POLITICO Nightly: Who’s winning the Reagan primary?

 

BY ADAM WREN BREAKING NEWS — Federal prosecutors have notified Donald Trump in a letter that he is the target of a criminal investigation , according to POLITICO reporting. That notification is the clearest signal yet that special counsel Jack Smith is on the verge of a charging decision in his probe of the former president. Trump is under investigation for concealing reams of classified documents at his private estate and orchestrating a scheme to prevent federal authorities from finding them. Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a campaign event today in Ankeny, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo THE GIPPER GAP — When Mike Pence announced his presidential campaign here in Iowa today, he did something that has become increasingly rare among the 2024 GOP presidential contenders: offer a paean to the late president Ronald Reagan. In telling his political origin story of converting from an Irish Catholic Democrat to a corn-fed Republican, Pence said he “joined the Reagan revolution and never looked back.” He spoke of taking his vice presidential oath by placing his hand on the Reagan family Bible — the first to do so since the Gipper. In his announcement video, Pence was careful to reference Reagan’s famous “shining city on a hill” line, as well as a photo of himself sitting down with Reagan at the White House. “He is a Reagan conservative,” top Pence adviser Marc Short told me after Pence’s speech. The presence of one of the party’s most successful, influential and beloved former presidents often hangs over Republican primaries, both literally and figuratively: the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. will host the second debate later this year. But the Reagan name, ever on the lips of aspiring Republican presidential contenders in elections past, has enjoyed less love so far this cycle. Pence, who turned 64 today, is unique in the field for both his frequent and explicit appeals to Reaganism. In part, it might be his age — Pence is the second oldest in the field behind Trump, and one whose political origin story is so closely tied to Reagan. Pence actually met Reagan while running for Congress. A younger field of candidates, removed from the Reagan lore, are less quick to cite Reagan’s policy victories (Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old longshot candidate, has also praised “Reagan’s moral vision for the country ,” and 44-year-old Gov. Ron DeSantis made Feb. 6 Ronald Reagan Day in Florida, and occasionally talks about Reagan on the trail.) Donald Trump, meanwhile, has become his own kind of political lodestar and antecedent, and was sharply critical of Reagan in his 1987 book Art of the Deal . That’s not to mention his own announcement speech and American Carnage vision of the country, which is fundamentally darker and bleaker than Reagan’s sunny shining-city-on-a-hill repertoire. Reagan’s dwindling preeminence holds true even amid the pages of the candidates’ own memoirs. While Pence cites Reagan no fewer than 34 times in his book So Help Me God , his rivals are far less reverent. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — who would’ve been only 8 years old when Reagan first won the presidency — mentions him 11 times, while DeSantis mentions him just 8 times, Ramaswamy, who was born five years into Reagan’s administration, cites Reagan 6 times across three books. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who would’ve been 15 when Reagan was elected in 1980,doesn’t mention Reagan at all in his book . Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and Reagan’s chief political adviser, told me the trend of declining Reagan references is a result of time passing. “I’m always stunned and sobered when I reflect back on how long it’s been,” Daniels said. “We’re as far from Reagan’s election as he was from the middle of the Great Depression. So, first of all, it’s not surprising. Secondly, I don’t think it’s necessarily advisable to invoke him all the time, for someone who has a distant memory or not remote, no memory at all, for so many of today’s Americans.” Reagan’s influence on the current field “may be asleep right now,” but it’s still there, said Craig Shirley, the Reagan biographer , who chalked it up to “ignorance” among the current field. “All the candidates seem to talk about is the politics of politics,” he said of the current field. “They talk about schedules, and they talk about polls, and they talk about fundraising. They don’t talk about issues. And if you go back to Reagan, all he did was talk about the issues. He didn’t know what he was in the polling. He didn’t care.” Daniels, who predicted his fellow Hoosier Pence and Scott would be the most likely on the trail to talk about Reagan’s legacy, said it is ultimately a good thing for the party to keep moving forward. “I think there are plenty of lessons to be taken from Reagan, but one would not be to keep bringing him up. And I honestly think that he would not encourage that or even be comfortable with it.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at awren@politico.com or on Twitter at @adamwren .   WHAT'D I MISS? — House conservatives choke floor action as revenge for debt deal: A band of roughly a dozen firebrands, mostly in the Trump-aligned Freedom Caucus, are now working to derail senior Republicans’ plans to pass even widely popular party priorities on the floor this week . And they’re preparing to make trouble beyond choking some floor action. More broadly, McCarthy’s right flank is trying to reassert control over a large swath of the GOP agenda. Already, blocs of conservatives are pushing Republican leaders to ramp up attacks against Biden administration officials — while also pushing for spending cuts this fall that would essentially renege on last week’s debt deal. — GOP donor arrested for attacking police with wasp spray on Jan. 6: A prominent Long Island funeral home director and frequent donor to GOP causes was arrested today and charged by federal prosecutors with spraying wasp insecticide at police officers during the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. Peter G. Moloney, who campaign finance records show has given thousands of dollars to GOP campaigns and committees — including Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee and Lee Zeldin, a former congressman and New York gubernatorial candidate — was also charged with assaulting a member of the media. Moloney is slated to make his initial appearance at a federal courthouse on Long Island on this afternoon. — CNN CEO Chris Licht to step down: CNN CEO Chris Licht is stepping down from the network after a tumultuous 13-month tenure marked by low ratings, the firing of a major anchor and an Atlantic profile that called his leadership into question. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told CNN employees of the news in an email today. Licht will be replaced for an interim period by longtime CNN executive Amy Entelis.   GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE .     NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 KINGMAKER — Chris Sununu had just gotten off the phone with Mike Pence. It was barely 27 hours after the New Hampshire governor had announced he was passing on a presidential bid. Pence, who kicked off his own White House campaign today in Iowa, was checking in with Sununu before returning to New Hampshire later this week, reports POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky. The scion of a powerful political family and a popular four-term governor in his own right, Sununu has deep connections in the first-in-the-nation primary state and a better handle on how to campaign here than most. And Republican presidential contenders know it. They were seeking Sununu’s advice on how to run in the state even when it looked like they might be competing against him — trading texts and huddling in his state house headquarters under the colonial-era map of New Hampshire that Sununu sometimes uses to tell candidates where to go and who to see. Read Kashinsky’s fascinating Q&A with Sununu, discussing this event and much more . DAKOTA DARK HORSE — In the last 16 hours, three Republicans have announced they’re running for president — an unfortunate syzygy for candidates whose meticulously crafted messages are now in danger of getting drowned out. And with his virtually nonexistent national profile, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum likely has the most to lose from sharing the news cycle with former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. On the other hand, he may not care too much: Thanks to his deep pockets (and the other candidates’ lackluster prospects), Burgum may have the most upside of the three, writes FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich. You could be forgiven for never having heard of Burgum before. He’s governor of the nation’s fourth-smallest state by population, and until a couple weeks ago, virtually no one outside of North Dakota was talking about him as a potential future president. So why does Burgum think he has a shot at the White House? Maybe because he’s gone from anonymous dark horse to Republican primary winner once before .       AROUND THE WORLD Houses sit in the water in a flooded neighborhood of Kherson, Ukraine, today. Floodwaters from a collapsed dam kept rising in southern Ukraine, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in a major emergency operation that brought a dramatic new dimension to the war with Russia. | Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo UNDER WATER — Ukrainian authorities rushed to rescue hundreds of people stranded on rooftops and supply drinking water to areas flooded by a collapsed dam in southern Ukraine today, reports the Associated Press. The growing humanitarian and ecological disaster is taking place along a river that forms part of the front line in the 15-month war. The collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and emptying of its reservoir on the Dnieper River added to the misery the region has suffered for more than a year from artillery and missile attacks. With humanitarian and ecological disasters still unfolding, it’s already clear that tens of thousands of people have been deprived of drinking water, many are homeless, crops are ruined, land mines have been displaced, and the stage is set for long-term electricity shortages. Kremlin-backed local authorities claim they are rescuing residents from the left bank of the Dnipro River, with some 1,300 out of 40,000 evacuated. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian forces are shooting at Ukrainian rescuers attempting to reach those trapped in flood-struck areas of occupied Kherson. UNDER THE KNIFE — Pope Francis emerged from a three-hour abdominal surgery at a Rome hospital this evening, with no known complications, the Vatican said. The procedure was necessary to repair a painful hernia the pontiff developed, linked to a 2021 operation to remove a significant portion of his large intestine.   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 .     NIGHTLY NUMBER 165,000 The estimated number of annual deaths due to the opioid crisis by 2025 without more policy action, according to Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. That would be an increase of about 55,000 additional deaths per year from the number of people who died from an overdose last year, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RADAR SWEEP MERGER MESS — On Tuesday, news shocked the golf world: the upstart LIV tour, backed by the Saudi investment fund, would be merging with the old-school PGA tour . The deal is especially surprising given that the PGA tour did everything they could do to bash LIV and its financial backers, who were luring away some of the sport’s top stars with cash prizes that the PGA tour was unable to match. Now, the details of the deal suggest that Saudi Arabia will have what’s akin to a controlling stake in men’s golf. Kevin Clark reports on the merger, its geopolitics and why it’s a coward’s way out for The Ringer. PARTING WORDS People take photos of the sun as smoke from the wildfires in Canada cause hazy conditions in New York City today. Smoke from the wildfires has engulfed the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S., raising concerns over the harms of persistent poor air quality. | Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images ORANGE SKIES AHEAD — The unhealthy haze that gripped vast swaths of the United States today discolored skies, ushered school children indoors, put hospitals on alert and peaked air pollution far beyond federal health standards, writes Sean Reilly . And there’s little the government can do about it.  The primary cause: smoke wafting downwind from more than 150 wildfires burning in Quebec Province, Canada, with no immediate respite in sight. The plume “is about as widespread as I’ve ever seen it,” said Paul Miller, executive director of the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a Boston-based group of air pollution regulators from many of the states most directly affected. The episode ranks among the worst on record for the eastern U.S., EPA data indicates. It’s also the latest manifestation of a trend that those regulators are effectively helpless to confront in the short term: bigger and longer-lasting wildfires linked to the effects of climate change. While those blazes are already catastrophically common in California and other Western states, hotter and drier conditions in eastern forests are now facilitating their spread in that part of the country as well. And short of solving climate change, there’s not much for federal regulators to do about it. Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong   FOLLOW US

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