Principals

☞ White House: President Biden spoke candidly about his views on abortion at a fundraiser last night in Chevy Chase, telling his audience he is “not big on abortion” as a practicing Catholic but that Roe v. Wade “got it right” before the Supreme Court did away with it. Meanwhile, the administration announced new sanctions aimed at the Wagner Group’s gold mining activities in Africa — an effort to further weaken the mercenary organization following its role in Russia’s brief weekend uprising.

☞ Senate: Tim Sheehy, the Republican former Navy SEAL running to unseat Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., won an endorsement from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

☞ House: It’s quite a ways off, but Attorney General Merrick Garland — who has been the subject of recent impeachment talk from top Republicans — will be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 20, an aide confirmed. After suggesting Trump might not be the most electable GOP candidate in an interview with CNBC, Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave an interview to Breitbart News during which he declared Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016.”

☞ Outside the Beltway: North Carolina’s Senate voted Tuesday to approve a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has said he opposes the bill, but Republicans have large enough majorities to override a potential veto. As Semafor’s David Weigel writes, courts are starting to block similar state laws across the country — but the Republicans pushing them remain undeterred.

The Supreme Court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory on Tuesday in a decisive 6-3 ruling with major implications for 2024. The decision reaffirmed the ability of state courts to overrule state lawmakers on issues involving federal elections, such as the layout of Congressional maps. Supporters of the decision hailed the ruling as a defense against partisan gerrymandering, as well as more extreme efforts to tilt elections.

Trump accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of ripping off his immigration plans during an interview aboard his plane yesterday. “I mean, he’s basically copied everything I said — catch and release, finish the wall,” Trump told Semafor’s Shelby Talcott and a reporter from ABC News.

More than $200 billion in loans from two popular COVID-19 relief programs may have been collected by fraudsters, the Small Business Administration’s inspector general said in a new report (or about 17% of the total funds given out in the form of Economic Injury Disaster Loans or Paycheck Protection Program loans).

Nikki Haley criticized Trump for showing “moral weakness” by congratulating Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 70th year anniversary of communist rule during a speech on her vision for China policy at AEI. Haley also said Trump was too “singularly” focused on trade during his first term, and didn’t do enough to counter China militarily or curtail U.S. technology and investment flows to China. Haley called for revoking normal trade relations with China over fentanyl deaths.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was on clean up duty after he botched an answer to a question from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt about the Chinese government’s repression of Uyghurs. “What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked, before later promising to study up on the “weeble” people. The GOP candidate later said he was aware of the plight of the Uyghurs but didn’t understand Hewitt’s pronunciation.

— Morgan Chalfant and Benjy Sarlin

Punchbowl News: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. is increasingly working with Republicans to move legislation. Her next goal is to build bipartisan support for her bill cracking down on money laundering through cryptocurrency.

Playbook: McCarthy’s comments about Trump’s electability in 2024, and his subsequent attempt to walk them back, haven’t calmed the “fury” in Trump’s inner circle and the question of why McCarthy hasn’t endorsed the former president. His team asked McCarthy to take down his fundraising pitch calling the former president “the STRONGEST opponent to Biden!”

The Early 202: The Washington Post dissects the White House’s new “Bidenomics” pitch — where the tagline came from, what Biden is trying to do with it, and how it differs from “Obamanomics” and “Clintonomics.”

Axios: Trump’s team is mulling the possibility that the former president will return to Twitter at an “opportune moment” as he ramps up his campaign, Axios reports.

‘It was bravado’: Trump says he wasn’t holding up classified documents in 2021 meeting

Semafor was on the plane with Donald Trump on Tuesday when he rolled out a new potential legal defense: It was only “bravado” when he seemingly told a room of people in 2021 that he was holding “highly classified” material and “secret information” about attack plans on Iran.

“I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado,” Trump said in response to one of my questions. “I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.”

The implication: He was overselling the material he was showing to an aide and people working on a biography of former chief of staff Mark Meadows in the recording published by CNN, a transcript of which featured heavily in his recent federal indictment.

One thing that stuck with me on the plane was the urgency with which he defended himself, even as that defense continues to evolve. During our conversation he repeatedly insisted he had no classified documents in the 2021 meeting, even doing a mock demonstration of how he often had papers strewn across his desk about topics of interest, and saying he may have had plans for a golf course mixed in.

“I had no classified documents, but I had magazine articles, and I had stories and newspapers,” he said. “Some of those stories would have been on Iran because it’s a very close subject to me, because I think it could be the end of the world, okay? And I’d hold them up and I’d say ‘you cant let this stuff happen.’ But that was not documents and it wasn’t classified.”

He asked us at one point if we understood the argument he was making. And after Trump ended the interview (abruptly, he didn’t like a question about a plea deal) he pointedly directed his aides to ensure we reported accurately on what he’d said.

A national security lawyer we talked to, Bradley Moss, was skeptical the “bravado” case would work: “One, they’re not charging him with retaining that document,” he said in a text message. “Two, the relevance of the comments in the audio are they speak to Trump’s intent and awareness of the limitations on his ability to have and share classified records. And three, I have no reason to believe Smith would have included this issue without getting clarifying testimony from the various witnesses.”

But that Trump would resort to essentially saying he was lying, or boasting, or exaggerating — not a common admission from him — seemed to reflect the seriousness with which he views the case against him. As a number of observers noted last night, it bore resemblance to his claim the “Access Hollywood” tape was “locker room talk” after it came out in 2016 and presented one of the biggest crises of his political life. That was notably the only time in his career as a presidential candidate that he personally apologized for doing something wrong.

In general, Trump seems to be grasping at any argument that helps him back up his assertion he did not improperly retain or share national security information. And sometimes too many explanations can end up backfiring.

Donald Trump is the frontrunner again for the GOP nomination and still under investigation — and defiant — over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. But with Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling in Moore v. Harper, it’s worth taking stock of how much the political system, including members of his own party and judges he appointed, has Trump-proofed elections since he left office.

In the short term, Trump-backed candidates who sided with his plot to stay in power lost critical races in every battleground state in 2022, easing fears of an extremist push to secure him 2024 wins by any means necessary. But looking beyond just the one cycle, there are now some bipartisan and cross-ideological guardrails that might deter future Trumps as well.

The biggest change is the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, which was signed into law this year. Its provisions directly target the ways Trump pursued to stay in power, including clarifying a vice president can’t reject an election result, raising barriers to objecting to election results in Congress, and setting up new roadblocks for state legislatures who try to overturn a result after the fact.

Now the Supreme Court has shut off another path to overthrowing a free and fair election that had pro-democracy groups nervous. The court strongly rejected the “independent state legislature” theory, which critics warned could be a legal prerequisite to partisan lawmakers substituting their own electors over the will of their voters.

Pro-Trump attorney John Eastman cited the independent state legislature theory in 2020 while urging states to reject the election results. On Tuesday, he told NBC News the court’s latest ruling made future efforts along those lines “murkier.”

— Benjy Sarlin

Steve Vladeck is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on federal courts, constitutional law, and national security law.

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, according to data from our partners at Ground News.

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: Trump is the only living president or former president who is not a direct descendant of people who enslaved Black people, according to a Reuters investigation.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: The Kentucky AFL-CIO is asking for an ethics probe of Republican gubernatorial candidate and current state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, alleging he accepted campaign donations from a substance abuse group his office is investigating.

• TikTok is working on a dedicated shopping tab featuring products bought from Chinese merchants, Louise Matsakis reported.
• Russia’s rebellion is creating uncertainty for a number of African governments relying on the Wagner Group.
• There’s new conventional wisdom in podcasting and A-list celebs are out. “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent,” UTA’s CEO told Max Tani.