Morning Report — Democrats fret over Senate race in Maryland, cheer Biden’s cash dash

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 03/29/24 6:53 AM ET

Democratic insiders say they’re cheered that the Biden-Harris campaign is awash in cash, including a huge haul from Thursday night’s mega fundraiser in New York City featuring President Biden and former Presidents Obama and Clinton (more on that below).

They’re even war-gaming the chaotic turbulence of the House GOP, imagining it could bolster Democrats’ aim to flip the lower chamber after November.

They’re worried, yes, about the White House race because of age, bleak polls, inflation, voter malaise, third-party candidates and former President Trump’s firm hand over his party, to name some anxieties. But there’s another problem.

Democrats are playing defense in their effort to keep the Senate. While they express optimism that they can oust GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and/or Rick Scott (Fla.), that’s unlikely. So, they will probably have to win every close race — and there are a slew of seats Democrats are defending — to keep the majority.   

MARYLAND’S SENATE PRIMARY is turning increasingly bitter as the Democratic Party adapts to late-entrant Senate candidate and former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who leads in recent polls against the top Democratic contenders, The Hill’s Julia Manchester reports.

Maryland Rep. David Trone (D) recently apologized after a House hearing because he used the word “jigaboo,” a racially charged slur, when he said he meant to say “bugaboo.” In the ensuing controversy, some high-profile House Democrats threw their support to Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks, Trone’s main Democratic rival.

Hogan has an uphill climb in a liberal state. Nevertheless, election experts at Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report moved projections of the Maryland contest last month from solid/safe Democratic to the “likely Democratic” rating, a holding zone, ABC News reports. Despite being up, Hogan is the underdog for now.

Montana is a state where the Senate odds in November appear favorable for what could become a Republican defeat of the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Jon Tester, a two-term member who’s often recognized for his flattop and years working as a farmer. Tester is battling Republican contender Tim Sheehy, a political newcomer, former Navy SEAL and aerospace entrepreneur who has the support of Trump and the Republican National Senatorial Committee.

Decision Desk HQ/The Hill: Senate prediction map shows top contests.

In Ohio, progressive Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown is being challenged by Republican businessman Bernie Moreno, a Trump ally. Brown had a 5-point edge over Moreno last month, according to RealClearPolitics’s polling average. A survey of likely voters in early March showed Brown up 4 points in a general election matchup against Moreno.

IN WEST VIRGINIA, Republican Gov. Jim Justice is 37 points ahead in a Saturday poll of GOP primary contenders, while Sen. Joe Manchin, a well-financed Democrat, prepares to retire from Congress rather than challenge the former president’s influence in an overwhelmingly pro-Trump state.

Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, is likely to face Afghanistan war veteran Sam Brown in the November general election, perhaps one of the most expensive Senate races in the state’s history. Sam Brown has reported a major fundraising edge over the crowded field of primary contenders, and Rosen amassed a record-breaking war chest, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.

Forbes: Here are 10 of the most contested Senate races from Ohio to Arizona.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ 🔎 Trend: U.S. adults see fewer major benefits from legal immigrants than they did in the past, and more major risks, according to research released today from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

▪ ✍️ A marketplace for marijuana won’t be legal in Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin indicated after using his pen to veto a cannabis bill Thursday.

▪ ⚖️ Convicted last year on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for his role in collapsed crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, 32, was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $11 billion in assets to refund the victims of his scheme.

LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS

POTUS TIMES THREE: Biden hosted a major New York City fundraiser Thursday evening, where he was joined by Obama and Clinton to at the most lucrative fundraiser of the 2024 campaign, warning fellow Democrats that Trump must be defeated while making forceful cases for Biden’s reelection.

“Joe is absolutely right that we’ve got not just a nominee, but frankly a party and an entire infrastructure that increasingly seems unconcerned with the essence of America,” Obama said of Trump and the GOP. “The idea of self-governance and the possibilities of us all fully operating and bridging our differences and moving forward. But we also have a positive story to tell about the future.”

The sold out more than 5,000-person event, moderated by late night host Stephen Colbert, was expected to net the Biden campaign more than $26 million. Biden, Obama and Clinton discussed a wide variety of topics, from the economy to the border to the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, which Biden referred to as an insurrection (USA Today and CBS News).

“The thing that disturbs me most is, I don’t know what it is that my predecessor has on these guys,” Biden said of Republicans. “Why they’re not stepping up more like [former Wyoming GOP Rep.] Liz Cheney and others because I know, I know that they don’t like a lot of what’s going on.”

But the money race isn’t anywhere near done. Last week, Biden’s reported $71 million cash on hand as of the end of February, more than twice the $33.5 million reported by Trump’s. But Trump and the GOP announced a fundraiser next week that they say will overshadow Thursday’s event by raising at least $33 million (NPR and The Washington Post).

▪ PBS NewsHour: Trump was in New York on Thursday at the same time as Biden, attending the wake of a police officer killed in the line of duty.

▪ CNN: Trump and the war in Gaza loomed large at Biden’s high-profile NYC fundraiser.

▪ Politico: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted Biden’s glitzy New York fundraiser.

BIDEN HAS COMPLAINED to aides, donors and news outlets about news coverage of his polling numbers, which he sees as highlighting unfavorable polls while ignoring more favorable surveys. While the White House and campaign maintain that it’s too far out from Election Day to rely on polls, the president has clearly shown he is annoyed with how the press has handled surveyed voters.

“While we probably haven’t read a lot about it, in the last few days, there have been several national polls showing us leading now,” Biden said during a campaign stop Tuesday in Raleigh, N.C. Overall, an aggregation from The Hill and Decision Desk HQ of more than 600 polls shows Trump with a 0.9 point lead over Biden (The Hill).

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ Democrats hope Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness efforts, currently totaling at least $138 billion, can help Democratic candidates in November’s contests.

▪ GOP political strategist Karl Rove did some data mining to unpack why the Biden campaign worries about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent bid for the White House, despite Kennedy’s ballot-access challenges. “In 2016, third-party candidates got 5.8 percent of the vote. That’s one out of every 17 voters cast a ballot for a third-party candidate. And in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Green Party candidate got more votes than Hillary Clinton lost those states by,” Rove told Fox News Wednesday. “… So even if they get a very small fraction of the vote, if it’s in the right places, it can cause enormous harm.”

▪ Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has been a harsh critic of in vitro fertilization while funding alternative research on extending women’s reproductive years.

▪ Richard Grenell, a former Trump administration official, is challenging the one-president-at-a-time mantra. He has acted as a version of a shadow secretary of state for candidate Trump, meeting with international far-right leaders and movements, pledging support from the former president and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies.

▪ Brian Pritchard, a conservative talk show host and first vice chair of the Georgia Republican Party, violated state election laws when he voted nine times while serving probation for a felony check forgery sentence, a judge ruled Wednesday. The GOP official must pay a $5,000 fine and receive a public reprimand from the State Election Board.

▪ No Labels’ 2024 presidential effort suffered another setback when former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) became the latest candidate to spurn the group, which aims to field a “unity” ticket in November.

▪ Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) met Thursday to discuss border security legislation. The meeting followed a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday that extended the block on a Texas immigration law that would let local law enforcement arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally.

WHERE AND WHEN

🐣 It’s Good Friday (not a federal holiday)! 💐

The House will meet for a pro forma session at noon.

The Senate will hold a pro forma session Monday at 10 a.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. and begin his day in New York City. Biden and first lady Jill Biden will headline a campaign event at 10:45 a.m. and then depart the Big Apple to travel to Camp David. (The White House is preparing this weekend for Monday’s annual Easter Egg Roll.)

Vice President Harris has no public events.

ZOOM IN

CONGRESS

BRIDGE FUNDING BATTLE: Days after the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, lawmakers are already duking it out over Congress’s potential role in repairing it. Biden on Tuesday vowed that the federal government would cover the massive cost to replace a major artery feeding the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the country. The federal government is already providing $60 million in “quick release” emergency federal funds and the largest crane on the Eastern seaboard to Baltimore in the wake of the collision.

The Hill’s Mychael Schnell and Mike Lillis report that the president’s proposal is winning praise from several Democrats, especially those in Maryland, who say the port’s value transcends the state. Only the federal government, they argue, has the resources to accomplish the task. But the idea has sparked an immediate backlash from conservative spending hawks, who are already up in arms over Congress’s recent approval of a massive 2024 spending package and maintain that Washington simply can’t afford to pile more money onto the national debt.

The Baltimore bridge collapse and its impact, which outside analysts think could amount to insured losses of between $2 billion and $4 billion, could wind up as “the largest-ever marine insured loss,” according to a Lloyd’s of London executive Thursday. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday on MSNBC that she expected insurance payments to cover part of the cost to rebuild the bridge. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explained in a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg News that the price tag to rebuild has not been determined.

“This isn’t going to happen overnight,” he said. “The original bridge took about five years to put up and this isn’t going to be cheap either, but we do have emergency relief funds to help in these kinds of situations. We really cannot yet say what the total price tag will be.”

IMPEACHMENT BATTLES: The House will send impeachment charges against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on April 10. House Republicans are accusing Mayorkas of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which DHS and Democrats vehemently deny. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will have to decide whether to hold a full trial on the Senate floor, vote to dismiss the charges immediately or to refer it to a special evidentiary committee. GOP strategists say formally sending the charges to the Senate will put vulnerable Democrats such as Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) on the defensive (The Hill).

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) in a Thursday letter invited Biden to formally testify April 16 as part of a Republican-led impeachment probe of alleged Biden family crimes for which no evidence has been presented after months of hearings and witness testimony. It’s an extraordinary ask of a president, who typically only appears before Congress once a year to provide the State of the Union address (The Hill).

Comer has hinted that a possible off-ramp for the inquiry, which has failed to turn up persuasive evidence of wrongdoing, might be a referral of any charges to the Justice Department, which would leave the matter for Trump or a future GOP president to pursue (NBC News).

ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with CBS News about the state of the war two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With aid for Kyiv stuck in limbo in Congress, the invasion has become a grinding artillery war of attrition where Russia not only has the upper hand with more firepower, but also firepower with a longer reach. Zelensky said what’s needed most are American Patriot missile defense systems, and more artillery.

“We didn’t have rounds, artillery rounds, a lot of different things,” Zelensky said. “I say we need help now.”

When asked whether the war could be won with Russian President Vladimir Putin still in power, Zelensky said that it would be a huge challenge, but that village by village, winning the war would weaken Putin at home, and he warned that if Ukraine does lose, Putin won’t stop there. Putin on Wednesday dismissed the idea that Russia could attack NATO, but he warned that any F-16 fighters given to Ukraine by its Western allies would be legitimate targets for Russian forces (CNBC).

Meanwhile, the White House on Thursday offered a fiery rebuke to Putin’s claims linking the recent Moscow attack on a concert hall that killed more than 130 people — carried out by ISIS-K — to Ukraine. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. provided information to Russian authorities about the threat ahead of the attack, passed a warning in writing to Russia and warned American citizens to avoid large gatherings and concerts in Moscow (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: Zelensky on Thursday reiterated his call for Congress to provide additional aid for Kyiv, directly warning Johnson of Russian advances.

▪ CBS News: The Moscow attack fuels concern over a global ISIS-K threat growing under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

FAMINE RISK: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday issued an order calling on Israel to allow unimpeded access for humanitarian aid into Gaza, which the United Nations has warned is on the verge of famine. The court’s ruling, which follows a case brought to the court by South Africa alleging state-sanctioned genocide, is part of a growing international pressure campaign to push Israel to do more to address Gaza’s dire humanitarian situation (Axios).

▪ NPR: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza are staving off hunger any way they can.

▪ Politico: Biden administration officials are in preliminary “conversations” about options for stabilizing post-war Gaza, including a proposal for the Defense Department to help fund either a multinational force or a Palestinian peacekeeping team.

TRUMP WORLD

WHILE TRUMP HAS ASKED the courts to leave his children out of his legal troubles, he doesn’t hesitate to aim his ire at the families of his perceived foes across numerous legal battles, targeting the spouses and children of judges overseeing his cases. Trump’s latest mark is the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, writes The Hill’s Ella Lee, the New York state judge overseeing the former president’s criminal trial linked to hush money payments made to an adult film actress to cover up an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election.

FIRST AMENDMENT: Lawyers for Trump argued at a hearing Thursday that the charges he faces in Georgia target core political speech and urged the judge to dismiss them under the First Amendment before the case heads to trial. Trump’s attorney argued that his political speech is protected — and he can’t be punished for false statements. Prosecutors pushed back, arguing that the communication from Trump related to the charges is not protected and that his lies furthered a criminal conspiracy. The judge did not issue a ruling.

“It’s not just that he lied over and over and over again,” prosecutor Donald Wakeford said. “It is that each of those was employed as part of criminal activity with criminal intentions.”

Trump faces 10 charges in Georgia, but Judge Scott McAfee dismissed three counts against him due to a lack of detail earlier this month. The former president and a dozen allies are accused of attempting to subvert the state’s election results to keep him in power (The Hill).

OPINION

How AI chatbots became political, by Zvi Mowshowitz, guest essayist, The New York Times.
Is Ukraine aid finally moving? by John Herbst and Jeffrey A. Stacey, opinion contributors, The Hill.

And finally … 👏👏👏 Kudos to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Readers teed up with their guesses and Googling about some recent developments in the sports world.

Here’s who went 4/4: Patrick Kavanagh, Pam Manges, Ruth Wagnon, Richard O. Fanning, Francisco Brocatto, Terry Pflaumer, Randall S. Patrick, Mary Anne McEnery, Dmytro Hryckowian, R. Travis de Grouchy, Jaina Mehta Buck, Peter Sprofera, Lynn Gardner, Stan Wasser, Lou Tisler, Harry Strulovici, Phil Kirstein, Gary Kalian, Richard E. Baznik, Chuck Schoenenberger, Luther Berg, Lori Benso, Steve James, Robert Bradley, Linda Field, Michael Palermo and John Trombetti.

They knew that NFL owners voted Monday for a rule change to ban the hip-drop tackle, a swivel technique.

Los Angeles Dodgers baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani, who speaks only Japanese, alleged this week that his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, stole from his account to pay gambling debts.

When two U.K. Women’s Super League soccer teams showed up Friday for a game wearing matching socks, it caused a 30-minute delay while a fix for the breach was worked out and nearly 33,000 fans waited. (Contrasting colors help referees under league rules.)

In Idaho Monday, safety concerns prompted by multiple racial taunts and slurs forced NCAA’s Utah Utes players and their traveling party to leave their hotel, according to their coach.

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