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Good Friday morning. The Iran nuclear deal has been making its way back to the Capitol during summer break, even if Congress has not, and it will be a focus of several events. But the big party is with the Democrats as they meet in Minneapolis to hear the candidates try to curry favor with the party’s leaders.

The summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee gets down to business on Friday with speeches by four of the party’s presidential candidates — Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor, and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the morning, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the afternoon – to hundreds of activists who are plenty familiar with their political speeches and policy views. So will the contenders say anything new or surprising?

Mr. Sanders, for one, was playing around with ideas on a yellow legal pad as he flew to Minneapolis on Thursday, according to Democrats on the plane with him. Like the other candidates, he has only about 10 minutes to speak, but advisers expect him to make a sincere pitch — even if he is not a Democrat, but an independent — as an outsider who is attracting big crowds.

“He will say if Democrats want to keep the White House,” said Michael Briggs, Mr. Sanders’s campaign spokesman, “then establishment politics won’t do it.”

“Few would deny he is generating excitement, and that’s what the party needs.”

Mr. O’Malley has been arguing that the current plan for only six debates favors Mrs. Clinton, who is leading in the polls. Several Democrats said they were curious if Mr. O’Malley would press for more debates in his speech — and whether he would do so politely or pugnaciously.

The party leaders are convening as Mrs. Clinton’s dominance in the race is shadowed by her email practices as secretary of state, and amid uncertainty about whether Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will enter the race.

As for Mrs. Clinton, this is her crowd: Many in the audience are already planning to support her. Democrats expect her to rally the base and rip into Republicans — which won’t be all that surprising, but will sure make people there feel good.

— Patrick Healy

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Charleston, S.C., is to be the scene of two tough-talking foreign policy addresses by Republicans, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Mr. Rubio plans to take aim at China, as concern grows about Beijing’s devaluations of its currency and the steep declines in markets that have reverberated to Wall Street.

His remarks come a week before China’s president, Xi Jinping, visits Washington to meet President Obama. Mr. Walker, who has called on the White House to cancel Mr. Xi’s visit, will focus his speech mostly on the Middle East. He will draw a contrast with what he considers weakness by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, and will call for a rejection of the Iran nuclear deal.“

As president, I will send the following message: The retreat is over,” Mr. Walker plans to say, according to an advance text.He will criticize the idea of engaging at all with Iran across a negotiating table.

Instead, he will call for an American defeat of Iranian “theocrats” and Islamic State “barbarians,” as necessary to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and the Chinese in the South China Sea.

“We’ve had enough of a president who proclaims that the greatest threat to future generations is climate change,” the prepared text says.

As part of his efforts to press for the approval of the nuclear deal, Mr. Obama will speak via a webcast to an event co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America.

— Trip Gabriel and Gerry Mullany

Though Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has been dogged by the questions about her email use, she has moved this week to highlight her strength before the Democratic National Committee meeting, including receiving an emotional endorsement from an old friend.

Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture who says he owes his career to Mrs. Clinton for her help in his Iowa governor’s race in 1998, endorsed her on Tuesday and joined her on Wednesday in Iowa, introducing her in a way that could serve as a counterpoint to some voter perceptions of her as untrustworthy.

The rollout of the endorsement, and memos released by the Clinton team on Thursday detailing her organizational power in early voting states, are gestures that many see as timed to the party meeting and to Mr. Biden’s 2016 deliberations.

But, to Mr. Vilsack, it was personal.

“This introduction means a lot to me,” he told a crowd in Sioux City.

He recalled how Mrs. Clinton had recently told him how concerned she was about drug addiction and mental health in the country. It struck a chord.

“I was adopted into a family where my mom suffered alcohol and prescription drug addiction,” he said. “And, on one very sad occasion, she tried to take her own life.”

Mr. Vilsack recalled how the last conversation he had with his father before he died was about the cost of law school, then noted Mrs. Clinton’s plan for easing student debt.

And, he said, “she understands loyalty.” She first took interest in him and his fledgling campaign in 1998, he said, “24 years before that, she met my brother-in-law.”

“It was that friendship that got her interested in my race,” Mr. Vilsack said. And then, “introducing my friend to my friends,” he handed the microphone to Mrs. Clinton.

— Nick Corasaniti

Donald J. Trump said in an interview on Thursday that he would soon decide whether to sign a pledge to support the ultimate Republican presidential nominee, something the South Carolina Republican Party is requiring to compete in the state’s critical primary.

Carly Fiorina, who has been gaining in polls and was widely seen as the winner of the second-tier Republican debate this month, is pressing party leaders in an effort to secure a spot in the prime-time debate in September.

And Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee have finalized a joint fund-raising agreement after months of difficult negotiations, opening the door for the party to gain a significant head start on Republicans at roping in big checks from donors.

On the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Obama, who has cited such severe storms in his push on climate change proposals — and separately faced some criticism from environmental groups on Thursday, visited New Orleans to make a case for his entire presidency: that when disaster strikes, the federal government should help not only to rescue the stranded but also to rebuild better and fairer than before.

Planned Parenthood gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.

And Mrs. Clinton compared some of the Republican presidential candidates’ views on women to those of terrorist groups, citing in particular stances against abortion even in the cases of rape or incest, and calls to defund all services of Planned Parenthood.

They’ve shared a private meeting in New York, the debate stage, and now, they will share a podium in Washington.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has invited Mr. Trump to join him to lead a rally calling on Congress to vote against the Iran nuclear deal.

The event will be on Sept. 9, a week before the next Republican debate.

“Senator Cruz has invited Donald Trump to join him on the Capitol grounds for a rally to call on members of Congress to defeat the catastrophic deal that the Obama administration has struck with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Cruz campaign said in a statement emailed to reporters. “The event will be sponsored by Tea Party Patriots, Center for Security Policy and the Zionist Organization of America.”

A joint appearance has long been in the works, according to Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for the Cruz campaign, “and this event rallying against the Iran deal is an important issue and perfect chance to partner together.”

Mr. Cruz did not extend the invite to any of the other Republican candidates, despite some, like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, taking strong positions in opposition to the deal.

Inviting Mr. Trump, who leads Republican polls, gives Mr. Cruz a near-guaranteed large crowd and extensive media coverage. Mr. Cruz has also been one of the few Republican candidates who have declined to criticize Mr. Trump over some of his more caustic comments.

— Nick Corasaniti

Mr. Trump‘s news conference argument with Jorge Ramos of Univision this week — Mr. Trump said Mr. Ramos was asking questions without being called on; Mr. Ramos said Mr. Trump was refusing to answer tough questions — drove a fair amount of traffic on television, online and in print. But, Time Magazine writes, Mr. Ramos says Mr. Trump is not the only one at fault: Speaking of the national media, “’He hasn’t been challenged enough,’ Ramos said of Trump. ‘He hates to be challenged, and it is time that we start doing it.'”

And NPR takes a look at Mr. Sanders, who considers himself to be a Democratic socialist, and “the S-word,” which “is not a word Sanders often uses on the campaign trail to define himself.”

Who would give money to Mr. Trump‘s campaign? Politico looked and found that “63 people contributed $250 or more in the first two weeks after Trump announced.””Ten of them have already ‘maxed out,’ meaning they’ve given the legal contribution limit for a federal primary election, $2,700,” Politico reports.

The animosity between Mr. Trump and Jeb Bush is rooted in decades of tensions between the billionaire and the Bush family. “There are clashes of style, manner and class between the Bushes — a patrician clan of presidents, governors and financiers who have pulled the levers of power for generations — and Trump, a hustling New York City deal-maker who turned his father’s outer-borough real estate portfolio into a gold-plated empire,” The Washington Post writes.