The Playbook Podcast

Leaked Ukraine docs create a major headache for Biden, and what political news you need to be paying attention to.

Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels talks with national security reporter Alex Ward.

How other 2024 GOP hopefuls are navigating Donald Trump, and what political news you need to be paying attention to.

Playbook co-author Rachael Bade talks with reporter Sally Goldenberg.

How DC became a bagel city, the biggest toplines from the week, and what political news you need to be paying attention to.

Playbook deputy editor Zack Stanton talks with politics editor Sam Stein.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ support for a Florida bill restricting abortion at six weeks of pregnancy shows he’s eager to continue courting the right flank of the GOP. A future problem for him may be in how his position on abortion rights will be received by moderate voters in the 2024 election.

The unveiling of the charges against former President Donald Trump will trigger a frenzied legal battle by Trump and his team to derail the case...here's what we know now.New York legal reporter Erica Orden talks with Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza about her day in court and what's next.

It’s election day in America — at least parts of America. The two biggies? Wisconsin, where tens of millions of dollars have poured into a supreme court race that could flip the balance of power on the court from conservatives to liberals; and Chicago, where a mayoral runoff pits two Democrats against each other. In Manhattan, Donald Trump's expected arraignment will happen around 2:15pm.

New York courts reporter Erica Orden talks with Playbook editor Mike DeBonis about what she's watching for.

A group of House Democrats is secretly crafting a fallback plan to avoid an economy-rattling debt default.

The White House wants no part of it.

Moderate Democrats in the Problem Solvers' Caucus have spent weeks constructing a break-glass deal with centrist Republicans in case the country goes all the way to the brink on the debt ceiling. As the summertime deadline for action approaches, they’re worried a prolonged standoff could lead to fiscal disaster.

Congress editor Elana Schor talks with Playbook editor Mike DeBonis about the plan and what she's watching for. 

At 7:15 last night, Manhattan DA Alvin bragg made it official with this statement: "This evening we contacted Mr. [Donald] Trump's attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.'s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected."

Even though we’ve long known this was coming, that term — “surrender” — hit us with the historical nature of March 30, 2023: A former president at the start of another campaign for the White House has been indicted for a crime and could go to prison. 

We’ll dig into what we know this morning, which frankly isn’t all that much more than yesterday because the indictment isn’t public yet. (Not that that’s stopping anyone from forming an opinion about it.) But keep in mind that Bragg is just one of three prosecutors currently building criminal cases against Trump — and that we are likely only at the beginning of the story of how state and federal law enforcement officials are preparing to hold the former president accountable.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

BREAKING OVERNIGHT — “Russian Security Service Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter,” by WSJ’s Daniel Michaels: “The Federal Security Service said Thursday it had detained Evan Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, in the eastern city of Yekaterinburg. The FSB said in a statement that Mr. Gershkovich, ‘acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.’ …

‘The Wall Street Journal is deeply concerned for the safety of Mr. Gershkovich,’ the Journal said in a statement. Mr. Gershkovich reports on Russia as part of the Journal’s Moscow bureau.”

“Trump’s lead grows in GOP primary race, now over 50% support,” by Fox News’ Victoria Balara: “The survey, released Wednesday, finds [Donald] Trump has doubled his lead since February and is up by 30 points over Ron DeSantis (54%-24%). Last month, he was up by 15 (43%-28%). No one else hits double digits.” See the poll

Our colleagues Hailey Fuchs, Clothilde Goujard and Daniel Lippman have a big investigation up this morning into the transatlantic political influence machine that TikTok put together as it battles efforts to regulate or ban the platform because of ties to China.

Read the full story: “How TikTok built a ‘team of Avengers’ to fight for its life”

And today, VP Kamala Harris is in Tanzania, where she’ll meet with President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the country’s first female head of state.

But the bulk of Harris’ Africa trip is now over. And from the administration’s point of view, it was a success — but perhaps not for the reasons you think.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

After weeks talking with his rank-and-file about what concessions they’d need from Democrats to raise the debt ceiling, Speaker Kevin McCarthy floated five proposals that could maybe, just maybe, elicit an agreement. We spent yesterday working the phones to find out what Hill Democrats — both lawmakers and senior aides — privately thought about these ideas.

First, a caveat: Don’t expect top Democrats to applaud any of these ideas on record right now. The party line, we’re told, remains and will continue to be to resist giving Republicans any concessions — particularly since they raised the debt ceiling three times under Donald Trump without conditions.

Democrats and the White House will also continue to demand McCarthy lay out and pass a budget to prove that he’s even worth negotiating with, we’re told. There’s a concern that even if Democrats cut a deal with McCarthy, he won’t be able to deliver votes given his limited hold on the GOP conference.

McCarthy’s letter, meanwhile, did not impress Democrats. One senior aide called it nothing more than a “pathetic” attempt to distract from his challenge cobbling together a GOP budget, and almost everyone else said its lack of specifics made it impossible to negotiate over.

But behind the squawking, we found that there were in fact some ideas that piqued their interests. We granted anonymity to a half-dozen Democrats to candidly assess the emerging Republican proposals and whether any of them might grow legs … 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.