| | |  | BY GABRIEL GAVIN | | | 
Russia's President Vladimir Putin walks down the steps to address troops from the defense ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry gathered in central Moscow today. | Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images | CLINGING TO POWER — It wasn’t long ago that he was Vladimir the Invincible. Conquering Crimea, slaying the oligarchs back home and ruling Russia with an iron fist — it was impossible to imagine a world without Putin. Now, it seems his days may be numbered. The rebellion , launched by his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, is just the latest sign something is going very wrong in Moscow. While the immediate danger is over, the threat is unlikely to go away quickly and the risk of a major rout in Ukraine is growing as a result. On Saturday, the Kremlin was forced to deny that the country’s commander-in-chief had fled north to the second city of St. Petersburg as a mercenary army marched towards Moscow. State newswire TASS, better used to boasting of great victories on the battlefield, ran a front-page story insisting Russia’s government hadn’t been evacuated as workers dug up the highways to stop the advancing tanks. The extraordinary Wagner mutiny sparked manic predictions that the man who has ruled the country for almost a quarter of a century could soon be ousted, or that the nation itself would descend into chaos and civil war. It didn’t — but, despite an eleventh-hour deal averting an outright catastrophe for the Kremlin, Russia is now on the brink. In a late night speech on Monday, Putin said “almost all of Russian society was united” in the face of rebellion. Scenes from Rostov, the strategic southern city Wagner captured over the weekend, tell a different story though — as locals snapped selfies with mercenaries and took to the streets to cheer them on. Nobody, it seems, was prepared to man the barricades in defense of their dear leader. For an already paranoid Russian president, there are a dizzying array of questions to ponder late at night. How was Prigozhin able to take so much territory virtually unopposed? And, if they’d made it to Moscow, who from his inner circle would have been first to stab him in the back? Ordinary Russians, for whom security and stability have long been a key part of Putin’s appeal, can only wonder what the point of their militarized police state is when it seems unable to deal with a few thousand former prisoners with guns. The debacle shows just how thinly stretched their armed forces are as a result of the brutal invasion of Ukraine. For a brief moment on Saturday, only one regional capital had been captured since the start of the war in Ukraine last February — and it was Rostov, in Russia. Putin bet the house on taking Ukraine, and after being pushed out of Kherson, and struggling to hold other key positions, he’s losing big. While a long-awaited counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces seems yet to produce any major results, Wagner’s rebellion can only help them. Tens of thousands of Russia’s most effective fighters are now chief suspects in a coup, told to lay down their arms and leave or sign up for a likely worse-paid role as regular soldiers. If and when Ukraine’s fightback begins in earnest, more major military setbacks could put the Kremlin in even hotter water. The dramatic insurrection over the weekend may have failed to dislodge the president, but it was a premonition of what the war could lead to — chaos and defeat. But, more worryingly for Putin, it also gave Russians and the world a glimpse of how, when the time is right, he might run out of luck. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at ggavin@politico.eu or on Twitter at @GabrielCSGavin .
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| | A message from Bank of America: HBCUs: Building networks of success for Black students. HBCUs are educating teachers, ministers, doctors, and other Black professionals who will shape American life for years to come.
Bank of America is partnering with HBCUs nationwide to support African American educational and economic empowerment. | | | | | — Supreme Court denies state legislatures the unchecked power to set election rules: The Supreme Court today rebuffed a legal theory that argued that state legislatures have the authority to set election rules with little oversight from state courts, a major decision that turns away a conservative push to empower state legislatures. By a 6-3 vote, the court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory in a case about North Carolina’s congressional map . The once-fringe legal theory broadly argued that state courts have little — or no — authority to question state legislatures on election laws for federal contests. — ‘Significant misconduct’ found at prison where Jeffrey Epstein died, inspector general report finds: Staff at the prison where Jeffrey Epstein was held while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges committed “significant misconduct,” including potentially criminal behavior , creating conditions that allowed him to die by suicide in 2019, according to a report released today by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The report found that staff at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York failed to assign Epstein a new cellmate after he had been placed on suicide watch, failed to adequately supervise the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was held prior to his death and neglected to ensure the facility’s security camera system could record video, among other missteps. — Court date postponed for Trump valet Walt Nauta in classified documents case: A court appearance was postponed today for a Donald Trump valet who’s charged with helping the former president hide classified documents that the Justice Department wanted back. A lawyer for the valet, Walt Nauta, told a judge that Nauta had been unable to find a Florida-based attorney. He also said that Nauta was stuck in Newark, N.J., after his scheduled flight down to Florida for the arraignment sat on the tarmac for hours and then was canceled.
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY . | | | | | | | CAUGHT GUESSING — Republican presidential candidate Francis Suarez was caught unaware this morning by a radio interviewer’s question about alleged human rights abuses in China. When the Miami mayor was asked if his campaign would mention the Chinese minority, Suarez responded by asking, “What’s a Uyghur? ” The Chinese government has faced significant international criticism in recent years over its treatment of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the western province of Xinjiang. Beijing, which broadly denies any human rights wrongdoing, is accused of detaining Uyghurs in reeducation camps, where prisoners allege they have been subjected to torture and rape. The U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and European Union have all leveled sanctions against Chinese officials over Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused China of committing “genocide and crimes against humanity.” DEPENDS ON THE MEANING OF STRONGEST — Speaker Kevin McCarthy today seemed to express doubts over whether former President Donald Trump would be the GOP’s “strongest” candidate to win in 2024 — even as he predicted Trump could have the support to defeat President Joe Biden. “Can he win that election? Yeah he can … the question is, is he the strongest to win the election, I don’t know that answer,” McCarthy said on CNBC, in response to a question on if Trump could win the general election and if it was good for the Republican Party if he was the nominee. “Can anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat ‘em.” It’s a surprising statement for McCarthy, the longtime House GOP leader whose loyalty to Trump has been rarely questioned. And it’s one that could raise some questions from Trump’s solid band of supporters among the House GOP — some of whom have already been causing headaches for McCarthy in his first six months as speaker. CAR WARS — Donald Trump is trying to tap into union autoworkers’ anxieties about the switch to electric vehicles , seeking a political vulnerability in one of the Biden administration’s signature economic policies. He aimed a barrage of attacks at President Joe Biden’s environmental stances during a campaign speech Sunday to about 2,000 people in Novi, Mich., contending that electric car manufacturing will destroy jobs in the auto industry. Trump’s remarks about electric cars point to an emerging theme in his presidential campaign that expands on the populist messages he offered to coal miners and blue-collar workers in 2016 and 2020. And they come amid signs of unhappiness among some of Biden’s allies about a crucial theme of the president’s pitch for 2024 — his success in enacting climate and infrastructure laws that are creating manufacturing jobs around the country.
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| | A message from Bank of America:  
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A supporter of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan holds flags near his house, in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 17, 2023. | K.M. Chaudary/AP Photo | NO NONSENSE POLICY — In response to recent protests that supported former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan’s military has cracked down hard on some of its top members . Three senior army commanders were fired and 15 top officials were otherwise disciplined after showing support for the cricket star-turned politician who was the prime minister of Pakistan from 2018 to 2022. The discipline within the military — its most significant against top officials in its own military in decades — is evidence that they’re willing to crack down on any officials who are adding to support for Khan after he was arrested on corruption charges in May. Khan’s supporters accuse the military of orchestrating his removal from office after a vote of no confidence by Parliament last August forced him to vacate the presidency. And since he was briefly arrested in May, protesters who support Khan have broken through military installations and ransacked the residence of a top military commander in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city.
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| | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today . | | | | | | | | |
| | | CRIMES LIVE STREAMED — In the growing ecosystem of servers on the social and video platform Discord, a few stand out as particularly shocking. A brazen community of young people known simply as the “Comm” are live streaming alleged crimes that they’re committing , from robberies and hacking to the grooming of young girls to threatening to inject kidnapping victims with heroin. And court records and other evidence corroborate some of these crimes. Joseph Cox reports on the Discord servers that are out of control for Vice.
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On this date in 1997: Venus Williams (right), accompanied by her younger sister Serena, waves to fans at Centre Court while waiting for play to start. The elder Williams sister competed in her first Wimbledon, a tournament she would go on to win five times, at 17-years old, losing in the first round. | Lynne Sladky/AP Photo | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here .
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| | A message from Bank of America: Historically Black colleges and universities have a long track record of serving as engines of social mobility.
To empower the next generation of graduates, Bank of America supports HBCUs through grants, entrepreneurship programs and advisory services as part of its commitment to racial equality and economic opportunity.
“The history of HBCUs speaks volumes about the resilience of this country and the determination of Black individuals to obtain an education,” says Ebony Thomas, racial equality and economic opportunity executive at Bank of America and a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest HBCU. | | | | |
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