POLITICO Playbook: 14 legislative days until the government shuts down Presented by Amazon

Republicans will almost certainly need Democratic votes to get a government-funding bill across the finish line. And there are a healthy number of Democrats who don’t want President Donald Trump to have any money for his border wall. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

DRIVING THE DAY

IT MIGHT PUT YOUR MIND at ease that August recess is around the corner, but Congress has 14 legislative days before the government shuts down Sept. 30. Yes, just 14 legislative days -- including today -- in session to pass a bill to keep the government open. Tweet this

If you talk to top Republicans privately, they’ll brush it off, and say that there is no way PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP will want a confrontation roughly a month before the election in order to get money for his border wall. A down payment to continue to build the wall will be enough to keep Trump happy, some top Republicans say.

IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH IMAGINATION to see the president unhappy with a small pot of money for his signature wall. If the right goes crazy, saying Congress isn't backing the president's top immigration proposal, the president might get riled up. Remember: last time the president threatened to veto a spending bill his own staff had a hand in negotiating. Republicans will also be on the brink of electing new congressional leaders, which adds another complication into the mix. There isn’t much room for error, as you can see. And the president and his advisers believe that his immigration policy is a net positive for Republicans across the country.

OF COURSE, the uncomfortable reality for Republicans is that they will almost certainly need Democratic votes to get a government-funding bill across the finish line. And there are a healthy number of Democrats who don’t want Trump to have any money for his border wall.

MOST LIKELY at this point: Congress will try to use September to pass a stop-gap measure to fund government until the end of 2018.

MORE INTERNAL IMMIGRATION DISCORD … “‘That was not the deal’: McCarthy, Ryan renege on immigration vow,” by Rachael Bade. POLITICO

NICK SHAPIRO, the former deputy chief of staff at the CIA, emails this about PRESIDENT TRUMP’S threat to take away security clearances from his former boss John Brennan: “To be clear: Former Deputy and Acting CIA Director Michael Morell perfectly lays out exactly why all former DCIA’s leave with their clearance here ( Morell’s tweet ) and so you know, John Brennan hasn’t made one penny off of his clearance. Not one thing he has done for remuneration since leaving the government has been contingent on him having a security clearance.

“One doesn’t need a security clearance to speak out against the failings of Trump. This is a political attack on career national security officials who have honorably served their country for decades under both Repubs & Dems in an effort to distract from Mueller’s investigation.”

-- @benjaminwittes: “I just texted @Comey asking whether he even has a security clearance to revoke. ‘Nope,’ he responded. There’s nothing for POTUS to revoke. Comey says he was ‘read out’ when he left government as per normal practice. ... He even recently declined a temporary clearance from the IG to read the classified annex to the IG’s recent report. He didn’t want to see any classified material lest the president accuse him of leaking it.”

-- BACKGROUND on Trump looking to revoke security clearances, POLITICO

Good Tuesday morning.

PALACE INTRIGUE … WHO WILL TAKE THE PODIUM POST-SHS … ANDREW RESTUCCIA and NANCY COOK, “Trump advisers quietly begin thinking about ‘life after Sarah’”: “Planning for her eventual exit is on the minds of many Trump advisers and staff members, according to interviews with nearly a dozen current and former administration officials and others close to the president.

“Bill Shine, the newly appointed White House deputy chief of staff for communications, has quietly begun asking friends and associates for their opinions about who could succeed Sanders if she leaves in the coming months, according to two people familiar with those conversations. Shine, in a brief interview, denied having such conversations. ...

“[A]n unofficial shortlist is already emerging among Trump White House alumni, former campaign aides and other backers of the president. At the top of the list is Heather Nauert, the current State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News host. Nauert has impressed White House aides with her steady performances in Foggy Bottom. ...

“Other possibilities include Bill Hemmer, a Fox News reporter; Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who recently left the network to join a pro-Trump outside group; Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh, who worked closely with the White House on its overhaul of the tax code and used to be a Fox News contributor; and White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah.” POLITICO

THE INVESTIGATIONS -- “Donald Trump’s Legal Team Submits Counteroffer for Possible Interview in Mueller Probe,” by WSJ’s Rebecca Ballhaus: “President Donald Trump’s legal team has submitted a counteroffer to special counsel Robert Mueller on a possible interview with the president that could allow for questions about collusion with Russia but curtail inquiries related to obstruction of justice.

“As negotiations for such a sit-down are set to enter their eighth month, Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said Monday that an interview between the special counsel and the president is ‘still on the table.’ The president’s legal team is open to him answering questions about possible collusion with Moscow, Mr. Giuliani said, but is less willing to have Mr. Trump discuss questions about obstruction of justice.” WSJ

-- @bradheath: “NEW: The FBI seized *12* audio recordings from President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. A special master reviewing the evidence turned them over to federal prosecutors on Friday.”

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MANAFORT WATCH -- DARREN SAMUELSOHN sent us some details on the court proceedings: “There were more than 100 people packed into the courtroom for Monday’s morning proceedings, though the crowd got smaller as the day progressed. There were probably two or three dozen reporters in the courtroom and another 8-10 TV cameras outside, including at least two live stand-up spots that I saw.”

-- HAPPENING TODAY: “Judge Ellis is bringing in the full jury pool at 9 a.m. He’ll give them a questionnaire and explain the basics of the case. Voir dire starts next Tuesday, July 31. Ultimately, the jury will be 16: 12 jurors and 4 alternates. Ellis also said he’d be in session on the first Friday of the trial, Aug. 2. But he also left the door open to not being in session on the other Fridays when the trial is going. It sounded like he’d make decisions each week on that.”

JOSH MEYER: “How U.S. intelligence agencies can find out what Trump told Putin”: “President Donald Trump’s insistence on holding a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin hobbled U.S. intelligence agencies who would usually get an intimate look at such a sitdown, but American spies still have extraordinary capabilities to piece together what was discussed. That’s in large part due to the existence of a top-secret U.S. collection service that specializes in tapping adversaries’ communications on the fly, including those of Putin’s entourage at last week’s summit in Helsinki.

“Privately, sources familiar with U.S. intelligence capabilities expressed confidence that the so-called Special Collection Service scooped up not only Putin’s readout of the two-hour meeting, but what the Kremlin’s top spymasters really think about it — and how they’re spinning it to their foreign counterparts.

“That means the National Security Agency and CIA are at less of a strategic disadvantage than U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged publicly. But because they likely are missing the one critical piece of intelligence they need the most — a word-by-word account of what, exactly, Trump and Putin said during the meeting — those officials appear to be flying somewhat blind when it comes to fulfilling their most important mission of helping U.S. policy makers figure out what comes next.” POLITICO

FOR YOUR RADAR -- “North Korea begins dismantling key test site, satellite imagery suggests,” by WaPo’s Adam Taylor in Seoul: “North Korea has begun dismantling the facilities at the satellite launch station in Sohae, according to an analysis of commercial satellite imagery released on the 38 North website. The Sohae location has been the main site for North Korean satellite launches since 2012.

“The testing facilities at the site are thought to play a role in the development of liquid-fuel engines that can also be used in North Korea’s ballistic missile program. If the analysis of the satellite imagery is accurate, North Korea may be taking a small but significant step toward the disarmament that was agreed upon by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump during a landmark meeting in Singapore on June 12.” WaPo

SCOTUS WATCH -- TOP-ED – SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-Vt.) in the NYT, “Uncover the Truth About Brett Kavanaugh”: “[U]nlike most of his predecessors, Judge Kavanaugh spent much of his career engaged in some of the most partisan fights in our nation’s recent history — including Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton, the Bush v. Gore case and five contentious years in President George W. Bush’s administration. Judge Kavanaugh thus has quite a paper trail — over one million pages — which the White House was well aware of when he was nominated. In the coming days Senate Republicans will decide if they support reviewing Judge Kavanaugh’s entire record. ...

“Senator Mitch McConnell is warning that Democrats will pay a political cost if they insist on obtaining Judge Kavanaugh’s full record, which may delay a vote on his confirmation. My response: Democrats should not worry. And Senator McConnell’s complaints about possible delays for a Supreme Court nomination ring hollow after he stonewalled Merrick Garland’s nomination to the court in 2016. The methodical review of a federal court nominee’s record is not optional. It is the most fundamental part of the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. ...

“The need to vet Judge Kavanaugh’s full record is all the more urgent because the last time he testified before the Senate, he appeared to provide a misleading account of his work in the White House. At his 2006 confirmation hearing, Senator Dick Durbin and I asked about his knowledge of several Bush-era scandals, including warrantless wiretapping, torture and detainee treatment. Judge Kavanaugh testified that he had no knowledge of such issues until he read about them in the newspaper. But a year after his confirmation, press reports indicated that he had participated in a heated discussion in the White House over the legality of detainee policies.” NYT

-- NYT’S THOMAS KAPLAN: “A Supreme Court Vote Is Just One of Heidi Heitkamp’s Headaches”: NYT

JONATHAN KARL in the WSJ, reviewing Sean Spicer’s “The Briefing”: “Speaking for Himself”: “Mr. Spicer’s book is much like his tenure as press secretary: short, littered with inaccuracies and offering up one consistent theme: Mr. Trump can do no wrong. Mr. Spicer has not been well served by the book’s fact checkers and copy editors. He refers to the author of the infamous Trump dossier as ‘Michael Steele,’ who is in truth the former chairman of the [RNC], not the British ex-spy Christopher Steele. He recounts a reporter asking Mr. Obama a question at a White House press conference in 1999, a decade before Mr. Obama was elected.

“There are also some omissions: He writes about working for Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.), who he says ‘knew how to manage the news cycle. And on top of all that, he was good to staff and fun to be around.’ He never gets around to mentioning that Mr. Foley later resigned in disgrace for sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys working as congressional pages.” WSJ

THE JUICE …

-- SPOTTED at Marc Short’s going away party last night at the home of Kellyanne Conaway: Kristen Short, John Kelly, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Larry Kudlow, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Sarah Sanders…

… Hogan Gidley, Johnny DeStefano, Russ and Mary Vought, Paul Teller, Josh Pitcock, Jeff Freeland, Johnny Hiler, Andeliz Castillo, Ja’Ron Smith, Julie Radford, Catherine Curry, Michelle Runk, Andy Koenig, Bethany Scully and Shahira Knight.

TRUMP’S TUESDAY -- The president is flying to Kansas City, Missouri in the morning. He will give a speech at the Kansas City Convention Center for the VFW National Convention. Trump will then participate in a roundtable with supporters and deliver a speech at a joint fundraising committee lunch. In the afternoon, he will fly back to Washington.

PLAYBOOK READS

PHOTO DU JOUR: An attendee arrives for an America First Policies event in Philadelphia on Monday. The event was the first stop for Vice President Mike Pence on his visit to the city in support of Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), who is trying to knock off Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). | Matt Rourke/AP Photo

SCOOP -- “Trump to Seek Repeal of California’s Smog-Fighting Power,” by Bloomberg’s Ryan Beene, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, John Lippert, and Ari Natter: “The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions -- including its mandate for electric-car sales -- in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan.

“The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle.” Bloomberg

WSJ’S REBECCA SMITH: “Russian Hackers Reach U.S. Utility Control Rooms, Homeland Security Officials Say”: “Hackers working for Russia claimed ‘hundreds of victims’ last year in a giant and long-running campaign that put them inside the control rooms of U.S. electric utilities where they could have caused blackouts, federal officials said. They said the campaign likely is continuing. The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure, ‘air-gapped’ or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative ease by first penetrating the networks of key vendors who had trusted relationships with the power companies, said officials at the Department of Homeland Security.” WSJ

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MEDIAWATCH -- “Abby Huntsman In Talks To Join ‘The View,’ Sources Say,” by Yashar Ali in HuffPost: “Abby Huntsman, a co-host of the popular Fox News program ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ and a former ‘HuffPost Live’ host, is in talks with ABC to join their daytime show ‘The View,’ four sources familiar with the negotiations tell HuffPost. If a deal is agreed upon, Huntsman would replace Sara Haines, a former ABC News correspondent, who recently announced that she is joining ‘Good Morning America’ host Michael Strahan in co-hosting a third hour of ‘GMA’ starting in September.” HuffPost

-- “Daily News cuts drive fears New York City’s becoming ‘local news desert,’” by Morning Media’s Michael Calderone: “Tronc’s decision to cut the Daily News newsroom in half, reportedly leaving as few as 40 people behind, also comes amid growing concerns that New York City, with a population of 8.5 million people, is already underserved when it comes to covering courts, cops and local communities. The Daily News closed its bureaus in the outer boroughs in 2015, while The Wall Street Journal shuttered its ‘Greater New York’ section in 2016 and The New York Times has trimmed metro coverage.

“The once-muckraking Village Voice killed its print edition last year, when New York City also saw the shuttering of much-beloved local site DNAInfo. The New York Post is kept afloat by 87-year-old billionaire Rupert Murdoch, but its future under his sons remains less certain.” POLITICO

"Icing on Tronc cake: controlling owner Michael Ferro resigned as chairman after accusations of sexual harassment. Converted $5M annual, three-year ‘consulting fee’ into $15M lump sum & sought to sell stake. Sale fell through. He kept $. It put Tronc in red for 1stQ." @davidfolkenflik

PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on a 1 p.m. Acela from Penn Station to D.C. ... Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) walking Monday morning in casual clothes on the street at H St. and 10th NW

WELCOME TO THE WORLD – OBAMA ALUMNI: Greg Schultz, executive director of American Possibilities PAC (Joe Biden’s PAC) and former senior adviser to VP Biden and special assistant to President Obama, and Simone Petrella, chief cyberstrategy officer at CyberVista, welcomed Carter Petrella Schultz. Pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Barbara Morgan, VP at crisis management and public affairs firm Greenbrier Partners and an SKDKnickerbocker and Anthony Weiner alum. How she’s celebrating: “In general, I’m pretty low-key about my birthday and since it falls on a Tuesday, it’ll be similar this year. My boyfriend and I will probably go for a long bike ride in the morning, which is the perfect way to start any day not just one’s birthday. We are having dinner with two of my best friends and their mini-humans, followed by a meet up with some other friends at a bar in northwest Denver.” Playbook Plus Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is 65 ... Joel Benenson, founder and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group, is 66 ... Pat Oliphant is 83 ... Marc Racicot, former RNC chair and Montana governor, is 7-0 … AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is 69 (hat tip: John Weber) ... Ryan Sims ... WSJ’s Kim Strassel ... John Brabender, chief creative at BrabenderCox … CNBC’s Eamon Javers … Jennifer Sarver ... Rob Anderson … Robert Hoopes, president of Vox Global ... Juergen Baetz ... Magee Quick McBride ... Mike Sugerman, CBS News NY reporter and anchor (h/t Jon Haber) … Kathleen Hennessey, a deputy Washington bureau chief at the AP … Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) is 62 … Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) is 45 (h/t Scott Jennings) ... Emily Casarona ... Politico’s Megan Ruane ... Hillary Gross, chief of staff for Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), is 29 (h/t Zach Parkinson) ... Melodie Brown Thomas, director of business development at AtlanticLIVE (h/t Patrick Garrigan) ...

… Vin Weber is 66 … CNN’s Veronica Bautista (h/t Dax Jejera) ... Kerri Briggs ... Eli Center ... Chris Bond, communications director for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise … Michelle Kessel, producer for ABC’s “Nightline” ... Sarah Citrenbaum ... Greg Hittelman, comms director at the Enough Project and The Sentry ... Trey Hollern, public affairs manager at CVS Health ... Christian Conner (h/t Tammy Haddad) ... CBSN’s Matt Joseloff (h/t Rob Gifford) ... Colin Peppard ... Jay Townsend ... Will Holloway ... Carmen MacDougall ... Allie Bedell, Sen. Deb Fischer’s campaign manager and an alum of Pat Toomey and Jeb Bush ... Michael Kracker ... Ben Keeler ... Ann Berry ...Dan Reilly ... Stephen Dinan … Anna Douglas ... Brian Mooar ... Katherine Ragsdale ... David Fuscus, president/CEO of Xenophon Strategies ... Maryann Sedlack ... Courtney Carlson ... Dan Slater ... VJ Sahi … Jessica Doyle … Olivia Morgan … Beth Scully (h/ts Teresa Vilman)

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