Comment on US military deaths in Afghanistan at 2,031

Playbook: “The agenda, we’re told, will be resolutely forward-looking. A potential 2025 legislative agenda will be a central focus, with tax policy, foreign relations and entitlements all teed up for discussion.” “That’s the plan, anyway. The reality is that Trump, true to nature, has been obsessed in recent weeks with harnessing the powers of Congress to fight on his own behalf and go to war against the Democrats he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.” “It’s a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker Mike Johnson.” “Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader.”

“House Republicans landed a big political punch against President Joe Biden on Wednesday, just hours before they’re set to welcome Donald Trump to the Hill. They almost certainly can’t do more before November,” Politico reports. “Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday kept his fractured conference in line long enough to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for defying GOP demands for audio of Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur.

Politico: “The G7 summit in the southern Italian coastal resort of Borgo Egnazia features arguably the weakest gathering of leaders the group has mustered for years. Most of the attendees are distracted by elections or domestic crises, disillusioned by years in office, or clinging desperately to power…” “Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, on the other hand, can’t stop winning.” “Two years after coming to power as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, the pugnacious, folksy Tolkien fan from a blue-collar district of Rome increased her party’s popular share of the vote in Sunday’s European election.

Axios: “Donald Trump appears to be making stunning inroads with young voters as he stakes out youth-friendly positions that defy GOP orthodoxy and contradict past statements.” “The prospect of Trump coming within striking distance of winning young voters — which shows up in poll after poll — would have seemed unthinkable at the outset of the cycle.” Big caveat: “The polls could be wrong.

“Donald Trump flew into Washington last summer in a state of misery. He was there for his criminal arraignment, and he told associates afterward that the city was disgusting. He could feel Washington’s hostility,” the New York Times reports. “Today, he returns to the nation’s capital under much different circumstances — to flex his dominance over a political and business establishment that has been forced to come to terms with him.” “The former president is now the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee against President Biden, after vanquishing several primary rivals, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in recent months and rallying a wide range of Republicans behind him in denouncing his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan as evidence of a weaponized justice system.” Associated Press: Trump is returning to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican lawmakers, a first since Jan.

Punchbowl News: “Just about the only person the House GOP’s oversight hasn’t really touched is President Joe Biden — much to the chagrin of former President Donald Trump, who will meet with Hill Republicans today. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying.” “With less than five months until Election Day, the sprawling GOP probes have yet to uncover conclusive evidence that Biden did anything illegal or improper.”