Oliver Wiseman

How Trump survived the primaries With just a handful of states left to vote, primary season is almost over. And no results in Florida and New York next week, or Massachusetts and New Hampshire next month, will change the basic story when it comes to the Republican Party: if this primary season was a chance for the GOP to make a decisive break with Donald Trump, it did not take it. Some had wondered if this round of voting would demonstrate that re-litigating 2020 was a dead end — and might prove the start of a blossoming post-Trump brand of conservatism that moves on from the former president’s hang-ups, mixes the best of Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin and leaves the party light on baggage ahead of an important contest in November.

Cheney’s last stand She may have lost the battle, but she has not lost the war. That was the defiant message from Liz Cheney as she conceded (unsurprising and widely predicted) defeat in yesterday’s Wyoming Republican congressional primary last night. “Our work is far from over,” said the scion of the Cheney dynasty who will be out of office next year. Cheney’s defeat means we now know the fate of all ten of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in his final days in office. Four have announced their retirement. Four have, like Cheney, been ousted in primaries and two — Washington’s Dan Newhouse and California’s David Valadao — managed to survive their primaries.

The CDC confirms its own uselessness More than a year after Joe Biden declared victory in the battle against Covid, the CDC has called it: the pandemic is over. Well, sort of. Announcing the publication of revised guidance yesterday, CDC epidemiologist Greta Massetti insisted that the updated advice “acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where Covid-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.” Ignore Massetti’s throat-clearing. The guidance’s marked change in tone speaks for itself. All social distancing recommendations have been dropped and those exposed to the virus are no longer advised to quarantine for those exposed to the virus. Testing to screen for Covid is no longer recommended for people who do not have any symptoms.

Known unknowns at Mar-a-Lago I’ve felt rather left out in the thirty-six hours or so since Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago house was raided by the FBI. The rest of Washington is partaking in an orgy of certainty, reveling in their confidence of the legal meaning and political ramifications of the extraordinary development when very little is known beyond the basic facts. This is either concrete proof that we are, or are not, living in a banana republic. The raid is either a desperate establishment attempt to stop the Trump juggernaut from rolling to victory in 2024, or it has just saved him from political extinction. These many contradictory claims about the event are made with staggering certainty.

Biden’s big effing deal  In a timeless line from Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells a joke about two elderly women complaining about the restaurant at a Catskill resort. The food is terrible… and such small portions. Democratic praise for the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate this weekend, resembles an upbeat reworking of the famous quip. This legislation is amazing… and so tiny! For now, the president seems content to stick to simple lines about “delivering for working families.

The case for Democratic optimism Maybe everything is going to be fine. Or, at least, not a total disaster. These are the optimistic thoughts that some Democrats are all of a sudden allowing themselves to think. Two recent developments have helped fuel this unexpectedly upbeat mood in a party that has sometimes seemed resigned to midterm wipeout. First, there was Tuesday’s pro-choice victory in deep-red Kansas that has triggered bullishness on the galvanizing, turnout-boosting power of Dobbs. Second, Kyrsten Sinema and Chuck Schumer reached a deal that means the Arizona senator will sign up to a modified version of the reconciliation bill that Joe Manchin unexpectedly gave the green light to last week.

Pelosi goes rogue Is Nancy Pelosi the Margaret Thatcher of American politics? Jacob Heilbrunn makes that mischievous claim in his defense of the speaker of the House’s Taiwan visit on the site this morning. While I certainly wouldn’t go that far, Jacob is right to identify Pelosi’s personal stubbornness, her sheer bloody-mindedness, as crucial to understanding her decision to head to Taiwan in spite of White House advice to the contrary. It seems that the lady’s not for turning.

Manchin throws Biden a lifeline Less than two weeks ago, Joe Manchin told a West Virginia radio host that he couldn’t even contemplate a deal on a reconciliation package until he had seen July’s inflation numbers (which are published in mid-August). Now, to the genuine surprise of most of Washington, the Democrats have unveiled a package of tax hikes and spending on energy, climate change and healthcare. It even has a shiny new name: America, meet the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The package is light on proposals that would actually live up to that name, but it does at least have the advantage of containing no immediate deficit increases and would reduce deficits by more than $300 billion over a decade.

Democrats still can’t get the politics of policing right Have Democrats learned their lesson on policing? There have been times when it feels as though they have, like when former cop Eric Adams won the party’s primary in the New York mayoral race, or when Joe Biden explicitly renounced the idea defunding the police in his 2022 State of the Union, or when Chesa Boudin was hounded out of San Francisco. And then there are times when it is clear just how much of a liability issues of policing and criminal justice still are for the party. This week is fast becoming an example of the latter. House Democrats had hoped to bring forward legislation that would increase police funding. With violent crime on the rise across the country, the proposals are good policy.

Recession? What recession? Magical thinking has long dominated the Biden White House’s approach to economics. Egregious examples include the president’s insistence that there is no relationship between public spending and inflation, or the related nonsensical notion that a massive multi-trillion-dollar spending package will actually help bring prices down. The third, and perhaps the most notorious, inflation-related mistruth: that it would only be a short-term blemish on an otherwise booming economy. Then there’s the especially risible idea that, by virtue of the fact that most emergency pandemic spending automatically expired on Biden’s watch, he deserves to viewed as one of the toughest book-balancing budget hawks in US history. These arguments all share two crucial traits.

What is the January 6 committee trying to prove? Sinister plot or dumb rabble-rousing? A well-thought-through coup attempt that nearly succeeded or the chaotic flailing of a president incapable of accepting defeat? This tension has been at the heart of the conversation over January 6, 2021 ever since pro-Trump protesters made their way into the Capitol that day. At times, this debate can get pointlessly pedantic and frustratingly circular. After all, 2020’s post-election frenzy can be more than one thing at once. Some plots are dumb; coup attempts can be chaotic. Politics, however, isn’t quite so literal minded an endeavor.

The coming energy storm Europe may be grappling with record-breaking heat, but it’s what happens when temperatures drop this winter that has policymakers worried. This morning, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen urged the continent to be “proactive” when she announced a plan to cut gas consumption by 15 percent between now and next spring. “Putin is blackmailing us,” she said in a blunt assessment of the messy confluence of geopolitics and energy policy that has left some of the world’s most advanced economies in such a vulnerable position. Europe’s energy worst-case scenario is not some remote nightmare but an imminent possibility.

Coalition of the redpilled Ruy Teixeira has left the Center for American Progress and will, on August 1, start as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. That sentence will, of course, mean absolutely nothing to the overwhelming majority of Americans. It may not even mean much to you, a subscriber to this email about political life in the country’s capital. But this admittedly very Beltway development is the latest development in a bigger story.

Joe Manchin to the rescue Just when you think the mood among Democrats couldn’t get any darker, it does. Lumbered with a chronically unpopular president, still coming to terms with the end of the Roe era and nervous about an economy that feels like it is spiraling out of control, the party could at least look forward to the prospect of a smaller version of Build Back Better passing the Senate. Well, not any more. Last night Joe Manchin torpedoed plans for any climate change spending or tax increases in any reconciliation package being haggled over by his party for at least a few months.

Mr. Biden goes to Riyadh Tomorrow will see Joe Biden complete the most clear-cut foreign policy U-turn of his presidency when he touches down in Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As a candidate, Biden had pledged to make a “pariah” out of the Saudi regime. After taking office, he declassified the intelligence report on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. But war in Ukraine and soaring global energy prices have forced the president to put realpolitik ahead of posturing.

9.1 percent No one was expecting this morning’s inflation numbers to paint an especially rosy picture. A survey of economists predicted an 8.8 percent year-on-year rise in prices and the White House had been working overtime managing expectations. But the news was worse than expected, with a headline price rise of 9.1 percent in June over the same month last year, yet another forty-year-record. It’ll be hard for the White House to put a positive spin on these numbers, but Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council, tried his best. “While today’s report shows unacceptably high inflation, energy made up 1/2 of the monthly increase & the report is backward looking,” he tweeted.

Taco Jill Jill Biden was in San Antonio yesterday, where she attended something called the “Latinx Incluxion Luncheon” as part of a conference sponsored by Bank of America (or should that be Bxnk of Xmerica?). It was just the sort of mind-numbing-sounding event where the president’s wife is expected to show up, say a few polite words and jet it back to Washington. On this occasion, the first lady and her speechwriters didn’t exactly nail the assignment. Her best effort at a bit of Latinx incluxion was to pay tribute the culture as “distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful of the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio.” Dr.

Biden is stranded Why is Joe Biden’s presidency failing? According to an emerging view on the left, it’s because Biden isn’t going far enough, fast enough. In recent weeks, the focus has been abortion, with the president being criticized for failing to rise to the moment after Dobbs. But the dynamic is basically the same whatever the issue. From climate change and voting rights to healthcare and college tuition, the complaint is by now a familiar one. Whenever the whingefest starts, I find myself asking: are we talking about the same president?

Abe’s assassination shocks the world The assassination of Shinzo Abe has shocked the world. Japan’s former prime minister and perhaps the country’s most recognizable figure on the world stage was shot at a campaign event Friday. Writing for the site, James Snell calls Abe Japan’s “indispensable conservative”: “Japan is now an essential partner of the democratic world in Asia. It has transcended economic stagnation, demographic decline and institutional pacifism to become a diplomatic and military force again. Abe is the reason this has happened.” Former presidents Trump and Obama both issued statements on a leader with whom they had close, productive relationships.

Boris and Biden made the same mistakes The departure of Boris Johnson, who this morning announced that he would resign as British prime minister and Conservative leader, prompted the latest round in a years-long game of comparing him to a blond bombshell political disruptor on this side of the Atlantic. Johnson’s insistence that he cling on to the bitter end offered fresh ammo for the peddlers of the case that he is the British Trump. But sulking for a day or two before throwing in the towel isn’t exactly January 6, and a self-centered determination to fight on isn’t unusual among politicians who make it to the top.