Good Thursday morning, I'm Anna Palmer, and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing, sponsored by Delta Airlines.

And I'm Jake Sherman. We have a big development in the midterm elections. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP leadership aligned Super PAC, will announce today that it raised $51 million in the second quarter of 2018.

That's more than CLF raised all of last cycle. The Super PAC has 71 million on hand and

have raised 93 million this cycle. Before you ask, yes, 30 million of that is from Sheldon Aedelson,

the Las Vegas casino mogul and prolific Republican donor. But another 21 million is significant

and gives Republicans a more than healthy outside group willing to

wage war to keep the majority.

Our colleague Matt Nussbaum scoops this morning that Mark Short, Trump's legislative director

is leaving the White House later this month to join Guidepost Strategies Consulting

Firm, and he will also teach at UVA.

And the New York Times has more on family reunification.

The paper is reporting that the Trump administration is speeding up reunions

and will no longer insist on fingerprinting all adults in a household where a child will live

or require home visits by a social worker.

The president did pull-aside meetings with Azerbaijan,

Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia this morning. He has already been active on Twitter, lodging a

complaint about the former FBI agent Lisa Page not complying with a House Republican subpoena

and talking about trying to get Germany to pay more into NATO. The Washington Post reports on

Trump-Aids, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and chief of staff John Kelly,

pursing their lips and glancing away when Trump criticized Germany yesterday at breakfast.

Next up, the president is traveling to England.

His former aide, Steve Bannon, has already been meeting with populists in the region, according to Annie Carney.

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