POLITICO Nightly: What the mainstream media can learn from ‘bro podcasters’

 

By Ian Ward Joe Rogan attends the UFC 277 ceremonial weigh-in on July 29, 2022 in Dallas. | Carmen Mandato/Getty Images THE PODCAST PRESIDENCY — On Friday afternoon, former President Donald Trump is slated to sit for an interview with Joe Rogan , the former UFC commentator and host of the most listened-to podcast in America. The sit-down will mark the culmination of a seismic shift that has remade the landscape of political media ahead of Election Day: The rise of independent podcasts as a staple of the presidential candidates’ messaging tours. With Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris also reportedly in negotiations at one point to appear on Rogan’s show, the 2024 election has officially become the “podcast election.” No species of interviewer has benefited more from this shift — or played a more decisive role in prompting it — than the so-called bro podcaster. Exemplified by Rogan, this sub-genre is made up mostly of men who have built enormous followings by engaging prominent figures in the sort of casual, testosterone-soaked banter that defines a certain type of quotidian male-to-male interaction. Many of the most popular hosts come across as loosely right-leaning — at least in a “Barstool conservative” type of way — though most tend to steer clear of blatantly partisan politics. Despite their largely apolitical bent, the bro podcasters have dominated the presidential interview circuit, especially with the Republican ticket: Trump and his running mate JD Vance have appeared on a slew of marquee bro podcasts — including the Nelk Boys’“Full Send” podcast, “This Past Weekend” with Theo Von and “The Shawn Ryan Show,” which sits at #2 on Spotify’s podcast charts between the “Joe Rogan Experience” and Tucker Carlson’s show. The mainstream media has reacted to these podcasters’ growing political influence with a mix of bewilderment and — it must be admitted — not-so-subtle envy , casting their hosts as somewhat useful idiots in the candidates’ attempts to reach out to disaffected and younger male voters. It’s true that these sit-downs are not hard-hitting interviews designed to hold candidates’ feet to the fire on tough issues. But if you spend the time to listen to them in full, it’s obvious that the bro podcasters are managing to elicit something from the candidates that traditional political reporters — and even political entertainers like late-night talk-show hosts — are consistently failing to draw out using more conventional interview techniques. Call it whatever you want: Authenticity may be too strong a word, but something like real personality and individuality shines through in these otherwise softball interviews, breaking through the tired talking points and the political truisms. In this respect at least, mainstream reporters may have something to learn from the bro podcasters. Their sit-downs with the candidates may not be “real” interviews in the traditional journalistic sense, but the podcasts this cycle have demonstrated that adversarial interview techniques aren’t the only — or always the best — way to elicit a nuanced picture of the candidate and their views. Sometimes, sitting back and letting a candidate just talk — bro-to-bro, if you must — unveils a more interesting and textured portrait than the one that emerges on the debate stage or in tense exchanges on cable news. Take, for instance, Vance’s recent interview with Theo Von, a 44-year-old comedian from Louisiana who talks regularly about his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. In the course of an extended exchange about what it was like growing up in a family that dealt with drug addiction, Vance, whose mother is in recovery from opioid addiction, admitted to struggling with “attachment issues” and acknowledged that he is slow to trust even his closest friends and family members — a startlingly frank admission about his personal life that Vance has not made publicly on the campaign trail. Of course, this is of psychological interest to Vance’s future biographers, but it’s also of political interest to voters: The running mate of a notoriously mendacious president is openly admitting that he struggles to trust the people closest to him. Von’s questioning of Vance was hardly hard-hitting, but Vance’s responses weren’t uniformly flattering, either. In one exchange, Vance told Von that his four-year-old son had recently referred to a group of reporters on the campaign trail as “the fake news,” echoing Trump and Vance’s own criticism of the mainstream media. Vance admitted to being taken aback by his son’s comments, adding, “You gotta be careful about that shit.” The exchange raised an obvious question for viewers and voters: If you don’t want your own son repeating your views about the “fake news,” why broadcast the term for the rest of the world to hear? For just a moment, Von’s laid-back approach caused Vance’s mask to slip, suggesting that he’s more ambivalent about his own Trumpian rhetoric than he has previously let on. None of this, it’s fair to say, has come through in Vance’s numerous sit-down interviews with traditional media on the campaign trail, where he has mostly stuck to his talking points about the benefits of Trump’s agenda and the failures of the Biden-Harris administration. That’s partly a function of the difference in format — many podcast appearances run an hour or even two hours long, whereas cable news interviews rarely last more than half an hour — and partly a function of vibes: Candidates go into interviews with mainstream reporters with their guard up, regardless of how an interview actually unfolds. But it’s also a function of how adversarial interviews play in our polarized media landscape. More often than not, Vance and Trump’s adversarial sit-downs with mainstream reporters become material for Republican messaging campaigns, with Trump-friendly social media accounts sharing clips of particularly feisty exchanges as proof that Trump and Vance are willing to fight back against the “fake news.” Both the candidate and the interviewer are incentivized to look tough to satisfy their distinct audiences. Of course, hard-hitting and adversarial interviews with candidates still play a valuable and necessary role in the political mediasphere, but these podcast appearances serve as a timely reminder that pressing candidates about hot-button issues isn’t the only way to extract interesting and valuable material from them. Voters now have fewer and fewer opportunities to learn about the candidates in relatively candid and unvarnished settings. To the extent that the bro podcasters are creating opportunities for that sort of engagement, mainstream reporters should thank them — and learn something from them, too. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at iward@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ianwardreports.   What'd I Miss? — Judge sounds inclined to halt Virginia voter purge: A federal judge signaled that she will likely order Virginia to restore about 1,600 people to its voter rolls after the state removed them in the past three months. Virginia says it has removed people who are not U.S. citizens. But the Justice Department and voting rights groups say that many of the removals may be erroneous — and that trimming the voter rolls so close to Election Day violates federal law. During several hours of arguments in federal court today, Judge Patricia Giles expressed skepticism about the defenses Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) and other state officials have offered for removing voters during a 90-day, preelection quiet period during which federal law prohibits “systematic” efforts to clean up the voting rolls. — Biden to apologize for Native American boarding schools: President Joe Biden plans to issue a formal apology for the role that the U.S. government played in Native American boarding schools, a brutal system that removed children from their homes and forced them to assimilate in an effort to destroy their language and culture. Biden is expected to make the announcement at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona on Friday. It will mark the first formal acknowledgment from a president about the role the federal government played in the boarding school system and the devastating impact it had on generations of Native American families. — Eric Adams’ political challengers slam latest evidence of corruption: “Gross misuse of power,” “Tammany Hall-style corruption” and “shameless.” Those were among the searing critiques from Democrats looking to unseat New York City Mayor Eric Adams, following revelations that his friend and aide Jesse Hamilton steamrolled an official bidding process and awarded a lucrative contract to a losing applicant — who happens to be a major mayoral donor . As POLITICO reported Wednesday, Hamilton waved off the results of a request for proposals process this spring from his perch atop the Department of Citywide Administrative Services real estate division, where he oversees leases between city agencies and private landlords. Nightly Road to 2024 TRUMP BABBLE! PARDONING HUNTER — Donald Trump said today he’s open to pardoning Hunter Biden if he’s reelected — a significant reversal after years of lobbing attacks at the legal issues faced by the president’s son as part of his “Biden crime family” talking point. “I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt when asked if he would consider pardoning Hunter Biden, who was found guilty in June of three felonies in a federal gun trial and pleaded guilty in September to federal tax charges. UPTON EXPLAINS — Retired GOP Rep. Fred Upton got a phone call from Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz on Wednesday. But he insists his decision to endorse Kamala Harris for president less than 24 hours later was one he made on his own . “I just think people have had enough, particularly moderate Republicans,” Upton told POLITICO in an interview today, referring to former President Donald Trump. “I don’t have any hesitation. It was the right thing to do and if it makes a difference — it’s certainly worth it. And people know that there’s cover. It’s not just one [former House Republican], it’s 30 some.” IMPRESSIVE!  SLAM DUNK — The most recent comprehensive study of Pennsylvania’s surging economy was almost startling in its promise, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. The State of Working Pennsylvania report, released just before Labor Day, found that the state’s economic output was “significantly exceeding” pre-pandemic levels, unemployment rates were near 50-year lows, workers’ bargaining power was high, and working-class families were sharing in the prosperity in a more sustained way than at any point since 1980. “Historically, if you told me these would be the numbers — employment, growth, stock market, inflation back down, all these things — I’d say, ‘Wow, slam dunk for the incumbent party,’ ” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. “And that’s the Democrats.” Instead, by almost every available polling metric, the 2024 presidential race in Pennsylvania is a dead heat. And Vice President Kamala Harris’ chance of securing the state’s critical 19 electoral votes may hinge on whether the reality of the state’s bustling economy squares with the perception of its citizens. AROUND THE WORLD A man looks at destroyed buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut on Oct. 7, 2024. | Hussein Malla/AP HELPING HAND — France has helped raise $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million in security assistance to support Lebanon and the more than 1 million people displaced there by the recent Israeli invasion, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said today. President Emmanuel Macron’s government helped secure the donation at a conference in Paris, where senior officials from 70 countries and international organizations have gathered. In his opening speech this morning, Macron said France would give €100 million. Macron also used the address to call for the war to “end as soon as possible” in southern Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces are attempting to dismantle the Hezbollah militant group through a combination of airstrikes and ground operations. NOW DEPLOYED — Military units from North Korea have left their Russian training grounds and entered the zone of combat between Russian and Ukraine forces for the first time, the military defense intelligence service of Ukraine (HUR) said in a statement this evening. Ukrainian spies recorded the troops in Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday, HUR said. North Korean soldiers are being trained at five military sites in the far east of Russia, and have to pass a training course lasting several weeks before being deployed in the war against Ukraine, HUR said. The United States confirmed Wednesday that thousands of North Koreans are training in Russia alongside Kremlin troops.     Nightly Number $6.2 million The amount the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, announced today it would invest in the Senate election in Nevada, a state where it had not previously spent. Positive early-voting trends for Republicans and former President Donald Trump’s polling in the state have spurred GOP optimism in the face of Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) lead in most public and private polling. MUST READ!  SCRUTINIZE SAM BROWN'S HISTORY BEFORE SUPPORTING HIM. HAS NEVER HELD ELECTED OFFICE - DEFEATED IN TEXAS, NO EDUCATION REPORTED  DON'T MAKE YOUR DECISION BASED ON SUPER PAC PROPAGANDA!  EXCERPTS:  Brown, a Purple Heart veteran, has gripped Nevadans’ attention with his story of surviving an explosion while on duty in Afghanistan. He previously ran for office in Texas and then in Nevada for the Senate in 2022 but didn’t make it past the primary. The Reno resident, who moved to Nevada in 2018, worked at an Amazon fulfillment center and founded a business that provides emergency pharmaceutical drugs to veterans. He has prioritized the economy in his fight against the sitting junior senator, calling her a rubber stamp for the Biden-Harris administration that exacerbated rising costs. Democrats, on the other hand, have picked apart Brown’s positions on abortion and Yucca Mountain. GOP PROPAGANDA! THAT'S NOT WHAT CAUSED PRICES TO RISE & LIES ABOUT HOUSING COSTS BECAUSE HE'S ANOTHER MAGA GOP REGURGITATING MANURE! THERE'S NO INDICATION HE HAS ANY EDUCATION - JUST ANOTHER CARPETBAGGER! Brown wants to stop what he calls reckless spending in Washington that caused prices to skyrocket, and he wants to lower taxes on food, gas, medicine and energy, according to the voter guide. He also wants to create better energy and monetary policies that lower costs for production and transportation of goods. To help with housing, Brown pledges to enact legislation to release federal lands in Nevada for housing on a “regular and reliable timetable,” as well as cut regulations that slow down housing development projects. RADAR SWEEP DO IT FOR THE ‘GRAM — Influencers with a huge reach online are only getting younger. And as high school students routinely amass hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of followers across platforms like Instagram and TikTok, they are beginning to make deeply consequential life decisions based on what fits with their “aesthetic.” That starts with where they’re deciding to go to college . One 17-year-old, for example, said that she wants to make sure the campus looks pretty in a particular way, and that there are large scale football games to attend, in order to keep making content that connects with her existing base of followers. For Teen Vogue, Fortesa Latifi reports on this new generation of influencers — and the future consequences of how they’re making decisions, both for them and their followers. Parting Image On this date in 1985: Coretta Scott King (center), wife of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and members of Congress hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to discuss plans for the first annual holiday honoring King. | Scott Stewart/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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Report: “Flash Flooding Is the Number One Storm-Related Killer in the U.S.” Few Cities or Towns in America Are Built to Survive Its Wrath

 

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Report: “Flash Flooding Is the Number One Storm-Related Killer in the U.S.” Few Cities or Towns in America Are Built to Survive Its Wrath

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2024 ~

Flooding from Hurricane Helene in Asheville, NC, Friday, September 28, 2024

As desperate and traumatized residents of Western North Carolina have learned over the past week, everything Americans thought they knew about storm threats must now be reexamined. Some Western North Carolina counties located 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 in Florida’s Big Bend area have reported more deaths than the entire state of Florida.

At yesterday’s press briefing in Buncombe County, North Carolina, Sheriff Quentin Miller reported that the death toll for his county from Hurricane Helene had reached 61; that’s four times the 14 Hurricane Helene-related deaths that the state of Florida is reporting.

As of this morning, total deaths reported in all states impacted by Hurricane Helene is 190, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

After wiping out communities on Florida’s northern coastline from Gulf of Mexico storm surge and 140 mph winds, Hurricane Helene delivered deadly blows inland from flash flooding as it moved north through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), “Flash flooding is the number one storm-related killer in the United States.” The NWS defines flash flooding as follows:

“A flash flood is a rapid rise of water along a stream or in a low-lying urban area. Flash flooding can result from slow-moving thunderstorms, from numerous thunderstorms which develop repeatedly over the same area, or from heavy rains associated with tropical cyclones. These floods may develop within minutes, depending on the intensity of the rainfall, the topography, soil conditions, and ground cover.”

The high death toll in Buncombe County comes from two major rivers, the French Broad River and the Swannanoa River, overflowing their banks with raging torrents of water sweeping away homes, businesses, and cars. Much of the county has been developed like a dangerous bowl, with rainfall from the surrounding Blue Ridge mountains flowing downhill into heavily populated areas, like the city of Asheville, where FEMA and the National Guard continue to truck and airlift food and water to residents cut off from running water, electricity and cell phone service — seven days after the flash flooding hit.

Thousands of towns and cities across the U.S. are at serious risk of flash flooding as their storm drains were never constructed to handle the unprecedented amounts of rainfall now occurring per hour during major storm events.

The North Carolina State Climate Office posted a chart showing record-setting 3-day rainfall totals at 12 Weather Stations in Western North Carolina. According to the Busick, North Carolina Weather Station, as of 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Busick had recorded 79.02 inches of rain year-to-date – but an unprecedented 31.33 inches of that rain came in the three-day period of September 25-27, during the approach of and landfall of Hurricane Helene.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have released preliminary findings that “Climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.”

In September 2023, radar in the town of Leominster, Massachusetts recorded 7.9 inches of rain falling in an hour, creating dangerous flash floods, flooded homes and businesses, and sink holes that stunned area residents.

For the stealthy role that one fossil fuels juggernaut, Koch Industries, has played in climate change, see our report: A Fossil Fuels Giant Has Been Raising the Election Chances of Extreme-Right Candidates — Using a Dangerous High-Tech Weapon.

Tens of millions of Americans are living under the illusion that their city or town faces no catastrophic threat from flooding. A large part of that illusion stems from local politicians refusing to accurately report deaths from drowning during major storm events.

On November 1, 2012 Wall Street On Parade reported the following about deaths in New York City from Hurricane Sandy:

“Despite what the paper of record would have you believe, Hurricane Sandy was not about killer trees. Hurricane Sandy, like Hurricane Katrina, was about killer water.

“The New York Times put it this way on Tuesday, before the death toll had climbed even higher: ‘There were 22 deaths reported in New York City, where the toll was heaviest, and 5 more fatalities elsewhere in the state. Most of all, it was the trees. Uprooted or cracked by the furious winds, they became weapons that flattened cars, houses and pedestrians.’

“Here’s the way those last two sentences should have read: ‘Most of all, it was the wall of water. Giant storm surges rushing over the sea walls, turning roads into instant rivers replete with white caps that pulled two toddlers from their mother’s arms and sent many more to a watery grave in their basements.’

“As of this morning, only 3 people in New York City are reported to have died as a result of falling trees, or 10 percent of the now reported 34 deaths in New York City. A staggering 64 percent of the storm-related deaths in New York City resulted directly from drowning or as a result of an unprecedented wall of water hitting the individual directly or while they were inside their homes.”

An archived article of the New York Times reporting that “Most of all, it was the trees,” can be read here.

The New York Times, apparently, did not want to contradict the then powerful billionaire Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who appeared unable to bring himself to mention the word “drowning” at the many press conferences he held during and after Hurricane Sandy.

On November 2, 2012, under the headline Mayor Bloomberg — Wake Up to the Suffering Around You, Wall Street On Parade reported the following:

“For three days, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has held multiple press conferences characterizing deaths from Hurricane Sandy as stepping on a downed power wire or being crushed by a fallen tree. All the while, as we reported three days ago, the facts proved unequivocally that the vast majority of deaths resulted from drowning.”

On October 31, 2012 Wall Street On Parade reported specific facts on the basement drownings during Hurricane Sandy, writing:

“Three people, aged 50, 57 and 72, drowned in separate basements in the Rockaways. The 57-year old was Henry Sullivan, according to the Associated Press. A man in his 50s was also found dead in a flooded lower Manhattan basement. In Tribeca, a middle-aged parking garage worker was killed when he got trapped in the basement by flash flooding. Police found a 70-year-old woman floating in water inside a home on 98th St. in Queens about 1 a.m. Tuesday morning…

“Artur Kasprzak, an off-duty NYPD officer in his late 20s, was found drowned in the basement of his Staten Island home, after he had moved other family members to safety on higher ground in the house.”

When Hurricane Ida arrived in the New York City area in 2021, the New York Times decided to report those basement drownings, blaming them on illegal apartments rather than the lack of government climate-change planning over the nine-year span since Hurricane Sandy.

At 9:28 p.m. on Wednesday, September 1, 2021 the National Weather Service, for the first time ever, issued a “Flash Flood Emergency” for New York City, and, specifically, for two of its boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens.

To underscore just how urgent and dangerous the situation was, the National Weather Service Tweeted 15 minutes later at 9:43 p.m. the following:

“To be clear… this particular warning for NYC is the second time we’ve ever issued a Flash Flood Emergency (It’s the first one for NYC). The first time we’ve issued a Flash Flood Emergency was for Northeast New Jersey an hour ago.”

Unfortunately, people accustomed to receiving flash flood “warnings” did not appreciate the difference between that and a flash flood “emergency.” The difference cost many lives.

Of New York City’s five boroughs, two are islands, surrounded by water: Manhattan and Staten Island. Two other boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are geographically part of Long Island, which is also surrounded by water: on the north by Long Island Sound, on the east and south by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by New York Bay and the East River. Only the borough of the Bronx is connected to the U.S. mainland.

Despite indisputable evidence of sea level rise and growing catastrophic threats from unprecedented levels of rainfall, New York City’s five boroughs are home to 8.4 million people.

The city of Asheville, North Carolina in Buncombe County – which may require months of work by state and local governments, FEMA, the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers to get back on its feet – has a population of 93,776, according to the most recent census data of July 1, 2022.

WALL STREET ON PARADE

Don Jr. Falls Apart While Giving Public Speech, Crowd Falls Silent

 

#DonaldTrumpJr #2024election #Campaign

Donald Trump Jr. is having a difficult time resonating with the crowd during his public speeches. Leave a comment with your thoughts below! #DonaldTrumpJr #2024election #Campaign

8:52

Lauren Boebert's Mouth Backfires On Her After Federal Records Go Public

by Rebel HQ

The MOST Racist Fox News Clip EVER

 

Curtis Sliwa, leader New York City's Guardian Angels, showed the group surrounding and shoving a man during a live broadcast on Sean Hannity's show, after falsely claiming he was a migrant. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.

POLITICO Nightly: The showdown in the suburbs

 

BY CALDER MCHUGH Mazi Pilip arrives to vote early at a polling station in Massapequa, New York. | Adam Gray/POOL/AFP via Getty Images SNOW MACHINE — It’s a snow day across much of Long Island’s Nassau County today. But as the kids stayed home, voters — at least those who remain motivated enough — headed to the polls for a nationally watched special election in New York’s 3rd District. Multiple inches of snow have dumped on the North Shore, and turnout this morning appeared considerably lower than usual , though it picked up this afternoon as the storm abated and polls remain open. The race pits former three-term Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) against a little known, Republican one-term member of the Nassau County legislature, Mazi Pilip. But the real question today, in light of the snow hammering the district, is how much juice does the Nassau Republican machine have? In the decades after World War II, this was the nation’s preeminent suburban political operation. It was a place where Republicans successfully replicated big-city, machine politics (the operation owned a printing plant for candidate mailers) and even GOP presidents came here to pay their respects. The zenith of the Nassau machine’s power came when an unknown town supervisor from Hempstead named Al D’Amato sent shockwaves through the political world when he defeated the iconic Jacob Javits in the Republican Senate primary — and then went on to squeak by Democrat Elizabeth Holzman — in 1980. D’Amato served for three terms until Chuck Schumer bested him in 1998. While much of the luster has come off the machine in recent decades as the county became more competitive, Nassau Republican party boss Joseph Cairo Jr., who’s served in the post since 2018, has it humming again, leading to big wins in 2022. In response to getting stunned last cycle, Democrats have redoubled their organizational efforts. It has paid off with a solid advantage in the early vote totals that could prove key if Election Day turnout is lower than expected due to the storm. Another reason for Democratic hope: After years of doing better with low-propensity voters and worse during off-year or special elections, Democrats nationwide now appear to have a special election advantage . The airwaves have been blanketed with ads; the parties combined have spent $22 million on advertisements according to ad tracker AdImpact, with Dems holding a $13.8 million to $8.1 million advantage. Ad buys are expensive on Long Island because of the pricey New York media market, but those numbers are still astounding for a special election. Cairo’s plan to run a hand-picked county legislator against a well-funded Democrat with experience and a familiar local name is a test of just how much sway he has and how well-oiled his machine is. It’s a complex system of old-school patronage that doles out government posts and expects thousands of local officials to do their part as hard-charging volunteers. That local system is up against a national Democratic effort led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who sees the Long Island seats that Democrats lost in 2022 as a key to regaining the House majority next year. As the snow poured down this morning, national Republicans brought in their big guns, too. The Republican-affiliated Congressional Leadership Fund hired snow plowing companies to clear the streets in the 3rd District, making it easier to get to the Election Day polling locations that dot the district. Now, it’s up to Cairo’s GOP army to stage the upset. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh .   YOUR VIP PASS TO THE MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE : Dive into the heart of global security with POLITICO's Global Playbook at the 2024 Munich Security Conference. Gain exclusive insights and in-depth analysis as author Suzanne Lynch navigates the crucial discussions, key players and emerging trends that will shape the international security landscape. Subscribe now to Global Playbook and stay informed .     WHAT'D I MISS? — Chief justice gives Jack Smith one week to respond to Trump’s bid to stave off trial: Chief Justice John Roberts is giving prosecutors a week to respond to former President Donald Trump’s request to keep his federal criminal election-subversion trial on hold while he tries to persuade the Supreme Court to scuttle it entirely on the grounds of presidential immunity. A brief docket entry from the court today morning said special counsel Jack Smith has until next Tuesday at 4 p.m. to address the emergency application Trump’s lawyers filed at the high court Monday. — Senate passes $95B aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan despite Trump attacks: The Senate approved $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan aid by a 70-29 vote early this morning, sending the bill to an uncertain fate in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson is giving the legislation a frosty reception. Despite a last-ditch effort from conservative opponents of the bill, Johnson‘s cold water and former President Donald Trump’s attempts to kill the legislation, Republican support for the deal actually grew overnight, with 22 GOP senators voting in favor of the package — a kind of rejection of those in the party, like Trump, who argued any aid should be structured as a loan. — Blinken spoke to Paul Whelan, American detained in Russia, on Monday: Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently spoke with Paul Whelan , the former Marine who has been jailed in Russia for more than five years, Blinken said today. Blinken spoke on the phone with Whelan on Monday, he said during an event on hostage diplomacy in Washington D.C. But he provided few details about what he discussed with Whelan. The U.S. government, Whelan and his family maintain that he was unjustly accused and convicted after being arrested on espionage charges in Russia in 2018 and later sentenced to 16 years in prison. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 NIKKI THE KNIFE — With less than two weeks to go until the South Carolina primary, and with early voting already underway, Nikki Haley is attacking Donald Trump harder than ever before, escalating her criticisms of his character and behavior , reports the New York Times. Barnstorming in South Carolina on Monday, Haley said that Trump, the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination, had disrespected U.S. troops with his comments insinuating that her husband, a National Guardsmen, deployed overseas to escape her, and for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe that had not paid the money they owed to the military alliance. “The most harm he’s ever come across is whether a golf ball hits him on a golf cart, and you’re going to go and mock our men and women in the military?” Haley said in Elgin, S.C., remarks that kept up her steady drumbeat of criticism on the matter. She also sent a fund-raising text on Sunday and released a digital ad on Monday. HOME STYLE — Nikki Haley made a campaign stop today in her hometown of Bamberg , a reliably Democratic rural town that she has described as instrumental to the values that guide her presidential bid, as well as a place where she and her family experienced discrimination. The Associated Press reports Haley’s hometown was her first stop as she barnstormed across the state in the closing days ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary, aiming to cut into Donald Trump’s popularity in the state. The former president plans to hold a rally Wednesday in North Charleston; Haley, meanwhile, is heading to Texas later this week for fundraising and campaigning in the Super Tuesday state. RETURN TO SENDER — The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. padded its war chest with millions of dollars in contributions from one of the best-known private security executives in the country — Gavin de Becker — writes POLITICO. And then it did something remarkable: it returned nearly all of the funds, making his contributions effectively a loan. The move shocked campaign finance watchdogs who said they’ve never seen such an arrangement before. De Becker’s contributions helped the PAC report a high fundraising total that can, in turn, be seen as a sign of legitimacy for the committee. All told, de Becker made $10 million in donations to the super PAC; $9.65 million of which was returned. AROUND THE WORLD Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Rafah on Feb. 12, 2024. | Fatima Shbair/AP PROGRESS REPORT — Israel and Hamas are making progress toward another cease-fire and hostage-release deal , officials said today, as negotiations went on and Israel threatened to expand its offensive to Gaza’s southern edge, where some 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge. The talks continued in Egypt a day after Israeli forces rescued two captives in Rafah, the packed southern town along the Egyptian border, in a raid that killed at least 74 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and caused heavy destruction. The operation offered a glimpse of what a full-blown ground advance might look like. A senior Egyptian official said mediators have achieved “relatively significant” progress ahead of the Cairo meeting between representatives from Qatar, the U.S. and Israel. The official said the meeting would focus on “crafting a final draft” of a six-week cease-fire deal, with guarantees that the parties would continue negotiations toward a permanent cease-fire. CIA chief William Burns and David Barnea, head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, attended the Cairo talks. Both men played a key role in brokering the previous cease-fire. FORCED LABOR FOUND — The Chinese region of Xinjiang continues to subject members of the Uyghur ethnic group to forced labor two years after a damning U.N. report detailed the abusive practice, according to new research previewed exclusively by POLITICO EU. The findings will likely pressure Western lawmakers to further restrict imports of products from the region. According to a report by Beijing-sanctioned academic Adrian Zenz, due to be published this week in the Jamestown Foundation China Brief, “forced labor transfers” of the Uyghur Muslim workforce in 2023 “exceeded those from the previous year and surpassed state-mandated quotas.” The study, which focuses on 2023 and early this year, adds to a growing body of evidence that Beijing is using forced labor and mass internment camps to control the Uyghurs — and ramps up pressure on the European Union to finalize plans for a bloc-wide ban on imports of products made with forced labor. Such a ban, currently in the hot phase of negotiations, would allow customs authorities in EU countries to take products off the market if they are found to have been made using forced labor.   YOUR GUIDE TO EMPIRE STATE POLITICS : From the newsroom that doesn’t sleep, POLITICO's New York Playbook is the ultimate guide for power players navigating the intricate landscape of Empire State politics. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest and most important stories from Albany, New York City and around the state, with in-depth, original reporting to stay ahead of policy trends and political developments. Subscribe now to keep up with the daily hustle and bustle of NY politics.      NIGHTLY NUMBER Over 1 million The number of New York City students and staff who — after switching to remote learning for the day due to school closures in a snowstorm — were affected by a crash in the city’s remote learning software. RADAR SWEEP GUEST AT YOUR OWN FUNERAL — Deborah Vankin, an arts and culture writer for the Los Angeles Times, discovered she was the victim of an AI death hoax, which spread fake news online about her supposed death. It was part of an elaborate phishing scheme, created by anonymous scammers, that used her name as clickbait. You can read more about the surreal experience of what it’s like to read your own obituary here . PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1990: Workers carry absorbent pom-poms and large plastic bag with mini-booms as they head for the surf at Bolsa Chica State Beach near Huntington Beach, Calif.. Waves of gooey brown foam and sludge came ashore after an oil spill that sent more than 416,000 gallons of oil into the ocean. | Alan Greth/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Mia McCarthy @Reporter_Mia   FOLLOW US

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