EXIT STRATEGY — In June, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu announced he would not run for president in 2024. Today, he said he won’t seek reelection next year, either.

One of the nation’s most popular governors, Sununu’s decision dramatically increases the chances that Democrats can pick up the governorship. But it could also have a significant impact in the first-in-the-nation primary state’s presidential contest next year, where former President Donald Trump currently holds a comfortable lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest challenger.

A leading Trump critic, Sununu has quite a bit of juice with the voters who will play an outsized role in determining the eventual GOP nominee. As a result, many in the 2024 field have already sought Sununu’s counsel. For months, he’s been meeting with candidates in his office in Concord and in booths at the state’s famed diners to offer advice on how to navigate the state.

The four-term governor has made clear he intends to play an active role in trying to stop Trump. He has argued that Republican contenders with “no path to victory must have the courage to get out” of the race this time around, to avoid the same scenario as in 2016, when a splintered field enabled Trump’s path to the GOP nomination.

“If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again,” Sununu wrote last month in a Washington Post op-ed. “Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.”

There’s a reason he placed that piece in a national publication, as opposed to a home-state paper — he envisions playing a leading national role in torpedoing Trump.

But the question is whether Sununu intends to do more than just lob grenades at the former president and actually put some skin in the game by endorsing one of Trump’s rivals and campaigning aggressively for them.

In recent decades, there hasn’t been much evidence that individual gubernatorial endorsements have made a huge difference in the outcomes of various primaries or caucuses. One that stands out dates back to 2008, when then-Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist delivered a surprise endorsement of John McCain just days before the state’s crucial GOP primary. The support from Crist, who had been heavily courted by various candidates, gave the Arizona senator a late burst of momentum that might have been enough to push McCain over the top en route to his victory over Mitt Romney in Florida.

But Sununu, the scion of a politically prominent family, is uniquely positioned to leave an imprint on his home state primary. He has a political operation that is fresh off a big win in 2022. He no longer has to worry about angering the GOP base by ripping the bark off Trump. There’s also some family history — his father, former Gov. John Sununu, went to the mat for George H.W. Bush in the 1988 New Hampshire primary and played a key role in helping Bush defeat Sen. Robert Dole there.

An August 2022 University of New Hampshire poll found that 35 percent of New Hampshire Republican primary voters said a Sununu endorsement would make them more likely to vote for a candidate, compared to 50 percent who said it would have no effect. (Not long after that poll was taken, Sununu weighed in with an endorsement in the state’s Republican U.S. Senate primary only to see his preferred candidate lose.)

Sununu has already said he plans to endorse a candidate against Trump. But exactly when he does it, however, will matter. Is it after the August 23 debate, when the candidate field may begin to take a more solid shape? Does he wait a few months after that, to avoid making a risky early endorsement that could make him look ineffectual if his preferred candidate crashes out? Does he do it after Iowa, when he might be able to get more bang for his buck?

In a brief interview with Nightly, the governor said he’s likely to “wait until November or December” to endorse in the GOP primary. “I’m going to test the waters with them. I want to see what they can do, like any other voter. So I have no favorites in it, per se. I’m going to work with all of them and see what they can do.”

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— Schumer offers Tuberville abortion vote amid military blockade: Chuck Schumer said Democrats will allow GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville a vote to repeal the Pentagon’s abortion policy, an attempt to unstick the Republican’s blockade of military promotions.

Tuberville has blocked quick consideration of more than 200 stalled military promotions, demanding that the Pentagon overturn its policy of providing paid leave to service members seeking an abortion. It’s unclear if Schumer’s offer of an amendment vote on the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act will be enough to lift the Alabama Republican’s hold. Democrats are also open to allowing Tuberville a standalone vote apart from the NDAA, a Democratic aide said.

The majority leader also didn’t rule out keeping the Senate in session into August to begin grinding through those promotions the long way. Lawmakers in both parties are antsy to find a solution to the blockade, which is prompting GOP discord and Democratic warnings about hurting national security. The chamber is scheduled to leave late next week for a five-week break.

— Kerry’s trip to China yields no breakthrough on climate: The United States and China failed to reach new climate agreements despite “productive” conversations, special climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday after a four-day visit to Beijing, an outcome that underscores the tensions between the world’s two biggest carbon polluters and economies.

Kerry said the hours of closed-door meetings with senior Chinese officials revealed “things we clearly agreed on,” with both sides committing to regular meetings, including one in the next few weeks. He still expressed hope of achieving breakthroughs that could keep the planet from experiencing disastrous climate change.

— Biden administration lays out plan to squeeze mergers: President Joe Biden’s efforts to slow a tide of corporate mergers is getting a boost Wednesday through an elaborate plan his top antitrust enforcers say will preserve competition.

In a highly detailed 51-page joint document, the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department outline 13 “guidelines” they will follow when reviewing deals — and hope the courts play along. An array of pending mergers are approaching decision points at both agencies, including Broadcom’s takeover of software company VMware, the tie-up between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons and Amazon’s purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot.

THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION — Call it a red state marriage of convenience. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott — leaders of the two most-populous Republican-led states — have become the most controversial and influential conservative governors on immigration in the country. Over the last year, reports POLITICO, they’ve transported tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, sued the Biden administration in federal court over border policies and deployed Black Hawk helicopters, unmanned aircraft and thousands of troops to the southern border.

Abbott and DeSantis assert that they’re filling the void left by the Biden administration and Congress to tackle one of America’s most intractable issues. Democrats and advocates for immigrants, however, have denounced the governors, alleging they’re using authoritarian policies against vulnerable asylum seekers for political purposes.

THE PRESIDENT OF GOLF — During his time as president, Donald Trump and golf were virtually inseparable. He spent most weekends at resorts that he owned across the country, and played an estimated 240 rounds of golf, largely at his courses in Florida and New Jersey.

In the years since, the sport has been an especially lucrative source of income for the former president. According to a Sportico analysis of a recent Federal Election Commission disclosure, Trump reported earning as much as $555 million from his golf portfolio between January 2022 and April 14, 2023. That tally accounts for roughly half of the $1.2 billion in income he specified as having received during that time.

By comparison, Trump claimed earning $237 million from his courses in the calendar year of 2020, and $224 million in 2018. Trump’s personal assets include ownership, management or licensing interests in 17 golf courses (one currently under construction) in five different countries. In the past few years, Trump’s courses have hosted a handful of Saudi-backed LIV Golf events, and lost opportunities to host PGA Tour events or British Opens.

TRUMP DENIED — A federal judge on Wednesday denied Donald Trump’s bid for a new trial two months after a jury found that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, reports POLITICO.

In his motion for a new trial, Trump argued that because the jury found him liable for sexual abuse but not rape, which is what Carroll originally alleged, the jury award of $2 million in compensatory damages for the sexual abuse claim was excessive.

In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote the former president’s argument “ignores the bulk of the evidence at trial, misinterprets the jury’s verdict, and mistakenly focuses on the New York Penal Law definition of ‘rape’ to the exclusion of the meaning of that word as it often is used in everyday life and of the evidence of what actually occurred between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump.”

007 THINGS — On the 55th anniversary of the Prague Spring, the head of Britain’s secret intelligence service sat down with POLITICO’s Anne McElvoy to talk about Russia, Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, China and AI in spycraft.

In the rare exclusive interview, Richard Moore issued a thinly veiled recruitment call to Russians who’ve become disillusioned with their leadership while assessing that President Vladimir Putin was “under pressure” internally after a mutiny by mercenaries exposed his weakness.

Among the takeaways from the interview with the MI6 chief, who rose to lead the agency in 2020 after a career in diplomacy: Western leaders should be careful not to ‘humiliate’ Putin; China’s spying capabilities are “huge and they deploy overseas in large numbers;” Iran’s decision to supply Russia with “suicide drones that mete out random destruction to Ukraine’s cities has provoked internal quarrels at the highest level of the regime in Tehran.”

WAGNER’S WARLORD — Troops from Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group, who are relocating to Belarus following last month’s aborted mutiny, will not go back to fight in Ukraine and will stay in Belarus to train local troops, their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said Wednesday, reports POLITICO.

“We did a lot for Russia. What is happening at the front now is a disgrace. We want no part of it,” Prigozhin said in his first appearance since his troops marched on Moscow in a failed uprising last month.

In a shaky mobile phone video shot at dusk, Prigozhin can be seen in silhouette wearing a baseball cap. He speaks to a crowd of men who appear to be Wagner fighters and break repeatedly into applause and cheers. He also hinted his troops could later go to Africa, where Wagner has been active in Mali and the Central African Republic.

THE REAL OPPENHEIMER — Since the end of World War II, historians and artists alike have been fascinated by the brilliant, enigmatic J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project laboratory that developed the atomic bomb. In recent years, however, much of that complexity has been reduced to a single popular image: the broken genius, haunted by his own invention, reciting a line from the Bhagavad Gita in a 1965 NBC News documentary. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer intones. But Oppenheimer’s life was about far more than regret, writes Andy Kifer in Smithsonian magazine. Will the new film finally get Oppenheimer right?