 | By Charlie Mahtesian and Calder McHugh | | Former President Donald Trump participates in a question-and-answer session with political reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists Annual Convention in Chicago on Wednesday. Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News (right) was one of the moderators. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO
| TIME BOMB — Donald Trump is once again at the center of the attention economy after drawing gasps for questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ race and heritage . He’s muscled his way back into the news cycle after nearly two weeks of Harris dominance. The question is at what cost. It’s too soon to know whether Trump has done his campaign any lasting damage or whether he’s simply triggered another outrage cycle that’s destined to burn itself out. What seems clearer is that Trump has handed his party a time bomb that’s set to detonate after he’s left the scene, if not in November. That’s because the multiracial population in the United States — which includes Kamala Harris — is the fastest growing demographic group in the country, according to the 2020 Census. Between 2010 and 2020, it nearly tripled in size to 33.8 million people . These voters, who self-identify as more than one race, aren’t likely to take kindly to efforts to pigeonhole, politicize or disparage multiracial identity, as Trump sought to do with Harris, who is both Black and Asian American. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now, she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said in an interview Wednesday at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” The problem isn’t merely Trump’s deliberately provocative remarks about the authenticity of Harris’ racial identity. It’s also what the discussion reveals about him and, by its tacit assent, the GOP. The very focus of his argument betrays an anachronistic view of race at a time when attitudes toward racial identity — for a variety of reasons — are rapidly changing. Trump and the older elements of the MAGA coalition may demand a crisper delineation of racial identity — the kind that they’ve been familiar with for much of their lives — but that’s at odds with the direction the country is headed. The ham-handed ploy to portray Harris, an HBCU grad, as a kind of race traitor or an inauthentically Black person mainly serves to remind voters of the 78-year-old Trump’s advanced age — nothing says septuagenarian like a preoccupation with pointless racial and ethnic distinctions. The trouble for the Republican Party is that Trump’s remarks come amid signs of a historic realignment, driven by gains among working class Latino and Black voters, that would remake the GOP into a populist, multiracial working class coalition . Many of those voters have a more fluid definition of race. Roughly 28 million Hispanics identified as more than one race in 2021 , up from just 3 million in 2010. The pace is slower among Black Americans, but still notable: In 2000, 93 percent identified their race and ethnicity as Black alone. By 2019, that number was down to 87 percent . And Trump’s attacks are all the more conspicuous given that the only non-white president the United States has ever elected is multiracial himself — Barack Obama was born to a white mother and a Black father. Trump, of course, was a prominent member of the “birther” movement, insisting that Obama was not born in the U.S. His attacks on Harris are of a different stripe — that she’s somehow not Black enough, or not authentically Black. They are reflected in some corners of the internet , where influencers suggest that Harris will prioritize “East Indian immigrants” over Black Americans, or that she doesn’t share the same experiences as other Black Americans given that she’s a descendant of Jamaicans rather than an American descendant of slavery, or “ADOS.” These ultra-fringe movements, though, are just that — representative of a tiny sliver of the American public. And if Trump wants to expand the Republican tent, attacking Harris for her racial background based on an outmoded understanding of race in America will likely do just the opposite. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com and cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie and @calder_mchugh .
| | — Narrowed version of Trump’s New York gag order will remain in place for now, appeals court rules: A panel of appeals judges today rejected Donald Trump’s effort to toss the remaining limitations imposed by a gag order stemming from his Manhattan criminal case, leaving the Republican presidential nominee restricted in his public comments even during the heated general election stretch. In late June, Trump succeeded in convincing the judge who imposed the gag order, Justice Juan Merchan, to loosen the restrictions, allowing the former president to comment publicly on witnesses and jurors involved in Trump’s criminal trial, which ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts in late May. — Senate blocks bipartisan tax package: The Senate blocked a once-promising $78 billion tax package today in the chamber’s last vote before lawmakers headed out of Washington for August recess. The bill went down in a vote of 44-48, with the vast majority of Republicans, one Democrat and two independents voting against a procedural motion to limit debate on the package, which includes an expansion of family tax credits and would revive a trio of lapsed business breaks. It would have required 60 votes in favor to succeed.
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“Sixteen million kids will be worse off and half a million will remain in poverty because Senate Republicans decided they’d rather wait around and hope Trump wins in November than take a bipartisan victory today,” said Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a prime negotiator of the package, in a statement after the vote.
— Key Trump ally in 2020 should lose law license for two years, DC disciplinary panel rules: Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department attorney who became a central figure in Donald Trump’s bid to seize a second term he didn’t win, should be suspended from practicing law for two years , a Washington, D.C., disciplinary panel ruled today. The oversight panel, authorized by the D.C. bar, rebuked Clark for aiding Trump’s effort to use the Justice Department’s might to undermine the results of the 2020 election. As part of that effort, Clark proposed a plan to persuade Republican-led legislatures to appoint pro-Trump presidential electors in states Joe Biden won. Clark’s role in the scheme violated his code of professional ethics as an attorney and even threatened to destabilize the country, the panel found.
| | THE FRACKING WHISPERER — This week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been doing damage control for statements she made in 2019 in support of a ban on hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. Politicians seeking votes in Pennsylvania have to stake middle ground on fracking, a method of drilling horizontally through shale to tap pockets of natural gas. Harris’ flip-flop is emblematic of the treacherous path Democrats tread in Pennsylvania where the fossil fuel industry flexes economic and political muscle , writes the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the same time, the state has forceful environmentalists pushing for renewable energy. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential Harris running mate, has managed to keep the natural gas industry from getting too uneasy, although bruising some people in the process. Observers say he could help Harris navigate a tricky landscape. THE NEVER SHAPIRO MOVEMENT — As Kamala Harris prepares to name her running mate ahead of a rally on Tuesday in Philadelphia, pro-Palestinian protests are very much part of the calculus surrounding Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro , who is believed to be on her shortlist of potential running mates, writes the New York Times. Efforts by a motley collection of left-wing and pro-Palestinian activists to derail his nomination have presented the Harris campaign with a decision as the vice president prepares to make one of most significant choices of her career: Should she take the opportunity to stand up to her far-left flank in an appeal to the center of the party and to independents, or should she shy away from inflaming an issue that has divided and bedeviled the party — Israel’s war in Gaza? BALLOT WARS — A judge refused today to put on hold his ruling that allows disabled people in Wisconsin to be emailed absentee ballots at home in November’s presidential election in the closely watched battleground state, reports the Associated Press. Republicans asked the judge to not enforce his ruling while their appeal is pending. But Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell rejected their arguments today, saying putting his ruling on hold “would inflict significant harm on both the disability rights advocates and the public interest.” It will now be up to the state appeals court to decide whether to pause the ruling that opens up a new way for an unknown number of disabled voters to cast their ballots in swing state Wisconsin before the Nov. 5 election.
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President Joe Biden, joined by relatives of prisoners freed by Russia, delivers remarks on the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian captivity today. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | FREE AT LAST — Four Americans and 12 Germans were released from Russia today in one of the biggest and most complex prisoner swaps in U.S. history . The Americans included three journalists: Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza, according to U.S. officials. Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive and former Marine, was also released. One of the freed Germans was Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death in Belarus. Several Russian dissidents imprisoned in the country were also released. In exchange, Moscow received eight Russians who had been imprisoned in five different countries. The biggest prize of the group for Russia was Vadim Krasikov, a Kremlin-connected colonel in Russia’s secret service who was jailed in Germany in 2019 for killing a Chechen dissident. The deal, which had been in the works for more than a year, marks a major victory for President Joe Biden. “In the context of the war against Ukraine and the overall degradation of our relations with Russia, securing the release of Americans detained in Russia has been uniquely challenging,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters today. “It became clear that the Russians would not agree to the release of these individuals without an exchange that included Vadim Krasikov.” The agreement was finalized several days before the president announced that he was leaving the ticket, said a senior administration official. And read the inside story of how the negotiations went down from The Wall Street Journal .
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0.25 percent The amount that the Bank of England just lowered its main interest rate , from 5.25 percent to an even 5 percent. It’s the first interest rate cut from the bank since the onset of Covid, and makes it the latest central bank to cut interest rates after a stretch of increases. |
| | | COVER ART COVERAGE — Do you have a favorite album cover? The art of figuring out how to brand the cover of a record has become an industry in and of itself. And while a lot of artists opt for abstract art on their albums, many over the years have ventured across America (and the world) in order to capture what they believe to be the right image to represent their music . In Smithsonian Magazine, Catherine Duncan took a look at six iconic covers — from KISS’ “Dressed to Kill” to Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and the stories behind where exactly in the U.S. they were shot and why each artist chose these landscapes.
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On this date in 1990: About 15,000 people, led by Roman Catholic nuns, march through the streets of New Delhi to the Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh’s residence to protest the alleged rape in July of two Roman Catholic nuns in Gajraula, a town in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and the police’s indifference to catch the perpetrators. | Barbara Walton/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | |
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