Saudi meeting not unlike dozens Biden has conducted in the last 18 months. Immediately following the meeting, Saudi leaders conducted interviews with media outlets from around the world, trumpeting the close contact with the U.S. president."
| | | | | | | Walmart supports career growth & opportunity. 75% of store, club and supply chain management started as hourly associates. At Walmart, there is a path for everyone. Learn more. | | | |  | | | | | "The Saudi government also shared multiple photos and videos of Biden's visit, including one in which a smiling Biden greeted a line of Saudi officials with fist bumps. The video then showed the crown prince exchanging fist bumps with grinning U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser." | The erosion of a campaign promise | | Biden had promised during the 2020 campaign to treat Saudi Arabia as a "pariah" because of Khashoggi's killing. The Daily 202 has chronicled the steady erosion of that promise, as well as the president's frequently transactional relationship to autocrats. After meeting with Mohammed, Biden claimed to have forcefully raised Khashoggi's fate in a "straightforward and direct" way. "I raised it at the top of the meeting, making it clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think of it now," Biden told reporters, adding that he had made clear he believed the crown prince was "personally responsible" for the killing, and Mohammed denied that. Over at PBS NewsHour, though, correspondent Nick Schifrin got a different account of the conversation from the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, who said he had not heard that part of the exchange (which is not a denial that it occurred). | - "Human rights is an issue that American presidents attach great importance to, even though sometimes they don't live up to those ideals, which makes America human like the rest of the world," the minister told Nick, before referencing American abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
| | Aziz El Yaakoubi of Reuters had Jubeir going even further, saying that Mohammed told Biden: "It has not worked when the U.S. tried to impose values on Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, it backfired. It does not work when people try to impose values by force on other countries." | | Whatever you think of Biden's decision to reset relations, or the progress he may have made toward the normalization of Arab ties with Israel, no judgment of his Middle East trip can truly be complete until Aug. 3. | | That's when the so-called OPEC+ coalition — 23 oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia — meet again to discuss global production goals in September and beyond. Painfully high gas prices are a significant political liability for Biden and his Democrats come November. The president hopes to be seen as taking action to bring energy costs back to Earth. Biden did not secure a public promise from Saudi Arabia to boost production, but told reporters Sunday "based on our discussions today, I expect we'll see further steps in the coming weeks." Jubeir, who pointed to the Aug. 3 meeting in his interview with Nick, suggested in a separate news conference that Riyadh would not act just because of pressure from Washington. | - "We assess demand and we work in consultations with other oil producers in OPEC and OPEC+ to make sure that we have adequate supplies," the Saudi minister said. "We base that on fundamentals, not on speculations, not on hysteria, not on geopolitics."
| | And Bloomberg News's Grant Smith, Fiona MacDonald and Salma El Wardany cautioned back in June against expecting too much from the meeting. Because most of OPEC+ members are unable to increase production, "[i]n recent months, the group has added significantly less oil to the market than promised, doing little to soothe crude prices," they reported. The question now is whether Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will pump more, they said. "While official data indicates the duo have almost 3 million barrels a day of spare production capacity, deploying this would require them to pump at levels rarely sustained before, if ever," Bloomberg News reported. And doing so, in turn, would require Biden's trip to have been successful. | | |  | What's happening now | | Biden disputes Saudi version of talk with crown prince on Khashoggi |  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks to President Biden during the Jiddah Security and Development Summit in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16. (Saudi Royal Court/Reuters) | | | "President Biden, fresh off a controversial visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accused a senior government official there of not telling the truth about a discussion he had with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi," Annabelle Timsit, Tyler Pager and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. report. | - "Biden publicly said he confronted Mohammed, the de facto Saudi ruler of Saudi Arabia known as MBS, about his role in the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul nearly four years ago. Biden said he indicated to Mohammed in a meeting that he holds him personally responsible for Khashoggi's murder….The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, said Saturday he 'didn't hear' Biden tell Mohammed this."
| Fauci says he'll leave before end of Biden's term | Jury selection begins in Steve Bannon contempt trial | | "Jury selection is underway in the federal trial of Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with an order from the House Jan. 6 committee to turn over records and testify about his actions ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol," Spencer S. Hsu reports. | Penalty phase begins for man facing death for Florida mass school shooting | | "Opening arguments are set to begin on Monday in the penalty phase of the trial of the man who killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Valentine's Day in 2018, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history," Reuters's Brian Ellsworth reports. | Zelensky removes security head, top prosecutor in high-level shake-up | | "President Volodymyr Zelensky removed the head of Ukraine's security services and its prosecutor general on Sunday, later announcing that hundreds of criminal investigations for suspected 'treason and collaboration activities' were underway in the besieged country," Isabelle Khurshudyan and Praveena Somasundaram report. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Advocates want Cyber Ninjas, which led Arizona ballot review, barred from federal work |  Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Arizona State Senate, examine and recount ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on May 8, 2021. (Courtney Pedroza/The Washington Post) | | | "Four voting and democracy advocacy groups in Arizona are asking federal officials to ban Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to conduct the partisan ballot review of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, and its CEO from doing business with the federal government," Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. | Congress wants more red-flag laws. But GOP states, gun groups resist. | | "While 19 states and the District of Columbia have passed red-flag laws — mostly in the years following the shooting in Parkland, Fla. — numerous other red-flag bills like [Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Todd Stephens's] have fizzled out in the same time period, mostly in GOP state legislatures," Kimberly Kindy reports. "A Washington Post review of legislative battles in those states suggests that the bills were defeated through campaigns organized by local and national gun rights groups, including the NRA. Faced with heavy lobbying, Republican lawmakers have echoed the groups' concerns in hearings and public venues." | Power in chaos: Steve Bannon is disrupting democracy. This is how. | | "Launched in late 2019 during the run-up to Trump's first impeachment, 'War Room' is a low-budget, high-profile show with Bannon as the host. The format is loose, with Bannon interspersing his interviews with personalities, politicians and conspiracy theorists on the right with his own outbursts of inflamed commentary," CNN's Rob Kuznia, Bob Ortega and Audrey Ash report. "The show is a hefty contributor to a grassroots surge that is sending political neophytes to city councils, school boards, and state legislatures, as well as to the polls to oversee voting — largely out of a sense that the nation has turned against them, and out of a baseless suspicion that the election infrastructure is rigged." | Justice Jackson, a former law clerk, returns to a transformed Supreme Court | | "In joining the court, Justice Jackson returned to a familiar setting. She had served as a law clerk to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, whom she replaced, in the term that ended in 2000. But that was a very different time — and the differences illuminate both the extraordinary transformation of the institution and the challenges its newest member will face," the New York Times's Adam Liptak reports. | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden questioned over accomplishments of Saudi visit |  President Biden departs after attending Mass at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Sunday. (Al Drago/The Washington Post) | | | "Human Rights Watch said it appeared to signal that the crown prince was now 'accepted' by the United States. And Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), speaking on CNN on Sunday, took Biden to task for 'flying to the Middle East and fist-bumping with murderers and despots,'" Ariana Eunjung Cha and Joanna Slater report. | Biden's realism approach runs head-on into liberal pressure | | "Throughout this century, presidents have often pushed aggressively to extend the boundaries of executive power. Biden talks more about its limits," the Associated Press's Seung Min Kim reports. "When it comes to the thorniest issues confronting his administration, the instinct from Biden and his White House is often to speak about what he cannot do, citing constraints imposed by the courts or insufficient support in a Congress controlled by his own party — though barely." | Judge temporarily blocks Biden administration's LGBTQ protections at work, schools | | "A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of two Biden administration directives protecting LGBTQ people in schools and workplaces from discrimination, ruling in favor of 20 state attorneys general who claimed in a lawsuit that the guidance infringes upon states' rights," Meena Venkataramanan reports. | | |  | Greenhouse gas emissions, visualized | | | "In 101 months, the United States will have achieved President Biden's most important climate promise — or it will have fallen short. Right now it is seriously falling short, and for each month that passes, it becomes harder to succeed until at some point — perhaps very soon — it will become virtually impossible," Chris Mooney and Harry Stevens write. | | |  | Hot on the left | | The impossible, inevitable survival of the Trump tax cuts | | "Why are the Trump tax cuts still standing? Is it something to do with tax policy in particular, and the Democratic allergy to tax increases? Is it a function of bare Congressional majorities, ridiculous legislative rules like the filibuster, and too-dramatic goals overlaid onto them?" David Dayen asks in the American Prospect. "I think it goes deeper, and signals how Democrats have just forgotten what constitutes governing. The way they create policy ideas, form political coalitions, and work to pass measures through Congress is just impossibly broken. If you have unanimous opposition to a bad policy with no real political proponents and then can't get a single thing done about it in the space of five years, it speaks to an essential malfunctioning at every level of the party and the process. Nobody should get a pass for it. It's nothing short of an embarrassment." | | |  | Hot on the right | | GOP establishment steps up push to block Trump ally in Arizona |  Republican candidates for Arizona governor: Karrin Taylor Robson (on left) and Kari Lake. (Ross D. Franklin/AP) | | | "Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has already helped block one of former President Donald Trump's allies from winning the Republican nomination for governor in a crucial battleground state. Now he's hoping for a repeat in his own backyard," the AP's Jonathan J. Cooper reports. "Ducey is part of a burgeoning effort among establishment Republicans to lift up little-known housing developer Karrin Taylor Robson against former television news anchor Kari Lake, who is backed by Trump. Other prominent Republicans, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have also lined up behind Robson in recent days." | | |  | Today in Washington | | | Biden does not have any public events scheduled this afternoon. | | |  | In closing | | Take a cosmic tour inside the images captured by NASA's Webb telescope |  The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI) | | | The photos from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are stunning. They're also loaded with information about the universe, the interplay of galaxies and the birth and death of stars, Joel Achenbach and Aaron Steckelberg write. "Still, these images can be enigmatic to the average observer lacking a degree in astrophysics. What exactly are we looking at? Let's take a closer look." | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
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