| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1981, just after midnight, MTV made its debut with the video for the Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star." | | |  | The big idea | | Kamala Harris seems to be stepping up her 2024 role |  Vice President Kamala Harris walks onto the stage during a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 13, 2023. (Elizabeth Frantz for The Washington Post) | | | Electorally critical states like Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin. An NAACP convention. A ringing defense of access to abortion in the face of increasingly punishing Republican restrictions. Caustic attacks on the way a GOP presidential candidate's home state plans to teach kids about slavery. Vice President Harris's campaigning — the states she visits, the audiences she seeks, the words she uses — are not those of a politician being sidelined or content to settle for a supporting role, even if that's by definition her job as President Biden's running mate as 2024 heats up. | - This is not to suggest she's eyeing the top spot herself — at least not yet, not in this cycle. If Biden wins, she'll be his logical political heir come 2028. If Biden loses, she'll have a claim to the mantle of Democratic front-runner in four years.
- The pace and tone of her involvement do seem to be escalating, but that may largely reflect the fact that the race is now well and truly underway. We noted as much back in May, zeroing in on the Republican focus on her.
| | None of this should feel particularly unfamiliar, at least if you followed the 2022 midterm elections. Autumn of that year brought a boomlet in pieces declaring Harris was helping to energize core Democratic constituencies (Black voters, Americans who support access to abortion) with an eye on her own political fortunes. This go 'round will look a lot like that effort. Democrats say their ability to hold the Senate and limit Republican gains in the House, where the GOP's razor-thin majority is much smaller than had been forecast, came down in large part to voter anger about abortion — and they see no reason that anger should have abated. | | Just over the past week or so, Harris traveled to Iowa to assail the state's new ban on abortions after six weeks and visited Gov. Ron DeSantis's Florida to denounce new educational standards she said amounted to a "purposeful and intentional policy to mislead our children," notably about slavery, my colleague Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reported. Today, she's scheduled to visit Orlando to address the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Women's Missionary Convention. On Saturday, she spoke to the 114th annual convention of the NAACP. She'll attend Everytown for Gun Safety's "Gun Sense University" in Chicago early next month. "The vice president seems to be touching the same core Democrats she focused on in 2022, and she's showing her strength at making the cultural arguments," Jamal Simmons, who served as her communications director, told The Daily 202. | - "We'll see if that approach is as effective for the reelect as it was for the midterms," he added.
| | Harris's travel is both easier and more complicated than Biden's. | - Easier: Vice presidents don't require the massive entourage presidents do, giving her a lighter footprint (far fewer motorcade vehicles, for instance) that makes scheduling her travel logistically much simpler and vastly less disruptive.
- More complicated: She's less likely to travel when the Senate is in session because the tiny Democratic majority so often requires her to cast tiebreaking votes.
| | Over at CNN, Edward-Isaac Dovere had a piece on Sunday looking at Harris in the role of "rapid-response" for the Biden campaign. Isaac highlighted the speed with which her team got her to Florida after the new educational standards rolled out, and to Iowa to assault the state's new ban on abortions after six weeks — just hours before GOP candidates attended a high-profile fundraising dinner. Of note: | - "Harris has been quietly noting how other Democrats, including her friend and sometimes rival for attention California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have grabbed the national spotlight by swinging at Republicans aggressively. Aides say she has also been watching the news out of the Republican presidential race and telling Biden aides she wants to be seen as fighting against extremism."
- "Biden aides see their path to victory next year rooted in large part in connecting with Black voters, women, young people and other groups that tend to respond warmly to Harris."
| | Team Biden is betting quite a lot on that "respond warmly" bit: If turnout, rather than changing voters' minds, is what decided 2022, they need those constituencies to turn out again in 2024, casting votes for Biden rather than staying home. My colleagues Colby Itkowitz, Sabrina Rodriguez and Michael Scherer reported Monday how that's a real concern, especially "among Black voters, the party's most loyal constituency," many of whom are less than enchanted with the country's direction and the president's performance. Fixing that isn't all on Harris, of course. But you can see why Democrats might want her to be part of the solution. | | |  | 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 | | Endless-seeming heat wave to keep broiling the southern U.S. this week |  A runner makes their way across the Tilikum Crossing as the sun rises over Portland, Ore., on June 26, 2021. (Alisha Jucevic for The Washington Post) | | | "The endless summer heat wave in the southern United States, now entering its third month, continues this week, scorching millions of Americans with record heat and high humidity. While portions of the Desert Southwest will see the searing heat ease ever so slightly early this week, it's getting hotter along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana and central to eastern Texas," Dan Stillman reports. | Jury weighs death penalty in Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting | | "A federal jury began deliberating Tuesday morning on whether Robert Bowers will receive the death penalty for killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack on U.S. soil," the Wall Street Journal's Kris Maher reports. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | For these young soldiers, Ukraine has been at war for half their lives |  Soldiers get ready on a base in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, to go to the front line before dawn in July. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post) | | | "In a country where almost everyone has been mobilized, it is not unusual to see graying men with potbellies working checkpoints. But this war, like so many others, has fallen mostly on the young," Fredrick Kunkle and Serhii Korolchuk reports. | - "For most of the youngest soldiers, the war with Russia in the eastern Donbas region seemed far away when they were growing up — a kind of simmering background music that occasionally touched relatives or friends. Now, however, they are on the front, fighting a powerful enemy that can, and does, strike anywhere."
| An abortion ban made them teen parents. This is life two years later. | | "When Brooke met Billy at a skate park in Corpus Christi, Tex., in May 2021, she could not have predicted any piece of the life she was now living. She'd been gearing up for real estate school, enjoying long days at the beach with her new boyfriend. Then she found out she was three months pregnant," Caroline Kitchener reports. | - "And because of a new law, she could no longer get an abortion in Texas. The closest clinic that could see her was in New Mexico, a 13-hour drive away. She gave birth to Kendall and Olivia six months later."
| She can stir a crowd. But can D.C.'s new police chief keep the city safe? | | "Since the early 2000s, D.C. mayors have appointed chiefs who rose through the ranks of the city's police force, battle-tested veterans well-versed in the intricacies of the department's bureaucracy, the nuances of local politics and what distinguishes neighborhoods such as Adams Morgan from, say, Anacostia," Paul Schwartzman and Peter Hermann report. | - "In [Pamela A. Smith], Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) chose a different type of chief — and not only because she's the first Black woman nominated to lead the D.C. police department in a permanent capacity. Unlike her three predecessors, Smith joined the agency only 14 months ago, after more than two decades at the U.S. Park Police, where she became chief."
| After paying lawyers, Trump's PAC is nearly broke |  Donald Trump's Save America Rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on Nov. 7. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) | | - "The dwindling cash reserves in Mr. Trump's PAC, called Save America, have fallen to such levels that the group has made the highly unusual request of a $60 million refund of a donation it had previously sent to a pro-Trump super PAC."
| No Labels to GOP donors: We are your anti-Trump alternative | | "The centrist group No Labels has targeted Republican donors disaffected with Donald Trump, pitching its unity ticket as a way to beat the former president without funding an entity assisting President Joe Biden," Politico's Shia Kapos reports. | - "It could have profound political ripple effects, complicating both the current Republican primary and future general election by siphoning funds away from candidates and entities challenging Trump to a ticket that does not yet exist."
| | |  | The latest on covid | | NIH announces long covid treatment studies with hundreds of patients | | "The National Institutes of Health announced Monday that it is launching four clinical trials to test the safety and effectiveness of potential long covid treatments, with seven more to begin in coming months — efforts to alleviate the suffering of millions of patients that critics say are long overdue," Mark Johnson and Amy Goldstein report. | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden, reversing Trump, won't move military's Space Command to Alabama |  President Biden is reversing a decision by his predecessor to relocate U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. (Tom Brenner for the Washington Post ) | | | "President Biden has decided against relocating the headquarters of U.S. Space Command to Alabama, senior officials said Monday, upending a controversial decision by his predecessor as the Trump administration was coming to an end," Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton reports. | Biden spoke with son's associates, but not about business, former partner says | | "President Biden met with and spoke to his son Hunter's international business associates on a number of occasions over a decade as Hunter Biden sought to drum up consulting deals, including while his father was vice president, his former business partner told Congress on Monday," the NYT's Luke Broadwater reports. | - "However, in nearly five hours of closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Devon Archer, the former partner, asserted that the elder Mr. Biden was not party to any of his son's business deals and that Hunter Biden had tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his powerful father when he was not, according to Democrats on the panel."
- "Republicans pointed to the interview as evidence that President Biden had lied when he claimed he had no involvement in his son's business dealings, and some said that was grounds for impeaching the elder Mr. Biden."
| Biden administration unwilling to call Niger coup a 'coup' | | "The Biden administration is refusing to call the military-backed ouster of Niger's president a 'coup,' knowing that doing so could trigger an end to U.S. security aid to a country that's key to battling terrorism and curbing Russian influence in Africa," Politico's Nahal Toosi and Lara Seligman report. | | |  | Our warming oceans, visualized | | | "The Earth's oceans have never been warmer. Every day since late March, the world's average sea surface temperature has been well above the previous highest mark for that day. And there will be ripple effects: Marine heat waves are affecting about 44 percent of the global ocean, whereas only 10 percent is typical, and they can have 'significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies,' according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration," Tim Meko and Dan Stillman report. | | |  | Hot on the left | | Jay Powell's Federal Reserve: Protection for bankers, pain for everyone else |  In this July 31, 2019, photo, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference following a two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting in Washington. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) | | - "Yet as it appeared that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) might be the first domino to fall, the Fed leapt into action. It quickly introduced a new emergency program, augmenting its regular discount lending window, which allows banks to mitigate their interest-rate risk due to the Fed's tightening."
- "What about the millions of workers who may lose their jobs due to the interest rate hikes? Thankfully, this hasn't happened yet. But if it does, who will create an emergency program for unemployed people, those whose job prospects were seen by the Fed as an appropriate cost of managing inflation?"
| | |  | Hot on the right | | Trailing in polls, Ron DeSantis unveils economic plans echoing Trump's |  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gives a speech to discuss his economic policy proposals in Rochester, N.H., on Monday. (Charles Krupa/AP) | | | "Unveiling a 10-point 'Declaration of Economic Independence' in a campaign stop in Rochester, N.H., DeSantis pledged to build on many key priorities of the Trump administration if he becomes president, including curbing trade with China, restricting immigration along the southern border, slashing government regulations and bolstering U.S. energy independence. DeSantis's policy program also steers clear of changes to either Social Security or Medicare — government programs that Republican lawmakers had once promised to cut, but that Trump vowed to protect," Jeff Stein and Marianne LeVine report. | | |  | Today in Washington | | | Biden is in Rehoboth Beach, Del., today. There's nothing on his public schedule this afternoon. | | |  | In closing | | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
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