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Week In The News: Democrats In Detroit, Baltimore, Interest Rates

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A makeshift memorial is seen outside the site of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, after a mass shooting took place at the event on July 29, 2019 in Gilroy, Calif. Three victims were killed, two of them children, and at least a dozen were wounded before police officers killed the suspect. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A makeshift memorial is seen outside the site of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, after a mass shooting took place at the event on July 29, 2019 in Gilroy, Calif. Three victims were killed, two of them children, and at least a dozen were wounded before police officers killed the suspect. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Editor's note: After the broadcast, news broke that President Trump dropped his plan to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, as the nation’s top intelligence official.

Here's more on the update: Trump Drops Plans to Nominate John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence


With David Folkenflik

Democrats debate. The president attacks Baltimore. Fed cuts rates for the first time since 2008. The roundtable is here.

Guests

Catherine Lucey, White House reporter for The Wall Street Journal. (@catherine_lucey)

Janet Hook, national political reporter for the Los Angeles Times. (@hookjan)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

From The Reading List

Wall Street Journal: "Trump Allies See Personal Grudge, Not Political Strategy, in Twitter Attacks on Baltimore, Cummings" — "After four days of assailing Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and describing Baltimore as a “living hell,” President Trump was asked to explain his strategy.

"'There’s no strategy. I have no strategy. There’s zero strategy,' he told reporters Tuesday. 'It’s very simple.'

"Democrats condemned his descriptions of Mr. Cummings, a senior African-American lawmaker, and of Baltimore, a majority black city, as racist, while some prominent Republicans said they were inappropriate and unpresidential. Several White House and campaign aides met the tweets, and the resulting criticism, with a collective shrug. Advisers said the tweets aren’t necessarily helpful to Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts, but said they marked yet another case of the president prioritizing the personal over the political.

"Those close to Mr. Trump said he was set off by last week’s decision by the House Oversight Committee, which Mr. Cummings chairs, to subpoena top White House aides, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, his daughter and son-in-law, in its probe into official emails and texts sent from personal accounts. They also pointed to Mr. Cummings’ remarks at a news conference last week where he suggested further action against the administration was imminent. 'There comes a point when silence becomes betrayal,' Mr. Cummings said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr."

Los Angeles Times: "Joe Biden takes fire from all sides in Democratic debate" — "The attacks on front-runner Joe Biden were unrelenting and, at times, personal in a contentious Democratic debate Wednesday night during which the former vice president delivered pointed retorts as he sought to convince voters that he is not an Obama-era relic, but the politician to revive the party.

"The leading rivals sharing the stage with the more moderate Biden on Wednesday — California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — tangled with him on issues not just of policy, but of identity politics, as the two black lawmakers compete with him for African American voters, whose support is crucial to winning the nomination.

"'There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that tough-on-crime rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine,' Booker said to Biden when the debate turned to mass incarceration.

"'Mr. Vice President has said that, since the 1970s, every major crime bill — every crime bill, major and minor — has had his name on it. And, Sir ... this is one of those instances where the house was set on fire and you claimed responsibility for those laws.' "

Politico: "Senate passes massive 2-year budget deal" — "The Senate passed a two-year bipartisan budget deal and sent it to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature, putting an end to the threat of a debt crisis this fall and easing the path toward funding the government past Sept. 30.

"The vote was 67-28, with a majority of Senate Republicans supporting the measure. Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been lobbying GOP senators hard the past several days to gain their approval, and their efforts paid off Thursday morning.

"The bipartisan package — hammered out in negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — raises spending $320 billion over current levels, lifts the debt ceiling for two years and sets a course for funding the government without the fiscal brinkmanship of recent years, such as last winter’s 35-day partial government shutdown over Trump’s border wall project.

"McConnell also repeatedly hailed the Democrats’ concession that they would not insert “poison pill” policy language into individual appropriations bills this fall. That leaves in place the Hyde amendment provision banning federal funding for abortions, for instance, which McConnell cited as a major win."

Anna Bauman produced this hour for broadcast.

This program aired on August 2, 2019.

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