| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. We're grateful to have senior political reporter Aaron Blake at the wheel today. On this day in 1946, the U.S. detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It was the first underwater test of the device and took place just over a week after the bomb's first-ever test at Los Alamos. | | |  | The big idea | | 5 things to watch for if Trump is indicted again |  Former president Donald Trump at the Moms for Liberty Summit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in June. (Photo by Hannah Beier for the Washington Post.) | | | The political world is watching closely to see if and when Donald Trump is indicted — again. Trump announced on social media last week that he'd received a "target" letter in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into efforts to overturn the election. A new criminal indictment would be Trump's third, after the federal classified-documents charges last month and the hush-money case brought in Manhattan in April. While we don't know for sure that charges are coming or when they might land, here are a few things to watch for if they do. | | This is obviously the most significant aspect, as it would set the stage for everything that lies ahead. | | While Smith's investigation has often been given the "Jan. 6" shorthand, it's important to note that there is plenty of evidence he's not just investigating actions related to the U.S. Capitol riot that day. Charges could relate to a much broader conspiracy to overturn the election — which contributed to that day's events but was distinct from it. The House select Jan. 6 committee cited four potential crimes, including obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the government, when it referred Trump to the Department of Justice after concluding its own investigation last year. We don't know whether Smith has these or other statutes in mind, but it's worth reviewing them as a starting point. | - The first one, obstruction of an official proceeding, has been used extensively against Jan. 6 defendants, and it basically amounts to disrupting Congress's certification of electoral college votes. Precisely how that might pertain to Trump is the big question. It's readily apparent how rioters who have been charged with this offense disrupted the day's events. With Trump, it's possible he could be accused of having fomented the riot or having proactively failed to halt it once it began.
- Conspiracy to defraud the government means obstructing a governmental function by deceitful or dishonest means. That sounds similar to the above, but it could include other efforts, such as pressuring officials in states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as lying about widespread voter fraud.
- The Jan. 6 committee included two other statutes in its referral: inciting or aiding an insurrection, and conspiracy to make a false statement.
| | A major question is how big Smith might go with his charges. Charging Trump with some kind of conspiracy would mean laying out Trump's broader plot and how it allegedly ran afoul of the law, including things like the "fake elector" plot. But again, Smith has given no public signals about the specific crimes he plans to charge, so for now, we will have to wait and see. | 2. Is there new information in the indictment? | | While an indictment is much-anticipated, it's also true that we've already learned plenty about the efforts to overturn the election. The Jan. 6 committee held several public hearings, and it wound up producing an 800-page report and releasing transcripts of witness interviews. But especially if the indictment does include conspiracy charges, it seems possible we'll learn quite a bit more. A few areas where the Jan. 6 report findings were somewhat limited, and where we could learn more: | - The "fake elector" plot: Specifically, do we get more evidence that it wasn't just a contingency in case certain states overturned their election results, but rather that it was always geared toward building a pretext for Jan. 6?
- The weapons: A big finding of the Jan. 6 report was that hundreds of weapons were confiscated outside Trump's Jan. 6 speech, and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has testified that Trump was told about the crowd having weapons but didn't care. This is key because it could suggest that Trump knew how potentially dangerous the situation was, and directed his supporters to the Capitol anyway. But the Jan. 6 committee didn't shed much light on whether the weapons claims had been confirmed.
- The Secret Service: Some of the other unresolved issues from the Jan. 6 committee's report have to do with the Secret Service, and a number of agents have reportedly testified before Smith's grand jury. The Jan. 6 committee was unable to resolve, for instance, Hutchinson's secondhand account of Trump's becoming irate at not being taken to the Capitol after his Jan. 6 speech.
| 3. Who else might get indicted — if anyone? | | If Trump is indicted on some kind of conspiracy charge, it stands to reason that others around him might also be indicted. Some of those who played prominent roles in all of this include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and a smattering of other lawyers. | | Thus far, we have no evidence that anyone else has received a target letter. But Smith doesn't technically need to send those letters, and you could understand why people not named Trump wouldn't be eager to disclose such things. | 4. How do Republicans react? | | The answer to this would seem predictable: They'll criticize the charges as being symptomatic of a two-tiered justice system — without engaging on the merits of Trump's alleged conduct. That's certainly been the case with Trump's hush-money indictment in Manhattan and his federal classified-documents indictment in Florida. But more than the behavior described in those indictments, the Jan. 6 attack is something many congressional Republicans objected to in real time, even if they didn't support Trump's impeachment over it. They objected not just to his actions on that day, but also to his voter-fraud claims more broadly. Jan. 6 also hit home for many congressional Republicans, given they themselves were endangered that day. The party would rather not talk about it. | 5. What impact does it have on the polls? | | |  | Politics-but-not | | | Click through to submit ideas for potential inclusion in our weekly roundup of stories you might not find in other political newsletters. Read more » | | | | | |  | What's happening now | | With UPS strike deadline nearing, company and union resume talks |  UPS workers hold placards at a rally held by the Teamsters union on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Union members have staged "practice picket" lines in recent weeks ahead of a potential strike. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images) | | | "With only one week left to reach a deal, UPS company officials and union negotiators returned to the bargaining table Tuesday to avoid a strike of 340,000 workers that could hobble the U.S. economy," Lauren Kaori Gurley reports. | France needs 'order, order, order' says Macron in first interview since riots | | "French President Emmanuel Macron, in his first major interview since the riots over the police killing of a teenager in a Parisian suburb, called for a return to order and authority," Annabelle Timsit reports. | DeSantis uninjured after car accident in Tennessee, campaign says | | "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and members of his team were involved in a car accident Tuesday morning but are uninjured, his campaign said … Details about the car accident remain unclear," Amy B Wang reports. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Putin appeared paralyzed and unable to act in first hours of rebellion |  In a photograph released by Russian state-funded agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a video address on June 24 as Wagner fighters stage a rebellion. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images) | | | "When Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched his attempted mutiny on the morning of June 24, Vladimir Putin was paralyzed and unable to act decisively, according to Ukrainian and other security officials in Europe. No orders were issued for most of the day, the officials said," Catherine Belton, Shane Harris and Greg Miller report. | All the ways Ron DeSantis is trying to rewrite Black history | How Republicans flipped America's state supreme courts |  The U.S. Supreme Court building on June 27, 2022. (Patrick Semansky/AP) | | | "In less than a decade, Republican politicians in eight states have transformed their state supreme courts — altering the process by which justices reach the bench, or the size of the court. The moves have pushed the courts to the right or solidified conservative control," Aaron Mendelson reports for the Center for Public Intergrity. | - "The changes take different forms. North Carolina and Ohio made their judicial elections partisan contests. Arizona and Georgia expanded the number of justices. And Iowa, Idaho, Montana and Utah granted Republican governors greater control over the process of picking justices."
| | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden wrestles with Israel's defiant turn to the right |  President Biden meets last week with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the Oval Office of the White House. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) | | | "The Israeli parliament parted ways with President Biden on Monday in taking its explosive vote to weaken Israel's Supreme Court, rebuffing weeks of pleas from the president not to do so without first building consensus and creating tension between the United States and one of its closest allies," Meryl Kornfield and Abigail Hauslohner report. | Washington tries to add some teeth to its cyberdefenses | | "The only problem is that the big implementation plan is long on aspirations — if notably less ambitious than the road map laid out this spring — and short on the very kinds of details that could make greater cybersecurity a reality during the administration's remaining time in office," Rishi Iyengar writes for Foreign Policy. | | |  | The mines Russia scattered across Ukraine, visualized | | | "The transformation of Ukraine's heartland into patches of wasteland riddled with danger is a long-term calamity on a scale that ordnance experts say has rarely been seen, and that could take hundreds of years and billions of dollars to undo," Eve Sampson and Samuel Granados report. | - "Efforts to clear the hazards, known as unexploded ordnance, along with those to measure the full extent of the problem, can only proceed so far given that the conflict is still underway. But data collected by Ukraine's government and independent humanitarian mine clearance groups tells a stark story."
| | |  | Hot on the left | | How a Christian transgender man increased his faith by taking the fight over LGBTQ+ rights to religious schools |  Helen Arguello, right, and her daughter Quinn, 12, from Cedar Park attend a rally in support of trans rights at the Texas Capitol on March 20. (Julia Robinson for The Washington Post) | | - "Silva recalls stepping out of an Uber in 2020 and sitting on the sidewalk after receiving a call from the Christian seminary school he applied to. The admissions officer said he respected that Silva had identified himself as a transgender man. But the answer was still 'no.' 'I hung up,' he said, 'and, to be honest, I cried on the corner.'"
- "Silva is one of dozens of LGBTQ+ Americans suing the U.S. Department of Education, challenging a law that allows religious colleges to discriminate based on the sex of students and applicants – even when those schools receive millions in federal funding."
| | |  | Hot on the right | | Republicans hoover up earmarks in House spending bills |  The U.S. Capitol as seen from the National Mall at dawn on Election Day on Nov. 8, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Robert Miller/The Washington Post) | | | "House Republicans have so thoroughly stacked the earmarking deck in their favor in appropriations bills for the upcoming fiscal year that the top Democratic recipient doesn't even appear in the top 60 among lawmakers in that chamber," Roll Call's Peter Cohn and Herb Jackson report. | - "In their first year in the majority since Congress in 2021 brought back the practice Republicans banned a decade earlier, GOP lawmakers are spreading nearly $7.4 billion among 4,714 individual projects tucked inside the fiscal 2024 appropriations bills. While Democrats requested 65 percent of those earmarks, they are receiving less than 38 percent of the dollars at nearly $2.8 billion, a CQ Roll Call analysis found."
| | |  | Today in Washington | | | At noon, Biden will sign a proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi. Biden will speak about expanding access to mental health care at 3 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | Twitter is turning into X. Analysts don't see the treasure map. |  The partially removed Twitter name at the company's San Francisco headquarters Monday. (Monica Rodman/The Washington Post) | | | "Twitter began removing its name from its corporate headquarters Monday, blocking two lanes of traffic as a large crane plucked letters off the sign. The crane departed by midafternoon leaving the task half-finished — only the blue bird logo and the 'er' remained, next to a ghostly outline reading '@twitt,'" Joseph Menn reports. Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
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