Is it too early to talk about 2024 House races? No.

Publish date: 2024-07-06

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In today’s edition … A new attempt at gun safety unveiled … What we’re watching: The Supreme Court … Don’t cry for K Street … Trump’s authoritarian vision for 2024 … but first …

A debt limit vote with 2024 implications

It’s not too early to talk about 2024 House races.

Next week, House Republicans are set to take their most consequential vote since they recaptured the chamber, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tries to pass legislation to raise the debt limit that’s also packed with conservative priorities.

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So we thought it might be worth taking a look at how the battle for the House is shaping up. (We previewed Senate races last week.)

Democrats need to win only five more House seats to topple Republicans’ perilously narrow House majority and flip control of the chamber for the third time in four cycles. Republicans, meanwhile, are working to expand their majority and give themselves a little breathing room.

Both parties are seeking an early electoral advantage in the debt limit fight. Democrats plan to go after vulnerable Republicans who vote for it, while the National Republican Congressional Committee is preparing to press Democrats in swing districts today over President Biden’s refusal to negotiate over the debt limit, which has been making some Democrats nervous.

Here’s how strategists in both parties are thinking about the battleground races:

New York

Democrats could win back the majority simply by winning swing seats in two blue states: New York and California.

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Republicans picked up four seats in New York last year that Biden carried two years earlier, and Democrats are determined to win them back. Their top targets: Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), who represents a seat Biden carried by nearly 15 points in 2020, and Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), who narrowly defeated Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney.

Republicans, meanwhile, will be trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who won reelection last year by less than two points a few months after winning a special election. Democrats are counting on better turnout in a presidential election year.

“A presidential year is always tough on New York Republicans versus a non-presidential,” said Thomas Reynolds, a former New York congressman and NRCC chair.

California

California was the other black eye for House Democrats last year.

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Of the five California Republicans whose districts Biden carried in 2020 — Reps. John S. Duarte, David G. Valadao, Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel and Young Kim — Duarte is a top target. He’s the only freshman, and he won by less than half a percentage point in a district Biden carried by nearly 11 points.

Rudy Salas, a former Democratic state assemblyman who came within three points of defeating Valadao last year, has filed to run again, and Will Rollins, a former prosecutor who challenged Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, is weighing it, too.

Republicans, meanwhile, are targeting the Orange County seat that Democratic Rep. Katie Porter is giving up to run for Senate.

Other Biden seats held by Republicans

There are seven other Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020.

Some of them are tough targets for Democrats, such as Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a moderate who easily won last year. But others are vulnerable, including Reps. Thomas H. Kean (R-N.J.) and Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), both of whom are freshmen who won tight races.

Trump seats held by Democrats

Just five Democrats, in contrast, hold seats that former president Donald Trump carried in 2020: Reps. Mary Peltola (Alaska), Jared Golden (Maine), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Matthew Cartwright (Pa.) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.).

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Republicans are targeting all of them.

They’re betting that Peltola might have a tougher time triumphing in a presidential year when she’s not facing Sarah Palin. Kaptur, meanwhile, defeated a Republican who misled voters about his military record. Will she get as lucky next year?

Other competitive races

Republicans are already eyeing the battleground seat that Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) is vacating to run for Senate.

They’re also going after Reps. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) and Yadira Caraveo (D-Colo.), two freshmen who prevailed by less than a point last year, and Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), whose narrow victory last year was aided by Republican Doug Mastriano’s blowout loss in the governor’s race.

Democrats, meanwhile, will be targeting freshmen Reps. Zachary Nunn (R-Iowa) and John James (R-Mich.), each of whom barely won their races last year.

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The wild card: Ongoing redistricting battles that could hurt Democrats in North Carolina and Ohio and could cost Republicans seats in Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and Florida, depending on how courts rule in the coming months.

On the Hill

A new attempt at gun safety unveiled

Gun violence is once again in the headlines — does it ever leave? — and there is zero expectation Congress will act.

But this week a bipartisan group of House members is introducing a modest gun safety bill that would incentivize safe storage of weapons.

It’s a sign the issue still has political salience in some competitive districts.

Led by Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), the measure would provide tax incentives for gun retailers to sell gun storage devices.

The measure is co-authored by three Republicans in swing districts: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Lawler and Kim. Democratic Reps. Brendan Boyle (Pa.) and Vicente Gonzalez (Tex.) are also bill leads.

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A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a high number of Americans have experienced or know someone who has been affected by gun violence. In that same poll, 4 in 10 Americans live in a household with a gun and 44 percent of those people say a gun is stored in an unlocked location.

What’s likely to get a vote

The more likely gun bill to move through the House, however, is one by Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) that would “disapprove” of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule that imposes regulations and registration on the sale of rifle “stabilizing braces.”

The House Judiciary Committee advanced the measure this week after it was previously postponed because of the Covenant School shooting, where three children and three teachers were killed. The shooter used a stabilizer, according to the authorities.

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Clyde’s bill is the latest evidence of how fiercely the Republican base opposes gun restrictions.

After Rep. Stephanie I. Bice (R-Okla.) voted in 2021 to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which included a provision that prohibited people convicted of domestic violence from owning guns, she said she was the target of intense opposition in her district.

“I got blasted at home for it,” including with fundraising campaigns against Bice by pro-gun rights groups, she said at a recent event.

Oklahoma ranks second in the country in having women killed by men, according to the Violence Policy Center. The state has also banned red flag laws.

What we're watching

At the Supreme Court

Ethics: We’re waiting to see if Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. accepts Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin’s (D-Ill.) invitation to testify before the committee about the court’s ethics rules on May 2 — or if he decides to send another justice in his place, or snubs Durbin altogether.

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In his letter, Durbin said Roberts’s “last significant discussion” about how the court could resolve ethical issues was in a 2011 report on the federal judiciary.

Several Republicans, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the committee’s top Republican, have said they don’t think Roberts should testify. When asked whether House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would consider holding a hearing on the matter, his spokesman said only: “God Bless Justice Thomas.”

If Roberts does opt to send another justice in his place, who will it be? 

Justice Elena Kagan testified before a spending panel in 2019 alongside Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Or perhaps Thomas will show up himself? (Don’t bet on it.)

Abortion: We’re also waiting for the justices to decide by tonight whether to uphold two lower-court rulings that restricted access to the abortion pill mifepristone pending the Justice Department’s appeal.

A ruling in favor of antiabortion groups would upend abortion access for millions of people nationwide.

Abortion continues to divide Republicans.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, on Thursday laid into the Trump campaign’s statement to The Post that abortion should be left to the states as “a morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate to hold.”

But Dannenfelser declined to criticize Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for seeking to consolidate Republicans around a 15-week abortion ban while privately expressing concern about a six-week ban.

At the Department of Homeland Security

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will deliver what is being billed as his first “state of homeland security” address this morning. He’ll discuss changing technologies and climates and their impact on the United States and is expected to announce two new initiatives to address technological threats and nation state aggression.

What he’s not expected to focus on is the border — the issue over which House Republicans are threatening to impeach him. Our colleague Nick Miroff reports that Mayorkas is expected next week to release a plan to address an expected surge of immigrants after Title 42 ends next month.

On K Street

Don’t cry for K Street

The lobbying business traditionally booms when a new president takes office and slumps during divided government, when Washington has a tougher time realizing the policies that companies are seeking as well as the ones they fear.

But three months after Republicans took control of Congress, K Street is doing almost as well as ever.

Many top firms reported first-quarter lobbying revenue only slightly below the highs they hit last year ahead of Thursday’s filing deadline. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Washington’s highest-grossing firm, reported near-record revenue.

Here’s what some of the top firms brought in, according to numbers shared with The Early:

Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter incorrectly reported how much money Monument Advocacy brought in during the first quarter. The number was $3.9 million, not $3.4 million.

The campaign

Trump’s authoritarian vision for 2024

‘I am your justice’: Our colleagues Isaac Arnsdorf and Jeff Stein take us inside Trump’s proposed agenda for his second term. His policies, which fall under public safety and law enforcement, would test the limits of his presidential power.

If reelected, Trump says he would …

Times are changing: “Trump’s emerging platform marks a sharp departure from traditional conservative orthodoxy emphasizing small government,” Isaac and Jeff write. “Trump, by contrast, is proposing to apply government power, centralized under his authority, toward a vast range of issues that have long remained outside the scope of federal control.”

The Media

Weekend (must) reads

From The Post:

From across the web:

Coffee Break(s)

Monday marked McCarthy’s 100th day in power. In a speech to commemorate the occasion, McCarthy touted his party’s accomplishments, noting: “One thing that is abundantly clear,” he said, “is the people’s house is a productive house.”

Here are some photos from McCarthy’s first 100 days in office, taken by our colleague Jabin Botsford:

Thanks for reading. You can also follow us on Twitter: @theodoricmeyer and @LACaldwellDC.

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