The Playbook Podcast

This week was another reminder that while Democrats “control” the Senate, they don’t actually control the Senate. Covid relief was cut from the Ukraine aid bill. A national law to codify abortion protections — should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade — came nowhere close to the 60 votes needed to advance it. And the 50 votes it would take to nuke the filibuster and pass the abortion rights law are also unavailable to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. More from Alice Miranda Ollstein and Marianne LeVine If there are serious negotiations underway to pass a Build Back Better 2.0 in advance of the midterms, they are a well-kept secret.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio

Former President Donald Trump goes 1-for-2 on primary day in Nebraska and West Virginia. And new reporting from inside the Supreme Court, via Josh Gerstein, Alexander Ward and Ryan, as the nine justices are set to gather Thursday for the first time since POLITICO published the draft opinion overturning Roe:“Justice Samuel Alito's sweeping and blunt draft majority opinion from February overturning Roe remains the court’s only circulated draft in the pending Mississippi abortion case, POLITICO has learned, and none of the conservative justices who initially sided with Alito have to date switched their votes. No dissenting draft opinions have circulated from any justice, including the three liberals.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

PRIMARY DAY: WHAT TO WATCH FOR — West Virginia and Nebraska hold primaries today. Like last week’s contests in Ohio, the action is mostly on the Republican side, and the main drama is about former President DONALD TRUMP.WEST VIRGINIA: Two GOP incumbents, Reps. ALEX MOONEY and DAVID MCKINLEY,  are facing each other in a congressional primary because the state lost a seat after redistricting.NEBRASKA: CHARLES HERBSTER, JIM PILLEN and state Sen. BRETT LINDSTROM are the three top GOP primary candidates running to replace the term-limited governor, PETE RICKETTS. The national implications of the race revolve mostly around Trump’s endorsement of Herbster, who has been accused of sexual assault by eight different women.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterKara Tabor hosted this episode of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Happy Monday. Get ready for yet another week dominated by the debate over abortion rights, as the impending decision expected to overturn Roe v. Wade sucks up all the oxygen in Washington. Two major storylines to watch this week, as Democrats gear up to go on offense:1) Senate tees up abortion vote — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to file cloture today on a bill by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that would enshrine a statutory right to abortion nationwide.2) Democrats seize on McConnell's national abortion ban remarks — Democratic strategists are salivating over comments Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made in a USA Today interview that published Saturday.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio. 

Overturning Roe v. Wade would be the culmination of  former president Donald Trump’s bid to remake the judiciary — the very reason that many social conservatives held their noses and voted for him in 2016. But Trump, “never one to shy away from taking credit for accomplishments, real or imagined, has yet to crow about the majority draft opinion,” our colleagues Meridith McGraw and Jonathan Lemire report. He’s addressed it only “when asked in interviews.”Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

J.D. Vance owes his GOP Senate primary victory in Ohio to two people: Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. Trump’s endorsement put him over the top in a crowded primary, while Thiel’s support — funneled through a super PAC called Protect Ohio Values (aka POV) — enabled Vance to outsource many traditional campaign operations, including polling, advertising, GOTV and, it turns out, opposition research.One big problem with letting a super PAC do everything: Campaign finance law prohibits communication between a candidate’s own committee and a super PAC supporting them.But there are ways around that obstacle. As Alex Isenstadt detailed Tuesday in a fascinating tick-tock of the Ohio race, POV set up an unadvertised-but-public Medium account, where it posted a trove of sensitive documents, polling reports, audio and video for Vance to use. Some of the files are boring, such as b-roll footage the Vance camp could include in ads. But the group also posted extensive opposition research reports — on both his primary opponents and Vance himself.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

On her first day back in public since testing positive for the coronavirus last week, VP Kamala Harris spoke to a crowd of abortion rights supporters at the EMILY’s List conference Tuesday evening. Her speech, scheduled long in advance, had to be completely rewritten for obvious reasons.Harris gave a preview of how the administration hopes to frame the debate moving forward — channeling its supporters’ outrage while pitching the midterm election as a choice between two very different views of abortion rights.In the wake of the news about the draft opinion overturning Roe, a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll reveals that a clear majority of voters want the court to support abortion rights.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

In his own words: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”Thus begins Justice Samuel Alito's February draft opinion that would end the constitutional right to an abortion in America, obtained exclusively by POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward.We knew this was coming. Ever since last December’s oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case, it seemed likely that there was a majority on the court to overrule Roe and Casey.But while not a surprise, it was still shocking to see Alito’s words in black and white. The draft opinion, if it holds, would be the culmination of half a century of legal conservatives organizing around the idea that Roe was wrongly decided and needed to be reversed.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

It’s May 2, just over six months until the midterm elections, which are generally a referendum on the president’s performance. President Joe Biden is in rough shape. Let’s look at how it happened, and how he hopes to prevent a wipeout …How they got here: As early as April 2021, John Anzalone — Biden’s top pollster — saw the writing on the wall. In a series of memos over the ensuing months, he tried to warn the president about the growing liabilities posed by immigration, inflation and crime, report NYT’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletterRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Most of the candidates chasing Ohio’s GOP Senate nomination have pledged allegiance to Donald Trump and beaten a path to Mar-a-Lago. But not state Sen. Matt Dolan. Instead, he’s poured millions of his own fortune into a run as a traditional conservative. Now, “days before the May 3 primary, Dolan appears to be experiencing a late burst of momentum,” Natalie Allison reports.Listen to Playbook Deep Dive: Beltway, stars want an invite: How Tammy throws brunchRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.