Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Jonathan Allen explores how Kamala Harris is navigating the controversy around Democrats’ buried 2024 postmortem ahead of a possible 2028 bid. Plus, Jane C. Timm reports on the latest state to pass a new congressional map.
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— Adam Wollner
How Kamala Harris is threading the needle on the DNC autopsy saga
Analysis by Jonathan Allen
Kamala Harris isn’t exactly demanding that the Democratic National Committee air the dirty laundry from her failed 2024 presidential campaign.
But it makes sense that the former vice president is telling allies that she thinks an autopsy commissioned by DNC Chairman Ken Martin should be released publicly — conversations first reported by NBC News today.
Some Democrats are up in arms over Martin’s decision to keep the findings under wraps after he promised to make them public, and there has been plenty of speculation among Harris’ critics that he is suppressing the postmortem to protect her.
But protect her from what?
By now, everyone interested in politics knows what Harris did right and wrong as a candidate. Her role was largely public. She was the one who rallied Democrats at their convention and performed well on a debate stage against President Donald Trump. She’s written a book about her campaign, as have others.
The oxen left to be gored are the political professionals — on her campaign, at the DNC, in the Biden White House and at Future Forward, the main super PAC supporting the Democratic effort — who made decisions that contributed to the defeat. After all, Harris took over the 2024 plane midflight, with a captain and crew picked by President Joe Biden before he withdrew from the race.
Critics of Harris have suggested that a big reveal would be that her position in support of Israel, which was consistent with the administration she served in, hurt her in key swing states. But that has been well established by now. And, for what it’s worth, it’s not clear that withholding their votes or casting ballots for Trump has put pro-Palestinian voters in a better place.
What’s more clear is that Harris risked taking never-ending hits from Democratic activists if she remained silent on the autopsy or called for it to be suppressed. At the same time, there’s no reason for her to antagonize the DNC as she considers another run for the presidency. So, she’s let her position be known without shouting it from the rooftops.
It remains to be seen how Martin will handle the building pressure to open the books. But for Harris, the time for looking backward should be over. The question for her in 2028 is whether she’ll be more prepared to answer questions like what she would do differently this time and what her presidency would mean for Americans’ bank accounts.
Tennessee Republicans pass map splitting up state’s lone majority-Black district
By Jane C. Timm
Tennessee’s Republican-led Legislature passed a new congressional map splitting up the state’s lone majority-Black district, swiftly responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s major redistricting ruling last week.
The redrawn map puts Republicans in position to gain a seat in this fall’s midterm elections and secure full control over Tennessee’s congressional delegation.
The new map carves up a Memphis-based seat held by longtime Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., into three districts, spreading the Democratic voters into more rural, Republican districts that stretch hundreds of miles east. It also further splits the Nashville metropolitan area, the state’s other Democratic stronghold, into five districts.
Gov. Bill Lee moved quickly to call lawmakers into a special session this week to take up a new map proposal ahead of Tennessee’s Aug. 6 primaries.
The big picture: Tennessee will become the ninth state to enact a new congressional map ahead of the midterms, an unusually active mid-decade redistricting cycle that first started last year when President Donald Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their lines to shore up the party’s narrow House majority.
Republicans could pick up as many as 14 seats as a result of the campaign, compared to upwards of 10 for Democrats, though several maps are still facing litigation.
[map]
A seismic Supreme Court ruling last week that effectively eliminated racial gerrymandering protections from the Voting Rights Act (more on that below) has supercharged the trend. Louisiana and Alabama Republicans are laying the groundwork to redraw their maps, while South Carolina lawmakers are debating whether to do the same. The three states have five majority-minority districts represented by Democrats between them.
🗺️ Related read: Indiana Republicans who lost their jobs after bucking Trump on redistricting have ‘zero regrets’
For subscribers: The Supreme Court had a chance to limit partisan gerrymandering, but has instead turbocharged it
Analysis by Lawrence Hurley
In a ruling just seven years ago, at least some conservative Supreme Court justices appeared to view partisan gerrymandering as a societal problem that the court was ill-suited to solve.
But in a momentous decision last week, the court found that attempts by lawmakers to further entrench their own party’s power are a legitimate use of government power.
⚖️ Related read: Chief Justice John Roberts says American public wrongly views the justices as ‘political actors’
🗞️ Today's other top stories
- 🚢 Keeping it Strait: Trump’s abrupt reversal on his plan to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz came after a key Gulf ally suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, according to two U.S. officials. Read more →
- ⛪ Papal politics: Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the Middle East with Pope Leo at the Vatican, a meeting that follows Trump’s criticism of the first American pontiff over the Iran war. Read more →
- 🥊 Fight night: The seven top candidates in California’s race for governor sparred at a tense debate last night, throwing criticisms at one another over issues like affordability and sanctuary policies, along with a dose of personal insults. Read more →
- 🗳️ Ballot battles: Check out our tracker of the Justice Department’s efforts to get voter registration data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
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