Think about Andrew this morning; he has an important fantasy football draft today.

No Morning shots Monday – we hope you all enjoy the holidays. Happy Friday!

—Willem Kristol

That whooshing sound you heard last night was a collective sigh of relief from Democrats, Never Trumpers, and other Kamala Harris supporters.

And after we released our bated breath, we said to each other:

“Phew.”

“Good enough.”

“The first test was successful.”

“She did what she had to do.”

Like she did, I think.

This was the first interview for Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, since they suddenly became the standard bearers of the Democratic Party. It’s not easy to get up to presidential speed in less than six weeks. Last night showed they’ve come a long way.

But not entirely. I want to mention one point in particular.

For a sitting vice president who campaigned on “change,” “turning the page” and “moving forward,” it was always going to be a challenge to balance that message with defending the policies of the current administration of which she is a part.

Yesterday’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash showed that this remains a challenge. And it begged the question: In the first phase of this race, Harris took over the mantle of change from Trump. Can she keep it?

We’ll see. But for now, I seriously doubt that last night changed the dynamics of the race one way or the other. Sometimes a cable news interview is just a cable news interview.

I do think, though, that interview marked the end of the beginning of the campaign. In those first five weeks, Harris really did what she had to do: she regrouped the anti-Trump coalition and re-introduced herself to the American people in a favorable light. She started a few points behind Trump, and she closed the gap and now has a small lead. These successes were not inevitable. But Harris and her campaign made them happen.

Last night didn’t reverse any of that. But it didn’t continue the impressive momentum of the first five weeks. Maybe it couldn’t. She had to explain some of her policy changes. She had to be asked what she knew about Biden’s ability to serve. It had to be defensive. But it was necessary.

And here we are, approaching Labor Day, with a race that is definitely worth your while.

That makes me a little nervous about the sighs of relief last night. The “she did what she had to do” verdict is usually given to a candidate who has a lead and does nothing to jeopardize it. But Harris is not a candidate with a significant lead. She can’t just play defense and stall. What she has to do is stay on offense and play to win.

All of which is to say: We have two exciting and decisive months ahead of us. And we have a big moment coming up: the debate. Harris’ performance last night was compelling enough to make you hopeful about the debate and the next two months. It was also tentative enough to make you worried about the debate and the next two months.

That is where we are now: at a time when there is no reason for hubris and no reason for despair.

And on Labor Day weekend, it may be appropriate to say that we have arrived at a moment when we are faced with a task worthy of all our efforts: victory in November.

Don’t look now, but we’re almost at the final stretch. Join us for the ride:

—Andrew Egger

They say it takes 10,000 hours of work to master a skill. So we shouldn’t be surprised that, after years of diligent practice, Republicans in Congress have gotten so good at ignoring the insane behavior of Donald Trump.

This week, Trump turned Arlington National Cemetery into a campaign prop, blatantly violating laws prohibiting “partisan political activity” at military cemeteries by shooting footage for ads at the graves of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. A cemetery employee who tried to get the campaign to respect those laws was physically “pushed aside,” the military said. said in a statementwhile the Trump campaign mockingly claimed that the employee was a “episode about mental health.”

A few Republicans in Congress jump to defend Trump’s behavior; most remained silent. The Bulwark We asked the office of Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, if they planned to investigate the incident. We did not receive a response.

Republicans have also been largely silent about Trump’s increasingly brazen abandonment of the pro-life agenda he embraced during his first term. Trump adopted an abortion-agnostic stance during the 2024 campaign, but since last week he has taken it to new heights. Last week he said told CBS News that as president he would not attempt to block the shipment of abortion pills across the country. This week his campaign dodged a question by The Bulwark on whether he would veto a Democratic-passed bill that Roe vs. Wade back to the law.

And yesterday, Trump suggested that he — as a Florida resident — would vote in November to expand abortion rights in the Sunshine State, where he has long criticized the six-week ban that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year as a “terrible mistake.” “I’m going to vote that we need more than six weeks,” he said. told NBC News(His campaign later tried to walk (This response back.)

None of this prompted public opposition from the four co-chairs of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus: Reps. Kat Cammack, Michelle Fischbach, Andy Harris and Chris Smith.

There has been no significant GOP response to Trump’s monopoly-money economic agenda: No tip taxes! No Social Security taxes! A new mandate for insurance to cover IVF! More tax cuts And more expenses! Pay it all with rates!

And, uh, we haven’t seen any Republicans lining up to distance themselves from Trump’s repeated calls — as we noted yesterday — to jail basically every prominent Democrat in national politics and every Republican who exposed his actions on January 6.

You can hardly blame them, though: we’re sure they’re all busy writing their detailed commentary on Kamala Harris’ first interview.

Do you believe Donald Trump’s turn to the agnostic center on abortion? Let us know in the comments:

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A MEMORY FROM THE PAST: JD Vance did something JD Vance-esque yesterday: he went online to mock Kamala Harris and maybe stepped in the with some women on the road. Trump’s running mate dug up a 2007 clip of Miss South Carolina Teen Caitlin Upton to mockingly claim he had found footage of Harris’ CNN interview. Upton, infamously, froze on live TV when asked to explain why Americans had trouble identifying the United States on a map, and said something about people not having maps and the need to help South Africa and Iraq. It was a train wreck and not something Upton would want to relive. But Vance also left out the second part of the story. Shortly after that, Upton was offered a job… by Donald Trump, who raved about her beauty.

“When I walked into his office, he said, ‘You’re even more beautiful than I expected. You’re going to model for my agency and I’m not taking no for an answer,'” Upton recalled. “It was surreal.”

Upton was just a teenager at the time. Here is a picture of them together.

THE YES MAN: The Trump-orbiters who loom largest in the liberal consciousness are the fanatical ideologues: the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers of the world. But on the Atlantic OceanElaina Plott Calabro has a great new profile of Kash Patel, a man dangerous for a different reason. “Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his dedication,” Calabro writes. “This was what seemed to bother many of his colleagues most: Patel was dangerous, several of them told me, not because of any particular plan he would carry out if he gained control of the CIA or FBI, but because he seemed to have no plan at all — his priorities today are always subject to the wishes of a capricious president tomorrow… What would not “What would such a person do if asked?”