The Conversation with Dasha Burns

This week, Florida’s statehouse cleared the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign a six-week abortion ban. The man who shepherded the bill, House Speaker Paul Renner, joins Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza for this episode of Playbook Deep Dive. You might not know Renner’s name – but you definitely know his work: A bill to ban surgeries and prescription treatments for transgender minors, which has passed the state Senate and Renner will soon push through the House One of the most comprehensive new school voucher laws in the country Legislation removing books with sexual content from Florida public schools A major tort reform bill, big tax cuts And if he gets around to it this session: a bill aimed at over-turning the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision, the most important First Amendment ruling of the last century All of this is aimed at Renner’s other project: helping Gov. Ron DeSantis build a record of accomplishments in Florida on which he can base his presidential campaign. While Republicans have created a legislative assembly line that is spitting out laws to change seemingly every aspect of life in Florida, a big question suddenly hangs over their project: Are they building a record of accomplishments that can launch the DeSantis rocket to the White House? Or are they weighing down the governor with so much right-wing baggage that he crashes upon liftoff? Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Paul Renner is the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio. Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2024 Republican presidential primary is off to a bit of a slow start. Donald Trump and former governors Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson have entered the race, but other likely candidates, such as Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, are still sitting on the sidelines. Almost every Republican senator who flirted with the idea seems likely to pass, with the notable exception of Tim Scott, who’s been making stops in Iowa and New Hampshire. Into this vacuum has come Vivek Ramaswamy, who stated his intentions in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He declared that he was running to forge “an inspiring national identity that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance.” In a subsequent interview with POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman, Vivek added that, “The GOP has a historic opportunity to answer the question of what it means to be an American.” You probably don’t know much about Vivek Ramaswamy – he’s a young entrepreneur from Ohio who’s never run for anything. But there are a few reasons to keep an eye on him: He says he’s willing to spend millions of dollars of an estimated half-billion dollar fortune on the race He’s a regular presence on the Fox News Channel, which is the top information source for Republican primary voters And he seems to be putting together a serious campaign made up of political pros Vivek swears he has a plan to break out of the single digits and take down Donald Trump. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza joins Vivek at the restaurant Art & Soul to learn whether he is completely delusional — or whether he just might be onto something. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Vivek Ramaswamy is a biotech entrepreneur and Republican presidential contender. Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio. Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Playbook Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza gathers three of the best journalists in the POLITICO’s newsroom to break down the immediate questions of what Trump's indictment means. Joining him is Jonathan Martin, POLITICO’s Politics Bureau Chief; Meridith McGraw, who covers Trump for POLITICO; and Erica Orden, who is new to POLITICO and is one of the best legal reporters out there. All three have been breaking news on this story – and they’re on deadline. These are their thoughts about what has led to this moment and what will occur because of it. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Erica Orden is a legal reporter for POLITICO.Meridith McGraw is a national political correspondent for POLITICO.Jonathan Martin is politics bureau chief for POLITICO.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio. Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lanny Davis long ago established himself as the go-to operative in Washington when you’re in the middle of a PR crisis. He was famously the public face defending Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. But today, 25 years later, he’s on the other side of a presidential sex scandal representing Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and self-described “fixer,” who went to jail for a number of offenses, including his role in paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her not telling the media her account of an alleged affair with Donald Trump. Cohen is now a central witness in the Manhattan DA’s case against Trump, one that could send the former president to jail. It’s a case that has died and been resurrected so many times that prosecutors have nicknamed it the “zombie” case. And a major obstacle that prosecutors face is whether or not jurors will believe that Cohen, who lied for Trump for over a decade, is telling the truth. On this episode of Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza catches up with Davis at his office in Washington, D.C., to hear the story of how the Trump “zombie” case came back from the dead and why he insists jurors should believe his client. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Lanny Davis is the lawyer and spokesperson for former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, the Senate began to re-evaluate one of the most controversial episodes in American history: the Iraq war. After a generation of use and abuse, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling a vote to repeal the Iraq AUMF, or authorization for the use of military force, which has been a key underpinning for America’s so-called “forever wars” in the Middle East. But Stephen Hadley, the man who was the architect of many of the national security policies that the Iraq AUMF enabled, has something to say before Congress votes. Hadley was President George W. Bush’s national security advisor from 2005 to 2009 and was Dick Cheney’s guy at the negotiating table with Russia during the George H.W. Bush administration. Now, he has just published a book called Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama that chronicles 20 years of war and politics in America. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza speaks with the former Bush adviser about what we stand to lose if Congress is sloppy about repealing the Iraq war AUMF, what Bush got right and wrong on China, how Joe Biden’s foreign policy echoes Bush’s Freedom Agenda, and how President Biden can learn from Bush’s successes and failures dealing with Vladimir Putin. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Stephen Hadley is the former National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last November, when the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT launched, an old science fiction question suddenly became very real: How long until the machines are smarter than the humans? It marked the beginning of a new era in technology – one that has enormous implications for the economy and the nation’s politics. On the Hill, members of Congress suddenly needed answers about the coming disruption. The expert they turned to for those was a video game developer from Southern California, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.). Obernolte is, according to his peers, the guy you need to know on AI. He has a masters in the field and owns a very successful video game company. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, he tells Playbook’s Ryan Lizza the truth about this powerful new technology and what it means to Washington, D.C.; from AI’s regulatory forecast to what – if anything – Congress can do to soften a potential white collar job apocalypse that its widespread adoption might bring. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Rep. Jay Obernolte is the congressman for California's 23rd district.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The war in Ukraine is just over one year old. There is widespread talk of a major spring offensive from both sides. War in Europe, once unthinkable, is now the new normal. But for one nation on Russia’s northern border, this feels like deja vu. Like Ukraine, Finland knows what it’s like to share a long border with Russia. The Finns have had Vladimir Putin as a neighbor, and they’ve been performing the same delicate dance of decoupling under his very watchful eye. Before his posting to Washington, Mikko Hautala was Finland’s ambassador to Russia, where he met Vladimir Putin more times than he can count. Hautala occupied his post in Moscow during the critical years following Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine. Since the war began, he’s become well known as the person to talk to to understand Putin, Russia and the conflict in Ukraine. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host Ryan Lizza talks with Hautala about what Americans don’t understand about the Russian leader, the implications of the growing alliance between China and Russia, Finland’s accession to NATO, and why he believes the West needs to massively ramp up its industrial capability if it wants Ukraine to survive. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Mikko Hautala is Finland's ambassador to the U.S.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Until last month, Anthony Coley was Director of Public Affairs at the Justice Department and a Senior Adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Coley was in the middle of some of the most extraordinary episodes at DOJ over the last two years: The appointment of two special counsels investigating one current and one former president. Responding to the drama around the investigation of the president’s son. Taking incoming from right-wing pundits saying Garland was protecting President Biden and left-wing pundits saying the attorney general was protecting former president Trump. And occasionally grappling with perhaps the most difficult dilemma that any government official faces: what do you do when you disagree with the boss? In his first interview since leaving Merrick Garland’s side, Coley joins Playbook Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza from his home on Capitol Hill to discuss how the Justice Department separates law from politics, why two special counsels might just take the pressure off Garland, and much, much more. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Anthony Coley is the former director of public affairs at the Department of JusticeAfra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, and President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is running for president. But not everyone on the right is impressed. In a brutal Valentine’s Day editorial, The Wall Street Journal said that there is “no clear rationale for her candidacy.” Over at The New York Times, the paper assembled 10 pundits to assess Haley’s candidacy, and the majority opinion was that she shouldn’t be taken very seriously. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Rob Godfrey, a senior aide and spokesman for Haley when she was governor, and a longtime ally to her successor, Henry McMaster, shares why the critics may be wrong. Godfrey discusses Haley’s career of defying expectations, her record as governor, South Carolina’s uniquely influential role in American politics, and invites host Ryan Lizza to come visit. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Rob Godfrey is the former senior aide to Nikki Haley. Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Washington, there is now a bipartisan consensus around being tough on China. This was happening even before the Chinese sent a spy balloon drifting across the United States. Last month, by a vote of 365-65, the House created a new “Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” And with China hawks now dominating the thinking of both parties when it comes to Sino-U.S. relations, Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza decided to check in with Max Baucus, who is one of the leading voices warning that the hawks have things dangerously wrong. Baucus was the U.S. ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017. Before that he was, depending on the year, the chairman or ranking member of the very powerful Senate Finance Committee. And in this fascinating interview, he’s surprisingly critical of Republicans and Democrats alike for muddling the U.S. relationship with China in order to score political points at home. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Max Baucus is the former U.S. Ambassador to China. Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After losing both chambers of Congress during Trump’s presidency and after waging a disappointing campaign to recapture them in 2022, the Republican Party is having a lot of intra-party feuds. This week, the post-election search for new leadership moved to the Republican National Committee. Right now, there’s no agreed-upon leader of the party, so like the recent battles in the Senate and the House, the RNC election has turned into a fight to define the GOP’s future. And once again, Donald Trump is at the center of the debate. Playbook co-author Rachael Bade flew to Orange County, California, to watch the fireworks at the RNC’s winter meeting, where the three-time incumbent chair Ronna McDaniel faced a challenge from conservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon. To understand what this fight is all about, Rachael had breakfast with Bill Palatucci, a longtime party member who is also a close ally of Chris Christie’s and a loud critic of Donald Trump. In this week’s episode, Palatucci explains how the Dhillon-McDaniel contest isn’t just about the RNC chairmanship – it's about who will lead the Republican Party into 2024 — and beyond — and why the GOP could languish for a very long time depending on the outcome. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Bill Palatucci is an RNC national committee man for New Jersey.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you do when you are one of the guardians of your state’s most precious political and cultural institution — the very thing that defines New Hampshire — and the president you love and the party you’ve served your whole life, tells you to destroy it? To find out, we spoke to Ray Buckley. Buckley has served as the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party since 2007 and he was involved in every New Hampshire presidential primary campaign since he was an organizer for Jimmy Carter. A big part of his job is protecting the status of the New Hampshire primary, which by state law is required to be the first in the nation. Any Democrat who wants to be president makes a point of becoming Ray Buckley’s friend. When Buckley got a call in December from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the worst part was that it was Joe Biden who had screwed him. Biden had decided to end New Hampshire’s decades-long reign by hosting the first presidential primary — at least for the Democrats. In its place: South Carolina, the state that resurrected Biden’s candidacy in 2020. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza speaks to Buckley about New Hampshire’s fight to preserve their first-in-the-nation primary. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Ray Buckley is the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In off-the-record conversations and private emails, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer argued that the pundits focusing exclusively on the fundamentals of the race — Biden’s approval rating and the dismal economic indicators — were missing the bigger picture. Yes, presidents usually lose an average of some two dozen House seats in similar circumstances, but that wasn’t the whole story. While many analysts argued that inflation would be more important than the diffuse issue of democracy, Podhorzer said that was myopic. He was much more right than wrong. Podhorzer has now left the AFL-CIO after 25 years and is able to speak freely. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host Ryan Lizza sits down with him in his kitchen for his first wide-ranging interview. They talk about what everyone got wrong about 2022, his critiques of the media’s coverage of the right, his ongoing battles with the so-called popularists in the Democratic Party, and why Podhorzer already thinks the presidential election of 2024 is headed for a dangerous endgame. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In late 2014, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) was traveling back to Louisiana with his wife when he had an idea: a plan to empower arch-conservatives to push back against their Leadership, led by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner. Soon after, he and eight Republican colleagues founded the House Freedom Caucus – the same group that is determined to deny Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) the speaker’s gavel. If you want to understand the roots of this week’s far-right rebellion, then you have to understand the roots of the House Freedom Caucus. And while not every member of the HFC opposes McCarthy – and not every opponent is a member of the HFC – most of them are. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, former Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a Freedom Caucus Founder, unspools something that we could all use right now to understand the current crisis and what it portends for the future of Republican politics: an unauthorized history of the House Freedom Caucus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) and his allies are trying to end Kevin McCarthy’s reign as leader of the House Republicans. Good is one of five Republicans in the far-right Freedom Caucus vowing to block McCarthy’s path to the 218 votes needed to become Speaker of the House. The two have a history. In 2020, Good was running for Congress to represent Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Incidentally, also home to the race between James Madison and James Monroe to be the district’s first representative in Congress. Madison won. While Good was running for Congress, Kevin McCarthy tried to consolidate power in the Republican House conference on his way to becoming Speaker. During his campaign, Good knocked out one of McCarthy’s loyal member’s at the GOP nominating convention. At a private meeting recently, Good and McCarthy had a heated exchange about events at the time. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade went to the Hill to meet Good at his office and dig for details on the history of his relationship with McCarthy and whom Good and his allies intended to support for Speaker instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Department of Energy announced a breakthrough in the decades-long quest to recreate on Earth the process that powers the Sun: nuclear fusion. To simplify slightly, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California recently fired a bunch of lasers at a piece of hydrogen. The lasers used 2.05 megajoules of energy to hit the hydrogen. The resulting reaction produced 3 megajoules of energy. For the first time in the history of fusion research, scientists achieved ignition — more energy was produced by the reaction than was used to create it. Here in Washington, and the world of politics, no elected official was as excited about these results as Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). Beyer is the former lieutenant governor of Virginia and was an ambassador in the Obama administration. A few years ago, Beyer became consumed with the promise of fusion. How it could become a cheap and plentiful alternative to fossil fuels. How it could solve the climate crisis. In this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host Ryan Lizza joins Congressman Beyer to explore the policy and politics of this big scientific breakthrough. Is it the turning point we’ve been promised for decades, or will it once again lead to the same dashed expectations that has long-characterized the history of fusion research? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gov. Chris Sununu was recently re-elected to his fourth term in office. The Republican governor has been positioning himself for the 2024 presidential primaries for a while now. Before Election Day, there were a lot of reasons to be skeptical about his chances. He’s a New England moderate in the party of MAGA. He endorsed DONALD TRUMP twice, but he’s also been a stinging critic. And he’s pro-choice, which might be seen as a non-starter in a GOP primary. Trump’s recent decline has emboldened his potential competitors. The underwhelming results for Republicans in the 2022 midterms have led to an outbreak of interest on the right in electability. Now Sununu is trying to define himself against not just Trump, but many of the right’s obsessions that he sees as political losers. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza went to the statehouse in Concord, NH, where Sununu was keen to discuss 2024 presidential primary politics in a way that he hasn’t recently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Bennet is the senior Democratic senator from Colorado, a famously purple state. In the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterms, Colorado seemed to be a place where Republicans might flip a few seats. But as it turned out, not only was there no red wave in Colorado, there was something of a blue wave instead. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host Ryan Lizza visits Sen. Michael Bennet on the Hill to dissect the 2022 midterms and pick his brain on 2024 presidential campaigns and what might be in store for the lame-duck session. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are some members of Congress who have famously struggled to understand the online world. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) prides himself on not only understanding the internet, but also for passing some of the key legislation that he likes to say helped lay the foundation for the digital revolution. More recently, Markey has been leading fights to enhance online privacy and regulate social media. So when Elon Musk took over Twitter recently, Markey was paying close attention to see what kinds of changes the richest man in the world might bring to the platform. The two men have a little history: they previously tussled over safety issues with self-driving technology in Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles. The Muskification of Twitter was equally concerning to the senator. But it was when Musk unveiled a plan to sell blue check marks — the Twitter verification symbol that prevents users from masquerading as other people and corporations — that Markey started to get really worried. What followed turned Markey into Musk’s chief tormentor in Washington. In this week’s Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza went up to Sen. Markey’s office on Capitol Hill to find out what it’s like to be in a Twitter war with the self described chief twit, and what might come next in this escalating confrontation. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Senator Ed Markey is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why were Democrats seemingly able to by and large defy history and avoid a catastrophic result in the midterms? Across the country, Democrats successfully defended seats that Republicans had confidently expected to pick up, while also adding wins in gubernatorial races in five swing states that flipped from Trump to Biden in 2020. There are many explanations: backlash to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, exhaustion with Donald Trump and some of the candidates that he backed, and a big turnout for Democrats among Gen Z and millennials. The coalition of voters that turned out to oppose Donald Trump in 2018 and 2020 remained largely intact in 2022. There were also a lot of races that turned on local issues where none of these common explanations seem to tell the full story. We’re all going to be unpacking the results for a while. So, we wanted to hear why these Democrats think they were able to defy history. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Ohioan and POLITICO Playbook co-author Rachael Bade talked to Greg Landsman, a Democrat who on Tuesday, ousted 13-term incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in Ohio’s 1st District. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Greg Landsman is the representative-elect for Ohio's 1st Congressional district.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simon Rosenberg is the head of the progressive think tank NDN, and he has a message for jittery Democrats on the eve of the midterms: cheer up! This week on the Playbook Deep Dive podcast we sit down with the Democratic Party’s apostle of optimism. “I'm not sitting here and telling you we're going to win,” Simon told us over lunch this week. “What I'm telling you is that the narrative about this election, about there being a red wave— there isn't one. There never has been.” If you spend a lot of time on political Twitter, you have no doubt encountered Simon’s tweets and threads over the last few weeks. He’s built a large and loyal following of Democrats looking for silver linings amid the clouds of negative media coverage about their party’s prospects in the midterms. — Hispanics abandoning his party? Simon says that NDN’s polling doesn’t show it. — Polling averages tilting to the GOP in the last few weeks? Simon says they’ve been polluted by a barrage of Republican polls dumped strategically to depress Democrats and excite Republicans. (This claim has been met with a lot of skepticism, because surely Democratic campaigns would be leaking their own internals, but we digress…) — And that red wave? Simon says that if you look at the Kansas abortion referendum, the five House special elections earlier this year, and especially the early voting data, that the anti-Trump coalition that powered Democrats to victory in 2018 and 2020 is holding strong in 2022. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Simon Rosenberg is president of NDN. Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Conston is the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Rep. Kevin McCarthy with the singular mission of making the California Republican Speaker of the House. Most forecasts suggest that Conston and CLF are on the verge of success. In a candid hour-plus interview, Conston took Playbook behind the scenes of CLF’s operation. We talked about the issues and demographics of this election, emerging GOP opportunities in the final days of the campaign and the inside strategies that one of the best-funded super PACs in American politics uses to take down its Democratic opponents. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Dan Conston is the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Draper's "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind" focuses exclusively on the GOP during the crucial 18-month period after January 6 and vastly adds to our understanding of the Trump era. Far-right representatives Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz are part of a new breed of Republican party fighting with their GOP elders. The subtitle of Draper's book — emphasizing when, not how — Trump-inspired elected officials helped the former president solidify his grip over the Republican party is as important as understanding what has happened to the party. In this week's Playbook Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza unwinds Draper's chronicle of what has happened to the Republican party, and America, through his character-driven account of the people and events shaping the extremes of American politics today. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scott Bland is POLITICO’s national politics editor and leading all of POLITICO’s 2022 midterm coverage. To do it, he has a team of about 15 reporters around the country following campaigns. Despite the cooling temperatures, this is when people like Bland start to sweat. His job is to ensure readers and listeners aren’t surprised on election night — that POLITICO has considered and reported on all possible outcomes, including the outliers — those black swan scenarios with seemingly low probabilities. Not just the most likely ones, according to conventional wisdom. The specter of 2016 still haunts newsrooms. Bland and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza dissect how 2016 midterm misses can be applied lessons for reporters covering the 2022 elections. Bland also weighs in on pressing questions like; what are the chances of Democrats winning the House while the Republicans take the Senate? Could all of those allegedly flawed Trump-backed candidates sweep their races? And could Biden be the first President since 2002 to avoid a party defeat in the first-midterm election? Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Scott Bland is the national politics editor for POLITICO.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Matthews has a political resume similar to a lot of conservatives her age. At Kent State, she joined the College Republicans and made her first pilgrimage to the annual CPAC conference in Washington. Sarah interned on Capitol Hill for John Boehner and Sen. Rob Portman, both of Ohio. And then she got a job doing comms for Republicans on the Hill. But a few years later, in June 2020, she was working for Donald Trump. Like a lot of her colleagues, she was well aware of Trump’s flaws, but she agreed with his policies. When her mentor, Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany invited Sarah to be her deputy, Sarah didn’t think twice. It was a chaotic seven months, marked by the Lafayette Square protest incident, Covid, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Then came Jan. 6. You probably remember Matthews from her primetime testimony to the Jan. 6 committee in July. She testified about her experience in the White House during the insurrection and how Donald Trump’s actions that day so disgusted her that she resigned that night. The January 6 committee is back next week, on October 13th, for its first hearing since the one at which Matthews appeared. Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza sat down with Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary, to hear the full story of what it was like for a young Republican to publicly break with the president, upend her career, and experience the full wrath of Trump and his supporters by cooperating with the January 6 committee. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Sarah Matthews is a former White House deputy press secretary for the Trump administrationAfra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last Sunday, Italians voted for the most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini. The controversial politician leading the winning coalition, Giorgia Meloni, will become Italy's first female prime minister. Meloni has become a darling of sorts for many Republicans in America, who invited her to speak at this year's CPAC conference. The "Brothers of Italy," co-founded by Meloni in 2012, was a fringe party with neo-fascist roots. It rebranded itself in recent years as a socially conservative, ultra-nationalist party that's also a European voice in the growing trans-national culture wars. From a rooftop bar near central Rome, Ryan Lizza and POLITICO Europe's Rome correspondent, Hannah Roberts, dig into Meloni's history, rise, and how she's likely to lead Italy's government with EU, NATO, and Russian relationships center stage. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Hannah Roberts is POLITICO Europe's Rome correspondent.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s hard to imagine a political event that was covered more intensively in real time than Trump’s two impeachments. But only now, 18 months after the Senate acquitted Trump a second time, we are learning crucial new details about what happened behind the scenes of those proceedings. And only now are we starting to reckon with what those two failed impeachments have wrought for Congress, the presidency, and the Constitution — and who was responsible. That reckoning comes courtesy of Playbook’s own Rachael Bade and Washington Post national security reporter Karoun Demirjian, who on Oct. 18 will publish “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.” It’s an unsparing look at the characters, the calculations and, frequently, the cowardice that shaped Congress’s dealings with Trump — and how the results have likely changed impeachment forever. On this week’s Playbook Deep Dive, Rachael and Karoun talk extensively about their book and its provocative argument with Playbook editor Mike DeBonis. It’s a reunion for the trio, who covered Capitol Hill together at the Washington Post and watched closely as Congress struggled to hold Trump to account. They discuss why “Unchecked” is an unapologetically “both sides” book, how congressional leaders’ public rhetoric rarely matched private reality, and just how many impeachment articles President Joe Biden might be facing if Republicans take the House. Mike DeBonis is Playbook's editor for POLITICO.Rachael Bade is Playbook's co-author for POLITICO. Karoun Demirjian is a national security reporter at The Washington Post.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

UCLA political scientists Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch and Vanderbilt’s John Sides argue that political party identity has become increasingly “calcified” in surprising new ways. Their latest book,“The Bitter End,” describes both the long-term trends and short-term shocks that shaped the 2020 presidential election and continue reverberating today. What’s driving the increasing distance between the parties and the growing homogeneity within the parties? Playbook Co-Author Ryan Lizza met Vavreck on UCLA’s campus to learn why so-called “identity-inflected issues” are the great new dimension of political conflict and present a dangerous direction in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kara Swisher has hosted the annual Code Conference for the last twenty years. Recently she announced that this was her final year organizing and running the event, which concluded on Thursday in Los Angeles. At the final big panel on Wednesday evening, Swisher ended things where she started: with a conversation about Steve Jobs. She gathered the famous Apple designer Jony Ive and the widow of Steve Jobs — Laurene Powell Jobs — and the CEO of Apple — Tim Cook — who flew to Los Angeles for Swisher hours after unveiling the new iPhone 14 at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. The event ended much more poignant than one would expect at a conference about technology and politics. Afterward, Playbook Co-Author Ryan Lizza met Swisher in a suite on the 8th floor of the Beverly Hilton at what was Code's last secret poker party. They talked about the end of her running the Code Conference, her long and winding career … and why she loves saying no. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, Leahy, who is retiring this year after representing Vermont in the Senate since 1975, released “The Road Taken,” an engrossing memoir that covers his long career, from his politically fraught vote against the Vietnam War to his account of rallying his fellow senators back into the chamber on Jan. 6 after they fled the mob that stormed the Capitol. In between, you meet dozens of politicians, Supreme Court Justices, presidents, world leaders, musicians, and Hollywood celebrities. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is the president pro tempore of the United States Senate.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White House suddenly has a lot to brag about. And the president’s aides, led by chief of staff Ron Klain, are reaching deep into the 20th century to make the case that Joe Biden is a transformational president with “historic achievements.” We ventured over to the White House and sat down with Klain in the Roosevelt Room to review the last 18 months of the Biden presidency and talk about what’s next. At the start of the summer, this conversation would have been vastly different. Now, gas prices have dropped, the last CPI report hints that inflation may finally be trending down after hitting a peak. Election forecasters are writing pieces at least entertaining the idea that Democrats might not suffer the long-predicted midterm wipeout. And there’s that burst of legislative victories that were squeezed out of Congress in July and August that had Biden, a lover of alliteration, calling this period “a season of substance.” Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Ron Klain is the White House Chief of Staff.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 using the process known as budget reconciliation. The upside? No filibuster is allowed. You only need a majority to approve a reconciliation bill. And the downside? There are strict rules about what can be included. On the last episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Eric Ueland and Greg D’Angelo, two GOP budget nerds, previewed the final challenges that the Inflation Reduction Act would face to pass the Senate. They even nailed one of the parliamentarian’s rulings: she nixed a portion of the bill that would have applied inflation caps to the private pharmaceutical market. For their most significant policies, neither party has sixty votes. Reconciliation is how presidents get big things through Congress now. And it’s likely to be that way for the foreseeable future. To understand how major policy changes can happen these days, you need to know how this byzantine process works. In this week’s episode, Eric and Greg step back and explain the long history of reconciliation and how it has come to dominate lawmaking in ways never anticipated when the process was created in the 1970s. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Eric Ueland is a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.Greg D'Angelo is a partner at the Nickles Group.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The biggest remaining obstacle for the Democrats is now Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who will continue to host Democratic and Republican aides behind closed doors today (no press allowed) to scrub the reconciliation bill for potential violations of the Byrd Rule. MacDonough broke the hearts of progressives on several occasions last year, including when she nixed the minimum wage from the Covid relief bill, which was passed using reconciliation, and rejected three different versions of immigration reform from the Democratic reconciliation bill that was eventually scrapped in December. Republican budget nerds reviewing the latest reconciliation bill still believe they can knock out certain provisions. On Thursday, for the latest episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, we sat down with two of the party’s leading experts on the process: Eric Ueland, who spent 25 years in the Senate, including as staff director of the Budget Committee, and Greg D’Angelo, who spent nearly a decade on the committee. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Eric Ueland is a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.Greg D'Angelo is a partner at the Nickles Group.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s something about Washington, D.C. that even a lot of people who live here don’t know: Psychedelic mushrooms are basically legal. In 2020 voters approved a ballot initiative that made growing, purchasing, and distributing mushrooms the lowest law enforcement priority for D.C. police. Cities and states are way ahead of the federal government. There are movements in more than two dozen states to either study, decriminalize, or outright legalize mushrooms and other psychedelics. It’s happening in blue states like California, New York and Vermont, as well as in red states like Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Cities such as Ann Arbor, Oakland, Seattle, and Denver, have, like D.C., all decriminalized mushrooms. The epicenter of this movement, as was the case with cannabis legalization, is Colorado. In November, voters will decide whether to approve the Natural Medicine Health Act of 2022, which would create state-regulated “healing centers” where anyone over 21 could receive psilocybin-assisted therapy. In this week’s episode, Ryan traveled to Littlejohn, Colorado and sat down with Veronica Lightning Horse Perez, the co-leader of the Colorado mushroom campaign. They talked about how psychedelics helped treat her mental health issues, what it’s like to undergo psychedelic therapy with mushrooms and ayahuasca, and her journey to becoming the unlikely political activist at the forefront of mushroom legalization. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Veronica Lightning Horse Perez is co-organizer of Natural Health Colorado.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ryan caught up with the former treasury secretary — and thorn in the side of Biden White House economists — Larry Summers on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum for a wide-ranging interview about last 18 months of economic debates, why so many policymakers got the inflation debate wrong, what Summers thinks about Joe Manchin blowing up Build Back Better over inflation concerns, what Biden — and Pelosi — are getting wrong in their approach to China, and why we are almost certainly headed into a painful recession. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Larry Summers is the former U.S. treasury secretary.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: GEORGE GASCÓN — Gascón was elected district attorney of Los Angeles County in November 2020 with 54% of the vote. “I won handsomely,” he reminisced Wednesday during a 90-minute conversation at the Hall of Justice in downtown L.A. “I got over 2 million votes.” It was a big victory for criminal justice reformers: the leading progressive prosecutor in the country taking over the movement’s top target, the largest county in the country and one that has long been hostile to change. California makes it relatively easy to recall an elected official. It’s been part of the state constitution since 1911. There was talk of recalling Gascón as soon as he was sworn in. And those calls were coming from inside the Hall of Justice, where many of his deputy district attorneys revolted against the changes. “The week that I got sworn in, they started talking about recalling me,” Gascón said. “And they had to be told you have to wait at least 90 days.” Voters will know by August 17 whether a recall of Gascón will be on the November ballot. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.George Gascón is the District Attorney of Los Angeles County.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of why so few Republicans have stepped forward to testify about what they heard and saw in the Trump White House, is very much at the heart of much of the House Jan. 6 committee’s work — and of Tim Miller’s new book, “Why We Did It,” which, by chance, was released the same day as Hutchinson’s explosive testimony. Miller’s arc is, by now, somewhat familiar: At the dawn of the Trump era, he was an in-demand Republican strategist and a top aide to Jeb Bush. He watched in horror as Trumpism swallowed the Republican establishment and his fellow GOP strategists jumped on the MAGA bandwagon. He resisted, left the party, and devoted himself to Never Trumpism. In his new book, Miller sets out to understand the mindset of those Republicans who remained — friends and former colleagues who weren’t all that different from him, but who enthusiastically worked to elect Trump and later joined his administration. In one chapter, he traces the journey of Alyssa Farah Griffin. In 2016, she was a 20-something conservative and top Capitol Hill aide who couldn’t bring herself to vote for Trump. By 2020, she was director of strategic comms in the Trump White House — before resigning that December. On the outside, Griffin joined Miller in the ranks of the Never Trumpers, and began helping others do the same. Most recently, it was Griffin who helped guide Hutchinson, her good friend, through the fraught process of breaking away from the Trump world, a journey that culminated in Hutchinson’s devastating account of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6. On Thursday, Ryan met with Miller and Griffin at the Georgetown Club for lunch — and to talk about Miller’s new book, their respective journeys navigating Trumpism and what Hutchinson’s testimony could mean for the future of Trump’s grip on the Republican Party. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Tim Miller is a political strategist and writer-at-large for The Bulwark.Alyssa Farah Griffin is a political commentator and former Trump White House aide.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If documentary filmmaker Alex Holder’s memory is accurate, Donald Trump was on the phone with Vladimir Putin just minutes after the news broke that the Russian president had dismissed Trump’s Hunter Biden allegations. Holder began filming former President Donald Trump in September 2020 during his campaign for reelection. In the runup to the election and continuing after they left office, Holder had extensive access to film and interview Trump, his inner circle and former Vice President Mike Pence. The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 recently sent a subpoena to Holder for raw footage related to interviews and discussions Holder recorded, as well as raw footage from Jan. 6 when Holder and his cameraman were there filming as the mob attacked the Capitol. On Thursday, shortly after Holder finished talking to Jan. 6 investigators, Ryan Lizza met Holder at his hotel. On this week’s Playbook Deep Dive, Holder talks about what it’s like behind the scenes filming Trumpworld, the significance of his project and potential impact of the footage subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Alex Holder is a documentary filmmaker. Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

J. Michael Luttig is the former federal appeals court judge who advised Vice President Mike Pence that the VP had no authority to reject electors on Jan. 6. Back in February, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza spent four hours interviewing Luttig for a Deep Dive episode that ended up being mostly about his extraordinary role advising Mike Pence on Jan. 6. Given the interest in Luttig this week, we went back through what was left on the cutting room floor to create a new show that goes deep on who Luttig is and where he comes from, which will help you understand why this lifelong right-winger is saying what he’s saying now about the threat to democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week in the GOP primary for South Dakota’s at-large district, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) defeated a challenger from his right who claimed he wasn’t aligned closely enough with former President Donald Trump, even though Johnson agrees with Trump on many policies. Johnson’s vote for a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks and his support for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to remain in House Leadership was cited as proof he is not an ally of the former president. Johnson also faced more than $500,000 in spending against him from Drain the DC Swamp PAC. He tells Ryan Lizza that South Dakotans like Trump – but they also like Dusty Johnson. Find out how he overcame the challenges faced from defying Trump and how he survived to win the Republican nomination on this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Rep. Dusty Johnson is the congressman at-large for South Dakota.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s at least a few people in the Democratic establishment who have hope for the midterms. They’re the redistricting experts, people like Kelly Burton. She’s a long-time political operative and the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an organization that she leads along with other top party names like former attorney general Eric Holder. The NDRC is leading the Democrats’ charge against Republican gerrymandering during the 2022 redistricting cycle. So why are Burton and her counterparts so sanguine? Because for the first time since 2018, they are confident that redistricting and numerous legal battles are making the field more hospitable for midterm victories. The NDRC is bringing lawsuits to state courts to fight what it says are illegal attempts at gerrymandering districts. Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama — the list goes on. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Burton tells Playbook Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza what it’s taken to draw an equitable voting map for 2022 and what she’s hoping to see in November. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Kelly Burton is the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trump-backed candidates have lost recently in Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina and Idaho. The biggest caveat about how the lessons of other states might apply in Wyoming is that in states where the Trump candidate lost, the non-Trump candidate was not anti-Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney’s political identity — at least, her identity on the national stage — is now defined by her criticism of the former president. The anti-Cheney effort in Wyoming has been led by Frank Eathorne, the Wyoming GOP chair and Trump’s most important ally in the state. Last weekend, Victoria Eavis of the Casper Star-Tribune and Rone Tempest of WyoFile, published a bombshell 6,500-word profile of Eathorne. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, co-author Ryan Lizza is in the Casper Star-Tribune’s newsroom, where Eavis explains how the story came together. Plus, former chairman of the Natrona County Republican party Dr. Joseph McGinley explains what it’s like to be pushed out of his own party. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Victoria Eavis is the state politics reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune.Dr. Joseph McGinley is a physician and former chairman of the Natrona County GOP.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ellis is the face of the movement that handed Donald Trump his biggest defeat of the year. She leads Take Back Idaho, a political action committee founded last year to beat back the growing tide of extremist candidates in Idaho. Ellis’s main target on Tuesday was Janice McGeachin, the state’s far-right lieutenant governor, whom Trump backed in her gubernatorial primary challenge to incumbent Gov. Brad Little. Trump’s candidate lost by almost 21 points. For this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, we sat down with Jennifer Ellis at her cattle ranch in eastern Idaho to understand how the state’s GOP establishment delivered this stinging rebuke to Trumpism. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Jennifer Ellis is a cattle rancher and co-founder of Take Back Idaho.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on “Playbook Deep Dive,” we sat down over Zoom with Steve Schmidt, the architect of the late Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, to hear what amounts to an untold chapter of that exhaustively chronicled campaign. It’s a story about regret and disillusionment that we are confident you will want to hear. Schmidt has long maintained that the roots of Trumpism, which he has spent the last seven years fighting, can be found in the movement that first gathered around Palin in 2008. But Schmidt has always been more circumspect about McCain, his one time hero and the man who actually picked Palin. Recently, though, he took to Substack to unfurl a surprising new chapter about the legendary senator and his failed 2008 campaign. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Playbook Deep Dive, POLITICO’s Peter Canellos talks with our own Josh Gerstein, who broke this week’s massive news that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has drafted an opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade. Peter and Josh nerd out on everything from the history of the court, to potential implications of the draft opinion — both for the country and the judiciary itself. Peter Canellos is POLITICO's managing editor for enterprise.Josh Gerstein is POLITICO's senior legal affairs reporter.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is back for the first time since 2019. Journalists, A-list celebrities and Washington’s power players will pack the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Hilton. That means brunch is back too. On this week’s episode, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza gets a tour from Tammy Haddad at the site of her annual garden brunch, one of the most sought after invites of the weekend. Plus, insights from comedian and WHCD alum Elayne Boosler and Ed Solomon of Anthony's Tuxedos in Georgetown. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Tammy Haddad is CEO & President of Haddad Media. Elayne Boosler is a comedian and the performer at the 1993 WHCD.Ed Solomon is the owner of Wedding Creations & Anthony's Tuxedos of Georgetown.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza is in Arizona to dig into a few big plotlines ahead of this year’s elections. Trump narrowly lost the state in 2020, Senator Mark Kelly – the Democratic incumbent – is one of the most vulnerable senators up for reelection this year and strategists are already looking at the 2024 Senate election to see who will run against Kyrsten Sinema. On this week’s Playbook Deep Dive Episode, Ryan joins Rep. Ruben Gallego for a long dinner and a few drinks. They discuss Gallego’s fraught history with Sinema, a potential campaign against her in 2024, the political environment in Arizona ahead of midterms and his deployment in the Iraq war. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Rep. Ruben Gallego is the congressman for Arizona's 7th district.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Carlos Prieto is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the coming weeks and months, the Playbook team will be out covering the key districts and states that will decide the outcome of the midterm elections. This week, co-author Ryan Lizza was in Las Vegas to interview John Anzalone, who is best known as President Joe Biden’s pollster, but who is also a top adviser to Gov. Steve Sisolak, who is up for reelection this year. In Nevada, two of the Democrats’ biggest political challenges collide: Democrats’ Hispanic voter problem is their working-class voter problem. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.John Anzalone is the founder of Impact Research.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Carlos Prieto is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congressman Ro Khanna is one of the most influential progressives inside the house democratic caucus. He represents California’s 17th district – a large chunk of Silicon Valley. It’s wealthy, influential and home to companies like Apple, Intel, and Cisco Systems. Today, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza asks Representative Khanna what went wrong trying to pass Biden’s Build Back Better plan and what he thinks progressives’ influence on Biden has been. Khanna also suggests how Democrats can improve their prospects going into the midterms. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Rep. Ro Khanna is the congressman for California's 17th district.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Carlos Prieto is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doug Sosnik is a man whose deep dive political memos are considered essential reading in Washington. He's best known as a former senior adviser to then-President Bill Clinton. His latest memo dissects the new center of political power in America and argues that the most important battlegrounds are fought in the suburbs. Today, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza has dinner with Sosnik to find out why he thinks a lot of conventional wisdom about the politics of American suburbs is wrong. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Doug Sosnik is a political strategist and former Clinton administration adviser.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Carlos Prieto is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices