With help from Ella Creamer, Andrew Howard, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz

What up, Recast family! President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrap their face-to-face meeting Monday without reaching a deal to avoid debt default. Longtime Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, a Democrat, won’t seek reelection, opening the door for Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Black woman, to succeed him. First though we focus on Sen. Tim Scott officially jumping into the GOP race for the White House.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina struck all the right conservative chords during his presidential announcement in his hometown of North Charleston on Monday. He even grooved a bit to his walk out music, the 1980 funk hit, “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” by The Gap Band.

At times he was optimistic, leaning heavily into his biography, from growing up poor in the Palmetto State’s Lowcountry to ascending to the Senate, where he’s been the Republican Party’s only Black senator for the last decade.

“We live in the land of opportunity,” Scott told a friendly crowd gathered at his alma mater Charleston Southern University. “We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty in a single parent household, in a small apartment to one day serve in the people’s house, and maybe even the White House.”

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He painted a grim picture of what the nation has become during the Biden administration, calling the U.S. a “nation in retreat,” while reminding the audience often of the personal grievances he’s endured as the nation’s most high-profile Black conservative.

“When I cut your taxes, they called me a prop. When I re-funded the police, they called me a token. When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the N-word.

“I disrupt their narrative. I threatened their control. The truth of my life disrupts their lies,” Scott said to resounding cheers.

Perhaps one of his best rhetorical flourishes was leaning head first into the culture wars, in particular speaking out against critical race theory. “I will lead a revolution for excellence in our schools. Less CRT and more ABC’s.”

Scott seems to relish tackling racial issues head-on — and serving as the Republican race messenger who can speak from a lived experience. That seems to be the lane he’s most comfortable navigating in the GOP’s 2024 nominating contest. Perhaps that’s what has helped him amass a respectable $22 million war chest, even leading one Fox News commentator to call him the “Black Ronald Reagan.”

But the reality is, as of now, the GOP primary electorate isn’t yet buying what Scott is selling as evidenced by him polling at less than two percent nationally.

“Data at this point does not suggest that he’s a viable candidate,” says Shermichael Singleton, a Republican strategist who has worked on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson.

“I think Scott, as with any person who happens to be Black and Republican, running for a position like that, it is a very, very delicate balance when talking about matters of race,” Singleton, who is Black, tells The Recast.

He adds that what he saw from Scott’s announcement was a lack of nuance: America may not be a racist country per se, he says, but racial disparities in the wealth gap, homeownership, education, health outcomes and a host of other issues are indisputable.

“He didn’t address that.”

Nor did Scott offer policies on how he would solve those issues, Singleton adds.

Longtime GOP strategist Mike Madrid does not believe Scott has a path to the nomination, but says the senator serves two important roles for today’s Republican Party.

“He assuages and limits … the criticism of African Americans, minorities and folks in the media to ask the hard questions of the Republican Party, as it devolves into a white grievance party,” says Madrid, who is Latino and is co-founder of the anti-Donald Trump group The Lincoln Project.

“He serves as a bulwark against those attacks.”

“The second is, he does have a legitimate claim to start asking some tough questions of the Democrats, about poverty, about systemic challenges that the Democrats have not been addressed in 50 years since the war on poverty,” Madrid adds.

The GOP nominating field is set to expand even further with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence expected to make their final decisions soon. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to formally announce later this week.

All are tailing Trump by wide margins in national polling, though none are expected to receive “good luck” wishes from the former president the way Scott did. In a Truth Social message, Trump cited working on Opportunity Zones with Scott, something he called a “big deal” and said, “Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable.”

Candidates of color inevitably face comparisons to other candidates from marginalized groups, particularly when running for the highest office.

And the 2024 GOP field is no exception. Some equate Vivek Ramaswamy as the Republican version of Democrat Andrew Yang’s role in 2020 as a tech entrepreneur-turned-White House hopeful. Scott has drawn comparisons too. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” pundits debated whether he was more Pete Buttigeig, who was a surprising upstart in early states, narrowly winning the 2020 Iowa Caucus — or more Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who failed to catch on in the Democratic primary that year.

But don’t compare Scott to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida who ran and eventually lost to Trump during the 2016 GOP primary, says Alex Conant, a former Rubio campaign staffer.

“Tim Scott comes into this with more money than we had on day one, without the baggage of immigration that we had and [this is] a very different political environment,” Conant said, referring to the bipartisan Gang of 8 negotiations that Rubio was a part of nearly a decade ago, which dogged his presidential run.

Conant adds that Scott was “single-handedly the best surrogate” of Rubio’s campaign that year.

If nothing else, Scott’s official launch helped create some much needed distance from his very public stumbles immediately following his exploratory launch, where he got tripped up over abortion ban questions. He dodged queries on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions before finally saying he would consider a 15-week ban.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, says she later spoke to Scott about abortion, which she calls “arguably the most intense issue on the table” in 2024.

Even though Scott didn’t talk about the issue during his announcement speech, Dannenfelser says, “I think Tim Scott is one of the best communicators out there and so more from him on [abortion] would be fantastic.

“And I’ll be looking forward to it.”

We’ll be watching to see how this all plays out — for Scott and for the rest of the GOP field.

All the best,
The Recast Team

WES MOORE WADES INTO THE CULTURE WARS

For the first time since being sworn into office, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland — the nation’s only Black governor — is taking on the nation’s culture wars. The Democrat is pushing back against political figures and Republican-led legislatures that have crusaded for banning books and for what has been derided as “divisive concepts” from being taught in school.

“When politicians ban books and muzzle educators,” Moore said, “they say it’s an effort to prevent discomfort guilt — but we know that’s not true. This is not about a fear of making people feel bad. It is about a fear of people understanding their power.”

“I look around the country and I see book banning. I’m looking around the country right now and I’m seeing … teachers being censored. I see [the] curriculum of truth being taken out,” said Moore, a Democrat, during a commencement speech Sunday at Morehouse College, a historically Black and all-male college in Atlanta.

He also encouraged the graduates to “confront this threat” in the next phase of their lives and use the challenges learned from previous eras of American history for the betterment of humankind. The alternative, he warned, was that “those who yearn to destroy history” will not stop at Black history, but will continue the erasure of the hardship and contributions made by AAPI, Jewish, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities.

Moore’s remarks are the latest sign yet that Democrats see book banning as a galvanizing issue heading into next year’s election cycle. It is also a sign he is looking to raise his national profile and testing ways to elevate his presence during the upcoming 2024 election cycle. He is seen as a rising star within the Democratic Party — with many predicting a White House run down the line.

President Joe Biden, who is just weeks into his reelection campaign, highlighted the book ban issue in a pair of campaign videos released last month that focused on GOP efforts to restrict curricula and casting himself as a bulwark against “MAGA extremists” looking to roll back America’s freedoms.

Biden in a commencement speech last weekend at Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C., also denounced white supremacy, calling it the “most dangerous terrorist threat” to the nation, an issue progressive activists have been urging him to speak about more forcefully as his reelection campaign ramps up.

ICYMI @ POLITICO

Uniting Behind Blunt Rochester — Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) announced he would not seek another term in 2024, then he threw his support behind Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, “setting up a potentially easy transition for First State Democrats,” POLITICO’s Burgess Everett reports.

Meta hit with a Mega fine — European regulators slapped Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, “with an unprecedented $1.3 billion fine Monday” POLITICO’s Alfred Ng reports. Beyond the hefty fine, he writes, this puts “new pressure on the Biden administration to solve a major disconnect between American and European data regulations.”

Black Traveling Advisory — POLITICO’s Kierra Frazier breaks down the travel advisory the civil rights group, the NAACP issued over the weekend warning Black Americans from traveling to Florida.

THE RECAST RECOMMENDS

Former Trump administration officials Chris Pilkerton, of the Small Business Administration and Ja’Ron Smith former White House Director of Urban Policy announce the release of their upcoming book: “Underserved: Harnessing the Principles of Lincoln’s Vision for Reconstruction for Today’s Forgotten Communities” It’s due out in September.

Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan star in “American Born Chinese,” streaming tomorrow on Disney+. Based on the 2006 graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, the show follows a high schooler embroiled in a battle among mythological gods.

“An Amerikan Family,” by Santi Elijah Holley, documents the impact of the Shakur family — the relatives of Tupac and Assata — on the fight for Black liberation in America.

Jasmine Cho celebrates famous and unsung Asian Americans through an unusual form of activism: painting her heroes’ faces on … cookies! Check out her intricate creations here.

The much-awaited live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey, arrives in cinemas Friday.

Summer Walker releases an EP with a wholesomely titled “Audio Hug” as the opener. The remaining tracks follow suit, making for a gentle and tenderly powerful listening experience.

Epic collab alert: BTS’ Jimin, NLE Choppa, Kodak Black, Muni Long and JVKE team up for “Angel Pt.1,” featured on the “Fast X” soundtrack.

TikTok of the Day: Got to be done