Analysis | The campaign dichotomy in one newsletter (2024)

🚨Breaking overnight:

Mexico will have its first female president after Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory Sunday. The left-leaning Sheinbaum, formerly the mayor of Mexico City, currently leads with 58 percent of the vote, though counting has not yet finished.

This week in Congress will be a preview of the next five months of the campaign.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing to wield their legislative and investigative powers in defense of former president Donald Trump after a jury found him guilty last week of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.

Democrats, meanwhile, will spend the week focusing on what they say is one of their most potent issues this election cycle, especially for suburban women who have turned away from Republicans in a post-Roe world: women’s reproductive rights.

The contrast on Capitol Hill will be reflected on the campaign trail as Trump decries the verdict, which his campaign and supporters say is a fundraising boom and has further motivated his base.

But Democratic leaders in the House and Senate believe the election will be decided not on Trump’s felony conviction — even as some Democratic members will absolutely incorporate it into their campaign messaging — but on issues that affect voters, senior Democratic sources say.

Plus, Congress has little that it must do in the coming months, with no deadlines until the end of the fiscal year in September — which means members are in full campaign mode.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is pledging oversight and retribution for Trump’s guilty verdict.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the Republican-created Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, has called on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to appear before the committee on June 13. (There’s no indication that they will comply.)

Johnson also indicated that Republicans are looking at how to target Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting a Jan. 6 case against Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has been leading the charge, calling for Congress to cut Smith’s funding. That was previously something that Johnson told our friends at Playbook isn’t possible, but now Johnson appears open to examining what is. (Greene, meanwhile, is now calling on Congress to defund New York.)

In the Senate, a group of Trump-aligned Republicans say they will block all of Biden’s nominees and all legislation not related to national security because they are “unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear the country apart.”

The 10 Republicans who signed the letter so far don’t usually vote for Biden nominees or funding bills anyway. They can’t stop legislation or nominees — but they can slow down the Senate even more. Also, it’s a sign that they will continue to draw attention to what they say is a “rigged” trial and put pressure on their Republican colleagues to join them.

Democrats, meanwhile, are focusing on abortion — which helped propel the party to electoral victory in 2022 and 2023 — as the second anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade approaches.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will hold a vote Wednesday on a bill that would codify a right to contraception. It’s an attempt to put Republicans on the record and provide another talking point for Democratic incumbents to appeal to disaffected Republican and independent voters on the issue of women’s reproductive choices.

The push by Democrats will expand beyond the Senate.

The Democratic National Committee and Texas Democratic officials are holding a press call today on the Texas Republican Party’s proposed platform that would define abortion as homicide, which Democrats say would open the door to criminal prosecution of women seeking abortions.

This week, the Biden campaign plans to focus on the upcoming Dobbs anniversary, too.

“In America, in 2024, access to safe, effective contraception should not be up for debate — but because of Donald Trump it is,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt wrote to The Early in a statement. “If he wins, his allies have a plan to further undermine access to birth control, including emergency contraception and condoms.”

Israel: The House could vote this week on a bill, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), sanctioning the International Criminal Court for recommending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be charged with war crimes.

The White House is leery of sanctions. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Israeli government have told Republicans that partisan bills that never get signed into law don’t help Israel, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

“AIPAC strongly supports bipartisan legislation to impose sanctions on the ICC for the morally bankrupt and legally baseless actions by the ICC prosecutor,” AIPAC spokesman Marshall Whitman said.

House Democrats are unlikely to whip for or against the bill, according to a senior aide. We’re watching to see the final form the bill takes and how much support it gets.

Appropriations: Today, the House Rules Committee is scheduled to take up the first appropriations bill of the year — the military construction and Veterans Affairs funding bill — with the goal of putting it on the floor this week.

It’s part of an aggressive timeline to pass all 12 appropriations bills before the House leaves town for the August recess. The MilCon-VA bill is expected to get few, if any, Democratic votes because of an antiabortion rider and steep cuts to military construction, which includes funding for base housing and other amenities for troops. Still, we’re watching the vote count and whether it is able pass with the slim Republican majority.

House margins: We’re also watching the swearing in today of Vince Fong, who won a special election runoff last month to fill former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s seat in California. He’ll expand the Republican majority from a one-seat margin to two seats.

Fauci: And we’re keeping an eye on Anthony Fauci’s testimony this morning before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

“Republicans are poised to grill the former National Institutes of Health official on the agency’s funding of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that participated in risky virus research in China before the pandemic,” our colleague Dan Diamond writes.

Biden is in Delaware this morning. He’ll head to Greenwich, Conn., later today for a fundraiser before returning to Washington.

Biden will host the annual congressional picnic at the White House tomorrow before leaving for France, where he is traveling with first lady Jill Biden to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

He’s expected to give a speech on Friday at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy — where U.S. Army Rangers scaled the cliffs on June 6, 1944 — on defending freedom and democracy.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, will host the Bidens for a state visit on Saturday.

Jury selection is set to start today in Hunter Biden’s trial in Delaware, where is facing charges of illegally buying a gun in 2018. It’s the first time a president’s child has faced a felony trial, our colleague Toluse Olorunnipa writes.

Here’s what to know about the trial from our colleague Perry Stein:

Nadine Menendez may not be at the corruption trial of her husband, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), but she’s been a key figure in it so far.

Bob Menendez served as the chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee until stepping down following his indictment on charges related to alleged bribes and improper use of his power. Nadine Menendez has been accused of facilitating bribes and is being tried separately from her husband. She has not been present at Bob Menendez’s trial as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer.

In her absence, Menendez’s legal team has portrayed his wife as manipulative and the senator as a victim of her scheming.

Some texts show Menendez denying his wife’s requests, such as one in which he responded to her asking him to praise Egypt in a speech with “Really???” But others show Menendez asking his wife to pass on information to Wael “Will” Hana, a businessman with ties to the Egyptian government who is also standing trial on charges of bribing Menendez.

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Rest in peace, Marian Robinson