POLITICO Nightly: A key number to watch in the fight against inflation

 

BY VICTORIA GUIDA President Joe Biden and then-Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) speak with workers at the Metro D Line Extension Transit Project in Los Angeles. | Apu Gomes/Getty Images PRODUCTIVITY POINTS — Prices have gone up a lot over the past couple of years, which, unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve noticed. Wages, too, have surged and are now growing faster than inflation. But the Federal Reserve has kept a wary eye on worker income for fear that it might lead to a resurgence in inflation. If you read that paragraph, you might think, despairingly: do we really have to worry about wages growing too fast? The good news is that the answer is no, not necessarily. But the economy does need a special ingredient: productivity growth. That is, more output from the same inputs. “The absolutely most critical piece of information that we need to glean is, what is happening to the productivity growth rate?” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told Nightly recently. “The question of, ‘Is this rate of wage inflation consistent with this rate of price inflation?’ That cannot be answered unless you say what the productivity growth rate is.” A reductive but useful way of thinking about wage growth is productivity growth plus inflation. So if you have 4 percent wage growth and 1 percent productivity growth, that implies 3 percent inflation — above the Fed’s 2 percent target. But if productivity growth is higher, you can have higher wages without rapid price increases. And there is more good news. Maybe. The most recent data for the second quarter (April to June) showed productivity grew at an annualized rate of 3.7 percent. That’s gangbusters compared to the rate we saw before the pandemic, which was more like 1 percent. Before we pop the champagne, though, there are caveats. Productivity is output per hours worked. On an individual level, you might have the same productivity on a given day if you’re getting a little bit done each hour or achieving a ton for just a couple hours. On a macroeconomic scale, we measure how much is produced by everyone combined in the aggregate amount of time they’re working. As you might guess, that’s a massive undertaking. Initial data is quite noisy, and it gets significantly revised as more, better data becomes available. But even if 3.7 percent gets revised down, or if it’s just a one-off, there’s reason to be optimistic that productivity growth might be a little higher going forward. “We should hope that the recent second-quarter productivity number is the real deal,” said James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “If the U.S. economy is going to grow anywhere near as fast in the future as it has in the past, productivity growth is going to have to do the heavy lifting.” Productivity last had a sustained surge because of the proliferation of the internet, though it can sometimes spike for bad reasons as well; often it goes up during a recession when there are layoffs because companies are able to sustain the same level of output for a time with fewer people. This happened in 2020. Then in 2022, productivity actually dropped because companies were adding workers so fast, so more hours were being worked but less was being produced. But now, those workers are largely trained up and supply chains have largely healed, opening the floodgates for more production, notes Skanda Amarnath, executive director of the worker advocacy group Employ America. “Output gains tied to the recovery that preceded it are starting to shine through,” he said. Now that the weirdness of the pandemic seems to have been more ironed out in the data, Goolsbee thinks that the second half of the year will be more instructive as to whether we’re returning to our disappointing pre-pandemic trend or whether we’ll see a boost. The biggest thing everyone is watching? If and when artificial intelligence will begin to show up in the productivity data. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at vguida@politico.com on Twitter at @vtg2 .   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO APP: Stay in the know with the POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS  – DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID .     WHAT'D I MISS? — Trump’s bond set at $200,000 in Georgia election-related case: Donald Trump’s attorneys have signed an order setting his bond on racketeering charges in Georgia at $200,000 and binding Trump to a set of rules that explicitly limit his ability to use social media to attack witnesses or co-defendants in the case. The three-page order, signed by Georgia Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, sets the conditions of Trump’s pretrial release in the case, which stems from his effort to subvert the 2020 election. — Tropical Storm Hilary shutters Southern California schools: District leaders fearing safety hazards from Tropical Storm Hilary moved to close schools across much of Southern California today. The nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, announced Sunday it would close to allow staff time to check buildings for damage from the rare West Coast tropical storm — and to avoid potentially dangerous bus rides to school. San Diego Unified pushed the start of its school year to Tuesday, but asked staff to report to work if they could do so safely. Several other school districts in Los Angeles County, including in Pasadena, also announced plans to close, bracing for the storm to swirl northeast and risk flooding throughout the region. — AI cannot hold copyright, federal judge rules: Artificial intelligence cannot hold a copyright for works it creates, a federal judge ruled. Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the U.S. Copyright Office was correct in denying copyright protections to a work that was created entirely without human involvement. The ruling will be a critical component in future legal fights as lawyers and inventors test the limits of intellectual property laws when applied to AI. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 SECOND IMPRESSIONS — Vice President Kamala Harris’ term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate. They’ve fueled whispers about whether she’ll be a drag on the reelection ticket as the 2024 race heats up, writes POLITICO. Now her political future, and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket in 2024, hinges on a simple question: Is it possible for Harris to make a second impression ? For Harris, it’s a question that fundamentally misunderstands the point. In her mind, she’s the same person she was when the prevailing narrative of her was that of a star prosecutor, ascendant political talent and even the future of the Democratic Party. UNREQUITED BROADSIDES — Chris Christie built his entire presidential candidacy toward a marquee confrontation with Donald Trump, relentlessly goading him and needling him as a coward in a clear effort to tempt the quick-to-anger former president into showing up to the debate on Wednesday in Milwaukee. It appears Trump will not take the bait, other than swiping back at the former New Jersey governor on social media and in speeches, writes the New York Times. Last week, he signaled that he planned to skip the first Republican debate and instead sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson that will be broadcast online at the same time. Trump’s absence could lead to an anticlimactic scene at the debate , with Christie forced to launch unrequited broadsides through the airwaves without the fireworks of a Trump response. TRUMP’S TRIAL DATE — Federal prosecutors objected today to the April 2026 trial date proposed by lawyers for Donald Trump in the case accusing the former president of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election, reports the Associated Press. Members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in a court filing that Trump’s lawyers last week had exaggerated the amount of material that they would need to sift through in order to be ready for trial. In suggesting an April 2026 trial date, defense lawyers said they had been provided by prosecutors with 11.5 million pages of potential evidence to review. But prosecutors said much of that includes duplicate pages or information that is already public, such as documents from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as copies of Trump’s social media posts. AROUND THE WORLD Presidential candidate Luisa González, of the Citizen's Revolution Political Movement, speaks to supporters after the polls closed in Quito, Ecuador. | Carlos Noriega/AP Photo IT’S A RUNOFF — Ecuadorian voters looking for a new leader to help curb the country’s unprecedented violence will have to head to the polls again in October for a runoff, reports the Associated Press’ Regina Garcia Cano .   The October battle will pit Luisa González, an ally of Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa (who was convicted of corruption in 2020 in absentia, though remains influential in the country), against former lawmaker Daniel Noboa, the son of banana magnate Alvaro Noboa. The younger Noboa was the big surprise of the election, winning 24 percent despite never polling higher than fifth. González, meanwhile, was the frontrunner throughout but only captured 33 percent, well short of the 50 percent she needed to win outright. In third place with 16 percent was Christian Zurita, whose name was not on the ballot but who replaced Fernando Villavicencio, whose killing this month as he left a campaign rally in Quito, the capital, laid bare people’s fears over unprecedented violence in a country they considered peaceful up until three years ago. MOVED IT ALL ONLINE — China wants to define how the metaverse works — and it is pushing proposals that bear an eerie resemblance to the country’s controversial social credit systems, proposals reviewed by POLITICO showed , according to Gian Volpicelli . The proposals, drafted by the state-owned telecoms operator China Mobile, floated a “Digital Identity System” for all users of online virtual worlds, or metaverses. They recommended that the digital ID should work with “natural characteristics” and “social characteristics” that include a range of personal data points like people’s occupation, “identifiable signs” and other attributes. They also suggested this information be “permanently” stored and shared with law enforcement “to keep the order and safety of the virtual world.” The proposals even provide the example of a noxious user called Tom — an ideal stand-in for whoever uses the fledgling technology, for instance for gaming or socializing — who “spreads rumors and makes chaos in the metaverse”; the digital identity system would allow the police to promptly identify and punish him. The proposals are part of discussions between tech experts and officials at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ telecoms agency that sets global rules for how technology works. Chinese public and private actors have sought to set global standards on fledgling technologies at the ITU — a strategy that Western officials have previously warned about as China seeks to promote a government-controlled version of the internet and telecommunications. Western officials already rang the alarm in 2020 over similar attempts by Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to rewrite how internet protocols, a key building block of global internet traffic, work.   Enter the “room where it happens”, where global power players shape policy and politics, with Power Play. POLITICO’s brand-new podcast will host conversations with the leaders and power players shaping the biggest ideas and driving the global conversations, moderated by award-winning journalist Anne McElvoy. Sign up today to be notified of the first episodes in September – click here .     NIGHTLY NUMBER Over 8,500 The number of Mauritanian migrants who crossed the Mexico-U.S. border between March and June , a huge surge up from just 1,000 in the four months prior. The uptick is due to the discovery of a new route through Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and some other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel. The news of the new route of migration to the U.S. has spread largely through Instagram and TikTok. RADAR SWEEP THE CULT OF LORNE — In today’s media landscape, rarely is there still one singular figure who can define a show or make or break a career. Maybe the last vestige of the true super-producer is Lorne Michaels , the scion of the SNL empire and its products, which include a constellation of stars like Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson and so many others. What all of those people have in common is they’ve essentially pledged allegiance to Michaels and his brand, even long after leaving SNL. For Longreads, Seth Simons digs into the cult of Michaels, why he’s managed to stay singularly relevant for decades, and what could be next for him and his empire. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1940: Doctors and nurses watch over Leon Trotsky as he dies from head wounds suffered in an attack in Mexico City. The exiled Russian revolutionary and co-founder of the Soviet Union, was attacked with a pickax by Ramón Mercader and fatally wounded. While still conscious, Trotsky said that his death was ordered by Joseph Stalin; it was later confirmed Mercader was an agent of the Soviet Union. | AP Photo 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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POLITICO Nightly: Learning from the ‘Covid dodgers’

 

BY JOANNE KENEN A Covid-19 testing tent sits along a street in New York City on March 9 | Spencer Platt/Getty Images STEERING CLEAR — Is ‘Novid’ a thing? Have some people really gone through three-and-a-half years of Covid and still never gotten the disease through some combination of caution and luck? And if a slice of the public really has avoided the virus — even amid the current Covid uptick   that has led to slight rise in hospitalizations — can scientists learn from them? The answer is yes and yes — with the usual Covid caveats is that a lot is still unknown. There probably are a relatively small number of people who really haven’t gotten it — although many if not most of those who think they were untouched probably had very mild or asymptomatic cases. Maybe we should call them LowVids. And yes, scientists working on the next generation of treatments and vaccines can in fact learn from these individuals. Some recent genetic findings published in Nature have pointed them in at least one potentially fruitful direction. Studies of blood samples showed in 2022 that about 60 percent of the U.S. public had been infected. More recent studies ran quite a bit higher, in the high 80s or into the 90s. Blood studies have limitations though — they aren’t representative of the population as a whole, and because Covid immunity — both from prior infection and vaccination — declines over time, it’s possible that someone who had Covid early on wouldn’t have signs of it in their blood one, two or three years later. “No one knows for sure (how many remained uninfected). It could be as low as four or five percent. It could be, you know, nine or 10 percent. But it probably isn’t 15 percent,” said Eric Topol, a physician-scientist at Scripps Research and the author of the Ground Truths newsletter that has helped explain Covid to the public. Katelyn Jetelina, in her popular Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, recently cited some research in the U.K that suggested that on average, people get it twice a year . But many infections are so mild that people don’t realize it’s Covid, or they are asymptomatic, meaning their bodies fought infection off so well that they never got even a teeny bit sick. At home rapid Covid tests don’t pick up every infection immediately, which is why the CDC recommends testing two or three times. Why some people don’t get sick — even if members of their household have been diagnosed with Covid — is probably “a mixture of luck and maybe some genetics and maybe a lot about vaccination” plus in some cases some immunity from a prior infection, whether confirmed by a test or not, said Jacek Skarbinski, a physician and scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. Research led by Jill Hollenbach at UCSF recently published in Nature examined 30,000 individuals — and found only 1,400 hadn’t fallen ill from Covid. Importantly, they identified a gene that means people are more likely to remain asymptomatic — twice as likely with one copy of the gene, a whopping eight times as likely with two copies. (People aren’t born with the gene; it's acquired from prior exposure to a less dangerous strain of coronavirus that predates the pandemic.) That discovery does open important new research pathways, particularly for therapeutics. “It’s a long way to understand how this finding will lead to better therapies, prevention or treatment. But it’s important,” Topol told Nightly. “It is giving us a hint” about how to develop a treatment to block infection. And as the recent uptick of cases reminds us, “Covid is still among us,” he said, even if most people have some degree of protection right now. Skarbinski, who was interviewed earlier this summer, before cases began to rise again this month, said there’s still a ton to tease out, including about how people behave to protect themselves, how they socialize, whether they keep up to date on vaccinations. Remember, he said, the virus loves a good party. “Covid loves big mixings, gatherings for people from all over, from different parts of the country.” That’s how it spread before. And that’s probably part of how it’s now spreading again, even though we collectively have enough protection for now to probably ward off a lot of serious illness — to stay Low-Vid until science can someday make us NoVid. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen .   YOUR TICKET INSIDE THE GOLDEN STATE POLITICAL ARENA: California Playbook delivers the latest intel, buzzy scoops and exclusive coverage from Sacramento and Los Angeles to Silicon Valley and across the state. Don't miss out on the daily must-read for political aficionados and professionals with an outsized interest in California politics, policy and power. Subscribe today.     WHAT'D I MISS? — IRS unable to locate millions of tax records, watchdog says: The IRS lost track of millions of sensitive individual and business tax records that should have been transferred from a closed agency facility in California and is also unable to locate thousands of records that were stored at a facility in Utah, according to a new watchdog report. As part of a review of the IRS’ mandatory storage of old tax records in microfilm backup cartridges, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released today that it found significant deficiencies in safeguarding and accounting for millions of tax records that contain sensitive taxpayer information. — Dems revive calls for Clarence Thomas resignation, SCOTUS ethics reforms after new ProPublica report: Democratic lawmakers revived their calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign from his position today after a new ProPublica report revealed he had taken more unreported luxury vacations funded by billionaires than was previously known. As the high court continues to see record-low public approval and a Democratic-led effort to impose ethics reforms, ProPublica reported today that wealthy benefactors have gifted Thomas at least 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, multiple VIP passes to sporting events and two resort stays during his time on the court — a higher number of billionaire benefactors than was previously reported. Ethics experts, ProPublica reported, said the failure to disclose travel and sports could amount to a legal violation. — Biden admin seeking $20B in emergency funds for Ukraine, other countries: The White House is set to ask congressional leaders for roughly $20 billion in new aid for Ukraine and other international needs today, according to two people with direct knowledge of the request. That total includes $13 billion in military aid to Ukraine, as well as billions of dollars in funding to replenish a dwindling pot of federal disaster relief, addressing the ongoing hurricane season and widespread damage caused by floods and wildfires this year. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 DATE PROPOSED — Special counsel Jack Smith is seeking to put Donald Trump on trial on Jan. 2, 2024 — fewer than four months away — on charges related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election, reports POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney. That aggressive timeline would put the weighty criminal trial first on Trump’s crowded calendar of criminal proceedings and guarantee an extensive airing of the grave allegations against him just before Republican primary voters head to the polls. Prosecutors say the abbreviated timeline is rooted in the extraordinary public interest in seeing this case resolved. “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case,” Assistant Special Counsel Molly Gaston wrote in a court document filed today, “in which the defendant — the former President of the United States — is charged with three criminal conspiracies intended to undermine the federal government, obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, and disenfranchise voters.” Trump’s legal team is expected to file its own proposed trial timeline next week but has already forecast a starkly different view of the case. Trump’s attorney John Lauro has predicted it could take years to review and organize evidence, well past the 2024 election in which Trump is favored to be the Republican nominee. FAKED OUT — The 2024 campaign cycle is expected to unleash a torrent of AI-generated “deepfake” videos and images capable of deceiving voters — but the early attempts in Washington to stem the problem have already hit political snags, writes POLITICO’s Steven Overly. Election watchdogs hope to clear one such hurdle today. The Federal Election Commission is scheduled to vote on a petition, initiated by advocacy group Public Citizen, that calls for banning political campaigns from distributing fake audio, video and images of their opponents. Public Citizen notes that deepfakes have already appeared in ads supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, including fake photos that depict former President Donald Trump embracing Anthony Fauci. Such forgeries have alarmed election officials and advocates alike for their potential to confuse voters and skew election outcomes. “We’re going to have very high-quality deepfakes in advance of 2024,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said. “And in the absence of some federal prohibition on the use of deepfakes, I think it’s a near certainty that political actors of all political stripes will use them.” AROUND THE WORLD Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio speaks during a campaign event at a school minutes before he was shot to death outside the same school in Quito, Ecuador. | API via AP ASSASSINATION IN ECUADOR — Fernando Villavicencio, an Ecuadorian presidential candidate who recently pledged to root out corruption and lock up the country’s “thieves” was fatally shot at a political rally in Quito as the South American country reels from drug-related crime and violence, report the AP’s Gonzalo Solano and Regina Garcia Cano. Villavicencio, 59, who was known for speaking up against cartels, was assassinated Wednesday, less than two weeks before a special presidential election. He was not a front-runner, but his death deepened the sense of crisis around organized crime crisis that has already claimed thousands of lives and underscored the challenge that Ecuador’s next leader will face. Video of the rally in Quito posted on social media seemed to show Villavicencio walking out of the rally surrounded by guards. The footage then showed the candidate getting into a white pickup truck before gunshots were heard, followed by screams and commotion around the truck. The candidate had received at least three death threats before the shooting and reported them to authorities, resulting in one detention, according to Patricio Zuquilanda, Villavicencio’s campaign adviser. “The Ecuadorian people are crying, and Ecuador is mortally wounded,” Zuquilanda said. “Politics cannot lead to the death of any member of society.   A NEW PODCAST FROM POLITICO: Our new POLITICO Tech podcast is your daily download on the disruption that technology is bringing to politics and policy around the world. From AI and the metaverse to disinformation and cybersecurity, POLITICO Tech explores how today’s technology is shaping our world — and driving the policy decisions, innovations and industries that will matter tomorrow. SUBSCRIBE AND START LISTENING TODAY .     NIGHTLY NUMBER 3.2 percent 3.2 percent — The year over year inflation for the month of July , the first time inflation has risen after 12 straight months of declines. The inflation number was driven largely by costlier housing, but excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation matched the smallest monthly increase in nearly two years. The July inflation figure remained far below last year’s peak of 9.1 percent, though still above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. RADAR SWEEP HISTORY OF HIP HOP — What does collecting modern history look like? It’s a question that hip hop historians are asking themselves as the medium has its 50th anniversary — and as many of the people who created the genre are still around. It’s also one different people have answered different ways — some guardians of hip hop history are interested in personal collection, while others are trying to memorialize 50 years of music that’s changed the world by building a library and tributes that anyone can access, forever. For WIRED, Angela Watercutter caught up with the people who are considering hip hop’s legacy as it turns 50. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1977: The “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz is arrested. Pictured are a group of Brooklynites reading about his capture in the New York Daily News — Berkowitz ultimately pled guilty to eight shootings that began in New York City in July 1976. | AP Photo 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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POLITICO Nightly: The GOP Is at War with College Towns. And It’s Losing

 

BY CHARLIE MAHTESIAN A group of incoming freshmen walk through campus at University of Colorado Boulder on Aug. 18, 2020 in Boulder, Colo. | Mark Makela/Getty Images VARSITY BLUES —  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in Utah today, a reminder that the 2024 Republican presidential primary is unfolding across more states than just Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s one of a big collection of states set to vote on Super Tuesday, March 5, a date that is likely to prove pivotal to the outcome of the nomination fight. With DeSantis out west, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott set to embark on a fundraising tour of six different non-early voting states over the next month, it’s a good time to take stock of the emerging presidential map — and the trends that are shaping it. One of them is the emergence of college counties as an electoral force, the subject of a POLITICO magazine deep dive today. In state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins . They’ve already played a pivotal role in turning several red states blue — and they could play an equally decisive role in key swing states next year. One of those states is Michigan. Twenty years ago, the University of Michigan’s Washtenaw County gave Democrat Al Gore what seemed to be a massive victory — a 60-36 percent win over Republican George W. Bush, marked by a margin of victory of roughly 34,000 votes. Yet that was peanuts compared to what happened in 2020. Biden won Washtenaw by close to 50 percentage points, with a winning margin of about 101,000 votes. Name the flagship university — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, among others — and the story tends to be the same. If the surrounding county was a reliable source of Democratic votes in the past, it’s a landslide county now. There are exceptions to the rule, particularly in the states with the most conservative voting habits. But even in reliably red places like South Carolina, Montana and Texas, you’ll find at least one college-oriented county producing ever larger Democratic margins. The American Communities Project, which has developed a typology of different kinds of counties, designates 171 independent cities and counties as “College Towns.” Of those 171 places, 38 have flipped from red to blue since the 2000 presidential election. Just seven flipped the other way, from blue to red, and typically by smaller margins. Back in 2000, they voted 48 percent to 47 percent in favor of Al Gore. In the last presidential election, the 25 million who live in those places voted for Joe Biden, 54 percent to 44 percent. Keep in mind many populous urban counties that are home to large universities don’t even make the ACP’s “College Towns” list because their economic and demographic profiles differentiate them from more traditional college counties. Among the missing are places like the University of Texas’ Travis County, where the Democratic margin of victory grew by 290,000 votes since 2000, and the University of New Mexico’s Bernalillo County, where the margin grew by 73,000 votes. The University of Minnesota’s Hennepin County has become bluer by 245,000 votes. North Carolina offers a revealing snapshot of a state whose college towns have altered its electoral landscape. Five of the state’s nine counties that contain so-called college towns have gone blue since voting for George W. Bush in 2000. Back then, the nine counties together netted roughly 12,000 votes for Bush, who carried the state by nearly 13 percent. Twenty years later, those numbers had broken dramatically in the opposite direction — Biden netted 222,000 votes from those counties. He still lost the state, but the margin was barely more than 1 percent. There’s no single factor driving the college town trend. In some places, it’s an influx of left-leaning, highly educated newcomers, drawn to growing, cutting-edge industries advanced by university research or the vibrant quality of life. In others, it’s rising levels of student engagement on growing campuses. Often, it’s a combination of both. What’s clear is that these places are altering the political calculus across the national map. None of this has gone unnoticed by the GOP, which is responding in ways that reach beyond traditional tensions between conservative lawmakers and liberal universities — such as targeting students’ voting rights, creating additional barriers to voter access or redrawing maps to dilute or limit the power of college communities. But there are limits to what those efforts can accomplish. They aren’t geared toward growing the GOP vote, merely toward suppressing Democratic totals. Two states to keep an eye on next year: Arizona and Georgia. Both were decided by less than 12,000 votes in 2020 — and both have seen dramatic growth since 2000 in the Democratic winning margins in their college counties. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie .   JOIN 7/26 FOR A TALK ON THE NEW ENERGY ECONOMY:  Join POLITICO's lively discussion, "Powering a Clean Energy Economy," on July 26 at 5:15 PM ET. We'll explore the effectiveness of consumer-targeted policies to boost sustainability and create clean energy jobs. How are the Inflation Reduction Act's provisions faring? Which strategies truly sway consumer behavior? How are advances in technology shaking things up? And, what's the future for energy consumption reduction? Hear from featured speaker Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), among other experts. Don't miss this insightful event — REGISTER NOW.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Judge sets Trump classified-documents trial for next May:  Donald Trump will stand trial on May 20, 2024 — after most presidential primaries have elapsed — on charges that he hoarded military secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a federal judge ordered Friday. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon appeared to split the difference between prosecutors’ request for a December 2023 trial date and Trump’s request to postpone the trial until after the November 2024 election. The new ruling from Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, largely sidesteps the issue of how the preparations for the trial in the federal case she is overseeing will interface with the demands of a presidential election campaign. Cannon noted that Trump’s lawyers argued that the case would face “insurmountable prejudice in jury selection stemming from publicity about the 2024 Presidential Election,” but she found it “unnecessary” to address that issue “at this juncture.” — House GOP committee chairs launch probe into Ford-China battery deal:  Two House GOP committee chairs are launching a probe into Ford Motor Company’s agreement with a Chinese battery company — prompting renewed scrutiny into U.S. corporate links to China amid a boom in domestic clean energy manufacturing. Ford announced an agreement with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, in February for its new $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan. Under the structure of the agreement, Ford said it would manufacture the battery cells using knowledge and services provided by CATL. — Alabama’s redistricting brawl rehashes bitter fight over voting rights:  A court ordered Alabama’s legislature to redraw its congressional map to give Black voters more power. The Legislature’s response? Not unless we have to . The GOP-dominated Legislature passed maps on Friday that disregarded a lower federal court’s directive — one reinforced in June by the Supreme Court — that it should include two districts with a Black “voting-age majority or something quite close to it” when it redraws its lines. The legislature, over the unified objections of Democrats, instead came up with districts that fall short of that, even as Republicans argue they are in adherence. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 HALEY VS. HARRIS — One way GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is trying to get some attention? Zeroing in on her favorite punching bag: Vice President Kamala Harris , POLITICO writes. Harris is an easy target: an LA Times poll out this week positions her as the least popular VP in recent history. Haley has made the repeated claim that if Biden is reelected, Harris will take over. “A vote for President Biden is actually a vote for President Harris,” she tweeted in June. She’s also repeatedly bashed Harris’ competency (“Kamala Harris is one of the most incompetent elected officials in the country”) and painted her as “unbelievably extremist.” The former South Carolina governor doubled down last Friday, in an interview with Tucker Carlson at the 2023 Family Leadership Summit: “We can’t afford a President Kamala Harris. I will say that over and over again.” SMALL-DONOR DROUGHT —  There’s been a dramatic downturn in small-dollar donations across the board, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal campaign finance data . The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported raising $15.2 million from donors giving less than $200 through the end of June, compared to $23.5 million over the same period two years ago and $19.5 million in 2019. The National Republican Congressional Committee’s fundraising from small-dollar donors similarly dropped to $7.1 million through the end of June compared to $20.6 million two years ago and $8.7 million in 2019. On the presidential level, Joe Biden’s campaign reported $10 million raised in the second quarter from donors giving less than $200, less than half of what the previous two incumbent presidents had raised at this point in the cycle. For Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the GOP presidential field’s top fundraiser in the second quarter, just $3 million out of $20 million raised came from small-dollar donors. Donald Trump hasn’t yet released his small-dollar information. SMALL TOWN — GOP presidential candidates are wading into a new cultural battle by playing Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” at their campaign events , NBC News reports. In New Hampshire on Thursday, Vivek Ramaswamy started and ended his town hall by playing the song by country star Aldean, whose music video prominently features a courthouse that was the site of a lynching in 1927 was pulled from the air this week by CMT after backlash. GOP contender Nikki Haley played the song ahead of her entrance during a campaign stop Thursday night in Greenville, South Carolina. “I hope you loved my playlist before I came on,” Haley said. OUT FROM THE COLD — President Joe Biden is staking his reelection bid on the political and financial muscle of the Democratic National Committee , according to the Associated Press. As it prepares for a bruising 2024 contest, his campaign plans to raise and spend around $2 billion. But it will do so in coordination with the national and state Democratic parties, in an effort to establish a coordinated campaign around the country. The idea is to bolster field, volunteer and data organizations, and ensure they work jointly to promote Biden and down-ballot Democratic candidates. The strategy is different from the way the last Democratic president treated the DNC. Barack Obama largely shunned the party’s traditional fundraising apparatus and instead raised money with his own groups, relying on personal star power. That helped leave the DNC depleted and in debt. AROUND THE WORLD Belgium, which hosts the headquarters of the EU and NATO, has long had a dysfunctional national political life. | ERIC LALMAND/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images BAD BREAKUP — Sooner rather than later, Belgium may cease to exist. The small Western European state that hosts the headquarters of the EU and NATO has long had a dysfunctional national political life, writes POLITICO. It holds the world record for the longest time taken to form a government during coalition talks — over 500 days. Now the strains between Dutch-speaking Flanders, in the north, and French-speaking Wallonia in the south of the country threaten a far bigger crisis. Elections are due to be held in June 2024. According to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, the far-right Vlaams Belang party — which wants to turn Flanders into a fully independent, breakaway state — is now the biggest political force in the country. GIVING THANKS — Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom , after the envoy criticized the Ukrainian president in public, reports POLITICO. Zelenskyy’s decree, announcing the dismissal of the ambassador, does not give a reason for his decision. But it comes after Prystaiko criticized Zelenskyy’s punchy response to U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace, who suggested that Ukraine should show more gratitude to its allies. Speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius earlier this month, Wallace said that the U.S. is heading for a presidential election next year, and lawmakers from countries making big military donations to Kyiv could face a political problem if they are met with Ukrainian anger. There is concern across much of Europe that NATO-skeptic Donald Trump could return as U.S. president. Zelenskyy responded with an ironic remark during the press briefing in Vilnius, saying he does not understand how much more he should express his thanks, in response to Wallace’s comment. “He can write to me about how he wants to be thanked, so we can fully express our gratitude. We can make a point to wake up (every) morning and thank him,” Zelenskyy said.   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 .     NIGHTLY NUMBER 95 The age at which legendary American crooner Tony Bennett performed with Lady Gaga at two sold-out 2021 shows at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall — his last public performances. Bennett died Tuesday at the age of 96 . RADAR SWEEP THE ‘GOLDEN AGE OF PALEONTOLOGY’ — Paleontologists are uncovering new dinosaurs at an astonishing rate . On average, a new species of “terrible lizard” is named about every two weeks from fossil sites all over the world. And as experts announce each astonishing species, the nature of the dinosaur family tree shifts. Fossil hunters are not just uncovering new dinosaur species—they’re revealing entirely new dinosaur groups that were unknown even ten years ago. “One of my go-to lines whenever I’m giving a public talk or writing a pop science article or book,” says University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte, “is that we’re in the golden age of paleontology.” While the 19th-century “Bone Wars” are widely known as when many dinosaurs were discovered and named, the early 21st century is seeing the greatest dinosaur bone rush of all time. Paleontologists are rapidly documenting various non-avian dinosaurs that roamed our planet between 66 million and 235 million years ago—a span of time more than two and a half times as long as the post-Cretaceous history of our planet. And experts hypothesize that more dinosaurs remain unknown than have been uncovered, writes Riley Black for Smithsonian magazine. PARTING IMAGE General Nhiek Tioulong, left, Commander in Chief of the Cambodian forces, shakes hands with General Ta Quang Buu, Viet Minh Defense Minister, after the two had signed an armistice for Cambodia in the Palace of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland on July 21, 1954. Center is Jean Paul Boncour, Secretary General of the Conference. (AP Photo/ Jean-Jacques Levy) | Jean-Jacques Levy/AP Photo   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong   FOLLOW US

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