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Countdown — Six weeks until Election Day!

Continuing Resolution released — Full text … Section-by-section summary

Nestled into the stopgap spending bill that Congress is aiming to pass to avert a government shutdown this week is over $12 billion in aid for Ukraine, AP’s Kevin Freking reports. What else is in it: “The funding package, which Congress is set to consider this week, will also provide disaster assistance, including for Jackson, Mississippi. … Also in the package is money to help households afford winter heating and funding to assist Afghans in resettling in the U.S.” What’s not in it: Biden’s request for emergency funds to fight Covid and monkeypox. What’s in it for now, but might not be for long: Sen. Joe Manchin's permitting reform bill.

IFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis spent his first term becoming one of the most influential Republicans in the country — a likely 2024 contender who’s already shaping his party’s national agenda. But DeSantis still hasn’t faced one of the toughest challenges a Florida leader can encounter: A hurricane. That’s all changing this week as Hurricane Ian barrels toward the state, and, Matt Dixon writes from Tallahassee, “depending on how well the governor responds to the potentially catastrophic storm, DeSantis may emerge more popular or open himself up to criticism.”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton discuss Maggie Haberman's anticipated book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. POLITICO's Steve Shepard's must-read this morning, Pollsters fear they’re blowing it again in 2022 and the odds of a government shutdown if Congress can't reach a deal by Friday at midnight.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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It’s perhaps the wonkiest, most in-the-weeds debate happening on Capitol Hill: The battle over Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) permitting reform bill. It’s also the biggest hold-up in the quest to keep the government from shutting down next week. 

The measure (aka the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022) would basically shorten the process to get permits for energy projects. Its inclusion in the must-pass continuing resolution is the result of a deal struck between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden that secured the West Virginian’s support for the reconciliation bill. 

For Manchin and those Dem leaders, it’s the ultimate compromise: Legislation that would benefit new fossil fuel projects (including specifically approving the Mountain Valley Pipeline planned for West Virginia) and speed up the creation of new clean energy projects.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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The two big stories in Trump World:

1. In a Wednesday night ruling, a three-judge federal appeals panel sided with the Justice Department, blocking “aspects of … Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that delayed a criminal investigation into highly sensitive documents seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate,” write Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.

Two of the three judges were Trump appointees. Their decision was unanimous. And it was unsparing.

From the ruling: “Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. … In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring.” Read the 29-page decision

Meanwhile, here’s Trump on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night: “If you’re president of the United States, you can declassify … even by thinking about it.” Video

2. New York AG Tish James filed suit against Trump and his three oldest children, alleging a yearslong campaign of deception and large-scale fraud. Her office is seeking to recover about $250 million that it says they netted from the scheme. The juiciest takeaways, via Josh and Kyle … The James-Trump backstory, by Erin Durkin … Forbes’ Dan Alexander: “Exclusive Recording, Documents Bolster Trump Fraud Lawsuit”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

It’s the juggernaut match-up Republicans can’t stop talking about: former president Donald Trump vs. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The conventional wisdom for more than a year is that Trump would be impossible to beat in a GOP primary. According to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, that’s no longer the case — at least in their home state of Florida.

In a hypothetical mano-a-mano Sunshine State presidential primary matchup, DeSantis leads Trump 48% to 40% — a major swing from January, when Trump was beating DeSantis by 7 percentage points.

And national politics reporter Holly Otterbein scoops the details behind a big-dollar Philadelphia fundraiser later today benefiting Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro. Among the co-hosts of the fundraiser is Sheryl Bartos, the wife of Jeff Bartos, a two-time statewide Pennsylvania GOP candidate and, more pointedly, the co-chair of Mehmet Oz's Senate campaign.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

With four offhand words, “the pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden touched off a firestorm during his Sunday “60 Minutes” interview.

The White House cleanup attempt was swift. Obviously the president wasn’t saying the American people shouldn’t take Covid seriously, it told reporters. Sure, he could have been more nuanced, but he was simply saying we’ve hit a different phase.

And yet: A summary declaration that the pandemic is kaput carried implications that Biden did not appear to fathom as he walked the floor of the Detroit Auto Show with Scott Pelley. For one, more than 300 Americans are still dying from the disease each day as the nation’s public health establishment works to convince Americans to get the new bivalent booster shot ahead of a possible winter wave.

The remarks also did nothing to convince Republicans to back an administration request for $22 billion in new Covid relief funding, a fight that will come to a head in the coming days. As Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday: “If it’s over, then I wouldn’t suspect they need any more money.”

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Is 2022 a ‘waves’ election? Evidence that the election will likely be closer than originally thought continues to mount, as two new polls give a sense of the contours of the race.

First, there's the NBC poll, which paints a decidedly mixed portrait. Seven weeks out, voters are evenly split at 46% in their preference for which party should control Congress next year. Biden’s approval rating has risen to its highest in 11 months, while DONALD TRUMP’s favorability has dropped. Sixty-one percent oppose the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, 63% said their income is falling behind the cost of living, and “threats to democracy” ranked as the issue most important to voters.

Republican dreams that a huge swath of Latino voters will run to their side aren’t coming true — yet. That comes from our second poll, the latest from the NYT and Siena College, which shows Democrats maintaining a hold on the Latino electorate. Asked which party’s candidate they’d vote for if the election were held today, 56% of Latinos sided with the Democrats, compared to 32% for the Republicans.

Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio.
Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, many Democrats pushed for legislation codifying the right to same-sex marriage, lest it, too, be taken away by the high court. Over the past two months, those efforts gained momentum thanks to the efforts of a small bipartisan group that saw a path to winning support from the requisite 10 Senate Republicans, raising hopes that a bill would soon hit Biden’s desk. 

Those dreams are now on hold through (at least) the midterms, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the bill’s chief sponsor, told reporters on Thursday. “Earlier in the day, the group of five senators leading talks on the bill recommended to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that a vote occur after the election after several Republicans called for a delay,” writes Burgess Everett. “Democrats had planned to hold a vote as soon as Monday.” 

There’s a real risk to this approach: If Republicans are able to flip the Senate, there could be little appetite to jump on board and support a Democratic priority during a lame-duck session. 

Senate reporter Marianne LeVine joins Playbook Daily Briefing to explain how we got here and where the bill might go next.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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“Biden: Tentative railway labor deal reached, averting strike,” AP: “President Joe Biden said Thursday a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections. He said the tentative deal ‘will keep our critical rail system working and avoid disruption of our economy.’”

And NYT’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, two old friends of Playbook (Susan was POLITICO’s editor from 2014-2016), will release "THE DIVIDER: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021," on Tuesday. But after The Guardian’s resourceful Martin Pengelly snagged a copy early, the book’s embargo was lifted last night, leading to a flurry of coverage.

In the NYT, Baker himself writes up an incredible account from the book about the time Trump’s friend, the cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder, convinced him that the U.S. could buy Greenland.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, most Republicans stuck to a simple message: The decision merely sent the issue back to the states; it was not a prelude to any national ban on abortion.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tossed all that out the window Tuesday, dropping a bill that would implement a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy while allowing states to pass more restrictive laws. The immediate effect was to put fellow Republicans, who had already been on their heels over Roe’s reversal, straight onto their butts.

And senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein and POLITICO founding editor John Harris discuss the life of Ken Starr, who passed away yesterday at the age of 76.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.