The 24 Seven – 5/9/24

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. 

And be sure to follow us on your favorite digital platforms - X - Linkedin - YouTube - Instagram. And you can now catch up on all of our 24sight Pods on Spotify.

President Joe Biden tells CNN Wednesday that he will halt arms to Israel if it proceeds with a plan to enter Rafah in the ongoing Israel/Hamas War. (Screenshot of CNN by Tom LoBianco/24sight News.)

1 Red Line 1

As the war in Israel rages on, in spite of recent attempts at a ceasefire, President Joe Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday evening that he would halt arms sales to Israel if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presses forward with plans to invade Rafah. Biden called it his “red line” in the ongoing war. The Biden administration and others have struggled to negotiate a ceasefire there.

The war has become the defining issue of the race in a way almost unforeseen after Hamas launched its terrorist attack on October 7, spurring the fighting. It has split coalitions on the left and the right (though primarily among Biden’s Democratic coalition) and has sparked some of the most widespread and violent campus clashes since the 1960s — though many have noted not nearly as combative as the Vietnam War protests which defined a generation.

For more on this critical dynamic, highly recommend reading 24sight News friend

Elise Labott

at her newsletter Cosmopolitics.

2 He likes you, but

Former President Donald Trump delivered a positively political rebuff of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Motion To Vacate, Wednesday after the Georgia Republican attempted to boot House Speaker Mike Johnson for approving additional aid to Ukraine.

“If we show DISUNITY, which will be portrayed as CHAOS, it will negatively affect everything! Mike Johnson is a good man who is trying very hard. I also wish certain things were done over the last period of two months, but we will get them done, together,” Trump wrote on his social media site.

The punctuation to this point, though, came not from Trump but from one of his longest serving aides, Stephen Miller, who stood side by side with Johnson shortly before the failed vote outside the Capitol — a clear sign of support for Johnson — as they called for a new law to outlaw voting by undocumented immigrants. Which is already illegal.

24sight’s Hill expert Warren Rojas was there for the event and brought back this dispatch.

3 Red Line 2

So, Indiana delivered a big surprise Tuesday night handing former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley 22% of the vote in the bastion of old-line conservatism and the Republican Party.

Your author, a veteran of Indiana politics, did a deep dive today into the *where* of that big Haley support and how it shows critical weaknesses in the GOP coalition.

One veteran conservative source noted after this piece was published earlier today that the high water mark for Haley could be in part because Trump voters stayed home in Indiana, without reason to vote in a race dominated by the battle for the governor’s office.

Indiana’s 2016 primary, of course, was a seminal moment in Trump cementing the GOP nomination as the fight ran down to the wire. Much more energized than this past Tuesday.

4 Taking care of business

Deeds trump words in political historian

Heather Cox Richardson

’s estimation. 

Richardson contrasts the two in her latest “Letters from an American” column, digging into how workers in Racine, Wisconsin have fared over the years following political stumping by former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden. 

She uses some headline-grabbing tech deals as her lens, weighing the millions in lost tax revenue and scaled-back job growth from the unfulfilled Foxconn Technology Group expansion plans Trump trumpeted in 2018 against the infrastructure-related projects the Biden administration has prioritized across the country and the $3.3 billion Microsoft has committed to investing in the area — a shot-in-the-arm that’s projected to spur thousands of construction and production jobs. 

Richardson commends the Biden administration for ensuring that red states benefited from enactment of a trio of Democratic priorities — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), the CHIPS and Science Act (2022) and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) — rather than just paying lip-service to locals and neglecting any follow through. “The Biden administration has been scrupulous about making sure that money from the funds appropriated to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing base has gone to Republican-dominated districts; indeed, Republican-dominated states have gotten the bulk of those investments,” she writes. 

The payoff, Richardson predicts, should be significant down the line. 

“Political philosophers studying the rise of authoritarianism note that strongmen rise by appealing to a population that has been dispossessed economically or otherwise. By bringing jobs back to those regions that have lost them over the past several decades and promising ‘the great comeback story all across…the entire country,’ as he did today, Biden is striking at that sense of alienation,” she writes. 

5 Not feeling it

Hyping up legislative wins sounds great in theory. 

But veteran political strategist

Steve Schmidt

maintains that Biden is doing it wrong. 

A GOP operative who has openly rebelled against the Republican party in the Trump era, Schimdt highlights six red flags for Biden ahead of the November elections — and the current economic messaging is a biggie.

“Generally speaking, the American people do not have any idea what the following are, and if they do, they don’t believe they are working,” he writes, citing recent polling showing voters know very little about the major spending packages Biden has inked into law. 

“The Biden Administration’s economic message is an argument with the American people based on the premise that Wall Street indicators will improve their mood. It won’t work,” Schmidt warns. 

6 GOP frenemies

After a month-long game of will-she-won’t-she, conservative bomb-thrower Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene finally took her shot at firing House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday night — only to watch it go down in flames. 

As promised, 163 House Democrats joined 196 House Republicans in tabling the motion to remove Johnson, sparing the embattled Louisiana Republican from suffering the same fate as ousted former leader Kevin McCarthy. 

And while the overwhelming 396-43 vote suggests that Johnson has more support within the badly fractured caucus than his short-lived predecessor, Greene’s procedural gambit has exposed those likely to continue causing trouble for Johnson the next time push inevitably comes to shove in the increasingly chaotic House chamber. 

The 10 other Republicans who voted against quashing Greene’s quixotic quest included: House Freedom Caucus members and McCarthy rebels Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona; House Freedom Caucus members Eric Burlison of Missouri, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, Barry Moore of Alabama, and Chip Roy of Texas; as well as Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana. 

To wit, Roy joined Johnson just a few hours earlier at a Capitol Hill press conference where they attempted to rally support for a partisan voter ID program.

7 All your brain worm are belong to us

It wouldn’t be a complete circus without the revelation that one of the top candidates for office, a scion of the country’s most famous political dynasty had a worm on the brain years ago. Yes. Really.

(What’s yet to be seen is how said worm will turn votes in critical battleground states or if it has been cleansed from the voter rolls.)

As metaphorical brain worms go, highly recommend our latest pod with

Chris Cillizza

- we talked a ton about the freedom of writing and reporting in the new and burgeoning world of independent media. (Hello, Substack!)

It’s a fun listen, your faithful author for today’s edition of the 24 Seven had a blast! Give a listen, and if you like it, think about supporting a couple of moderately grizzled, none-too-cynical reporters. And if you didn’t like it, well, support us anyway!

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.) 

Our twice-weekly 24 Seven newsletter is free for all. Paying subscribers to 24sight News get more exclusive content and access to our archives. If you support quality journalism at a time when so many older news outlets are laying off reporters, please think about upgrading to a paid subscription. And to our faithful paying subscribers, we thank you.

Tom, Pilar and Warren