| Good morning, Early Birds. Choose your fighter. Tips? earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us. In today's edition … Abortion is on the ballot for the first time since Dobbs … U. S. kills al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in drone strike in Kabul … What we're watching: Any movement on the burn pits veterans bill … but first … | | |  | The campaign | | Today's primaries are a test for progressives — and for Trump |  Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), seen here in a file photo, faces a primary challenge. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | Voters will cast primary ballots in five states today — and in several of those races progressives are on defense. Two progressive members of the "Squad" are facing challengers who lean toward the ideological center: Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) is facing off against a Democratic state senator who's running to her right, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is confronting a trio of primary challengers. And Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, could lose his seat to Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who belongs to the more centrist New Democrat Coalition, in a suburban district reshaped by redistricting. | - "You're seeing super PACs funded by billionaires going into war against young progressives, often women of color," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who flew to Michigan on Friday to hold a last-minute rally for Levin. "I think that's outrageous. I think it's counterproductive to long term interests of the Democratic Party."
| | Sanders criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which started a super PAC earlier this year that's spent more than $4.2 million supporting Stevens and attacking Levin in the primary. "What we're seeing is big money interest [sic] trying to delete progressive candidates," he said. | A trying summer for progressives | | Progressives have suffered several losses this summer already. Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) lost her primary in June to Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) in another member-on-member battle. Kina Collins, an activist who challenged Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) with the backing of Justice Democrats — the group that helped propel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's upset primary win over a top House Democrat in New York in 2018 — came up short. And Jessica Cisneros, another Justice Democrats-endorsed candidate, lost a primary runoff against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) — one of the most conservative House Democrats — by fewer than 300 votes. Progressives have had victories, too. Two other candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats won the Democratic primaries for open House seats in Pennsylvania and Texas — both of them solidly Democratic. | - "It has been a tough, uphill fight," said Faiz Shakir, who managed Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, citing races in which progressives had been outspent. "But thankfully it hasn't been a full-on massacre."
| | Progressives are also excited about Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who won the Democratic nomination for an open Senate seat, and Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who's on track to win the nomination to challenge Sen. Ron Johnson (R) after his two chief rivals dropped out last week. Fetterman backed Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016. "We've got some of the strongest contenders in general election Senate races that we've had in some time, and it's because the progressive movement brought them to us," Shakir said. | Senate Republicans know which Eric they're backing | | Former president Donald Trump has endorsed 25 candidates in Tuesday's primary. Or maybe 26, since he endorsed "ERIC" in the Missouri Senate race on Monday evening. Two competitive candidates are named Eric: Eric Greitens, the scandal-plagued former governor who is accused of assaulting his ex-wife, and Eric Schmitt, Missouri's attorney general. Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long are also seeking the Republican nomination. But they are not named Eric. Greitens and Schmitt both immediately claimed the endorsement. | | But Senate Republicans are clear about which Eric they don't want to win: Greitens. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said he's "hopeful" Greitens will lose. | - "I think if he were the nominee it would cost millions and millions and millions of dollars, because I think he's got a brand that's going to be very hard to defend in a general election," Thune said.
| | Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was even more blunt, saying it would be a "good thing" if he loses. "Obviously he's a very damaged individual as a political figure, and him being a candidate for Senate would be a real problem," Romney said. | Can Republicans who voted to impeach Trump hang on? | | Three of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year are facing primaries today — Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and Peter Meijer (Mich.) — have had to beat back Trump-endorsed candidates. Trump has endorsed challengers to each of them, and Democrats have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running ads supporting John Gibbs, Trump's pick to oust Meijer, because they think he'll be easier to defeat in the general election. | - (BTW Sanders is not pleased with Democrats' strategy. "I think it speaks to the weakness of the Democratic Party," he said. "The Democratic Party has to a large degree turned its back on working families, forfeiting them, giving them over to a right-wing Republican Party, which could care less about them, and therefore you're left with trying to decide who your opponents are going to be.")
| | The only Republican who faced a Trump-endorsed challenger after voting to impeach Trump, Rep. Tom Rice (S.C.), lost in a blowout in June. But Washington state's top-two primary system could help Newhouse and Herrera Beutler hang on, as our colleague Dave Weigel reported last month. Rep. David G. Valadao (R-Calif.) is so far the only Republican who voted for impeachment who has managed to survive his primary, which was in June. But Valadao, who's close with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was lucky: Trump never endorsed the Republican running against him. | Election deniers poised to win key election positions | | Two Trump-endorsed candidates for secretary of state, running on the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election, are likely to advance to the general election, potentially putting them in a position of overseeing elections in two swing states. In Michigan, Kristina Karamo, whose victory was sealed in a state Republican convention in April, is set to advance to the general election. And in Arizona, state Rep. Mark Finchem is the leading candidate for secretary of state. | - "Finchem has sought to upend Arizona's popular and well-established mail voting system and was photographed near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the building to disrupt certification of the 2020 election," as our colleagues Hannah Knowles and Colby Itkowitz report. "He recently embraced the support of Andrew Torba, the founder of a far-right social media site, who has said non-Christians are not real conservatives."
| | Trump and former vice president Mike Pence Arizona gubernatorial candidates are battling on Tuesday with Trump-backed election denier Kari Lake up against Pence-supported Karrin Taylor Robson. 2024? Term-limited Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who has been critical of Trump because of Jan. 6, said he is "thinking about" a run for the White House in 2024 but won't make a decision until after the midterm elections. "I think the test in 2024 (is) can a conservative that has a more optimistic view of America, that doesn't resort to personal grievances, can that person win? And that's what I want to be able to support in the fight for 2024," Hutchinson told Leigh Ann in an interview on Washington Post Live. | Abortion is on the ballot for the first time since Dobbs |  A sign hangs in the campaign office for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom in Overland Park, Kansas. (Christopher Smith/The Washington Post) | | | Voters in Kansas heading to the polls today will decide whether the state's constitutional protections for the a right to an abortion should be upheld. It's the first time voters will vote on an abortion related measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. The outcome will be the first indicator of where voters stand on the issue. Kansas is a conservative state that backed Trump by 15 points over Joe Biden. But the state has a Democratic governor, and one of its four congressional seats is represented by a Democrat. "If the ballot measure passes, it would allow the Republican legislature to pass laws banning abortion. That's a realistic outcome, given that Kansas Republicans have tried for years to do just that: They attempted to ban abortion in 2013, and in 2015 Kansas became the first state to ban a common procedure for second-trimester abortions. The state's Supreme Court knocked that down, affirming Kansas's constitutional right to an abortion in the process," our colleague Amber Phillips writes in The Fix. | Bipartisan abortion access bill unlikely to pass the Senate | | Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled compromise legislation to guarantee federal access to abortion, an effort to codify abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The legislation, co-authored by Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), ensures federal abortion rights up to viability, and allows post-viability abortion when the health of the mother is in jeopardy. But it's highly unlikely to gain the support of the additional eight Republicans needed to break a filibuster, and it's unclear if it would even gain the support of all Democrats. Kaine admitted that many Democrats prefer the Democratic version of the bill to codify Roe, the Women's Health Protection Act, which the Senate has already voted on twice this year. It failed both times. Reproductive rights groups slammed the measure Monday night. "Regrettably, the bill introduced [Monday] does not address the abortion access crisis," a coalition of abortion rights' groups, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "This bill has been written for a world that does not exist and would provide little solace in the nightmare we are living." | | |  | At the White House | | U.S. kills al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in drone strike in Kabul | | 🚨: "The United States has killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and one of the world's most-wanted terrorists, who, alongside the group's founder, Osama bin Laden, oversaw the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," our colleagues Shane Harris, Dan Lamothe, Karen DeYoung, Souad Mekhennet and Pamela Constable report. Zawahiri, 71, "was killed in a CIA drone strike in Kabul over the weekend." | - In an address to the nation, Biden confirmed the death and called the attack a "precision strike" that did not cause civilian casualties. "Justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more," Biden said.
|  Zawahiri in 1982, standing behind bars in an Egyptian court during his trial as one of the organizers of the assassination of President Anwar Sadat the previous year. (Getty Images) | | | The world's most-wanted: "Americans knew him as al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, the bespectacled, bushy-bearded deputy to bin Laden," our colleague Joby Warrick writes. "Though lacking bin Laden's personal charisma, Zawahiri became the intellectual force behind many of al-Qaeda's grandest ambitions, including its apparently unsuccessful efforts to acquire nuclear and biological weapons." | - "In his later years, Zawahiri presided over al-Qaeda at a time of decline, with most of the group's founding figures dead or in hiding and the organization's leadership role challenged by aggressive upstarts such as the Islamic State."
| | |  | On the Hill | |  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Washington on July 29, before she headed to Asia. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) | | | Happening … today? "Several Taiwan media outlets reported late on Monday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will visit Taiwan on Tuesday and spend the night in Taipei," per Reuters. | - "The prospect of the third-most senior figure in U.S. government visiting the world's only Chinese-speaking democracy has roiled Asia's already choppy geopolitical waters," our colleague Ishaan Tharoor writes.
| | |  | What we're watching | | | Will the Senate work out an agreement to move forward with the PACT Act, the legislation that would provide additional benefits and care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits? Democrats want to vote again on the bill this week. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), co-author of the bill, told The Early Monday night that they offered Republicans a vote on an amendment by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) at a 60-vote threshold and they are waiting for Republicans to respond. Thune said Republicans want a 50-vote threshold for the amendment. | | |  | The Data | |  A still image from a campaign ad funded by Pritzker for Illinois. (AdImpact) | | | Democrats's risky business, visualized: "There's a growing reckoning in the Democratic Party over a strategy that isn't entirely new but is rather risky and at least somewhat unseemly: spending money in Republican primaries to try to nominate more extreme — and potentially more beatable — candidates," our colleagues Aadit Tambe and Aaron Blake report. "One objection is that, if the November midterm elections don't go to plan, Democrats could unintentionally help put candidates like Doug Mastriano and John Gibbs in office … The other is that it's just a bad look, period." | | |  | The Media | | | |  | Viral | | | *spider-man pointing meme* |  | | | | | | AM/PM | | Looking for more analysis in the afternoon? | | | | Weekday newsletter, PM |  | | | | | | |
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