The 24 Seven - 5/7/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
Welcome to The 24 Seven – 24sight’s daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the race for the White House. If you see something we missed, have some suggestions or care to share a hot tip, please drop us a note: info@24sight.news.
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1 Remembering
President Joe Biden trekked to the Capitol Tuesday to deliver a speech against rising anti-Semitism and to remember the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust.
"During these sacred days of remembrance, we grieve. We give voice to the six million Jews who were systematically targeted, murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II," Biden said Tuesday at the Capitol.
A deeply worrying rise in anti-Semitism has spread through the global West in the past decade or so, punctuated in part by the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018. More recently, a number of pro-Palestinian protesters have called for the murder of Israelis — though they have also been rebuffed by other protesters and in some cases recanted their threats.
(Pro-Palestinian protests have surged across the U.S. in response to the repeated attacks on the residents of Gaza, including the blockading of basic humanitarian assistance and an Israeli attack which killed seven aid workers from restaurateur Jose Andrés’ relief organization.)
Biden’s speech comes as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on — even as attempts to broker a ceasefire have made some progress.
24sight friend and veteran foreign affairs reporter Elise Labott has been covering the protests, the war and the ramifications extensively at her Substack
— highly recommend the read.2 Failed attempt to forget
At the same time as Biden spoke at the Capitol, the former porn star at the center of the first ever criminal trial of a former president testified in court about their affair almost two decades ago. Stormy Daniels recounted spanking former president Donald Trump with a rolled up magazine and how she would take his calls on speakerphone so her friends could hear him call her “honeybunch”.
Judge Juan Merchan, who Trump has repeatedly attacked and who imposed a gag order which has had some limited effect, notably curtailed many of the details of Trump’s sex with Daniels, Just Security and MSNBC contributor Adam Klasfeld reports.
Trump and his team have repeatedly denied he had an affair with Daniels. It remains to be seen if Trump will take the stand in his own defense.
When seemingly trapped, Trump, one of the most powerful - if uniquely limited - forces in American politics grabs the cameras. Weeks of routine press conferences from the drab cement halls of the Manhattan courtroom where he is being tried on campaign finance fraud recall his daily Covid press conferences from the last time he ran for office.
3 Dems under fire
The Justice Department, under former Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, is plowing forward with its criminal cases against veteran Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Bob Menendez, who beat charges of bribery and fraud in 2018, is set for his trial to begin next week on charges alleging he was secretly lobbying for Egypt and accepting bribes from New Jersey businessmen.
And Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, has been charged with bribery stemming from payments he received from a bank in Mexico and an Azerbaijani energy company.
These Democrats have had an odd defender of late in former president Trump. Trump, himself a defendant in a historic number of cases for any former president, has issued statements in support of Menendez and Cuellar, alleging recently that Cuellar was a fellow victim of an alleged deep state conspiracy. Semafor’s Dave Weigel writes on Trump’s affinity for convicted Democrats, including his pardoning of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was feted by Trump and the Republican Party last weekend at Trump’s Florida resort.
4 The RFK Jr. Conundrum
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., possible spoiler, Kennedy family scion and breakout political star of an election which many Americans really, truly, deeply do not want — increasingly seems to be more of a problem for Trump than Biden, eating into Trump’s MAGA base with his mix of novelty, anti-vaccine history and statements supporting January 6th rioters.
Kennedy has been competing for airtime on Trump’s favorite conservative channels and, The Hill notes, Trump’s team has been increasingly attacking the Kennedy family scion who used to be viewed more as a foil against Biden and less as a threat.
5 Fight for Center right
The 2024 race is still shaping up as a battle over who will win over disenfranchised moderate and center-right Republican voters, driven from the party by Trump.
Re-upping here from Saturday the 24sight Pod featuring Republican Voters Against Trump, the Never Trump group which has been conducting focus groups of voters in an effort to keep them with Biden in the 2024 battle.
6 The man in black
Arkansas is sending two new statues to the Capitol, icons of the state (H/T
) — Former Civil Rights leader Daisy Bates and the man in black, Johnny Cash.7 Swagger
Veteran media critic Jack Shafer writes at Politico that the collapse of the journalism industry has taken with it one of the profession’s great strengths: swagger.
Shafer writes that as the power and sweep of the media industry has collapsed in the digital age - so too have reporters’ signature ability and willingness to hold power to account.
However, the Pulitzer Prizes for 2024 were announced, offering a distinct counterpoint to Shafer’s salient piece. Reporters still in the trenches were honored for investigations revealing the conditions of migrant child laborers across the U.S., the terrifying proliferation of the AR-15 rifle used in so many mass shootings, and many more.
It’s a perilous time in the news industry. But journalists press on.
One of the central tenants of 24sight’s style and reporting is bringing clarity to an utterly chaotic media ecosystem. (If you’ve checked out because lawmakers performing sex acts in Beetlejuice musicals gets the same footing as riotous campus protests or Supreme Court hearings, this is where you check back in. We keep it tight, clean and on the button – news judgment.)
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Tom, Pilar and Warren