Good morning. I'm playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Wednesday, July 26th. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is now pumping the brakes on the idea of beginning an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. This comes just a day after the speaker suggested on Fox News that the House was on the cusp of beginning such proceedings to try to oust him. Now, McCarthy clarified to reporters yesterday that, quote, I wasn't announcing an impeachment inquiry. I was simply saying that the actions

I'm seeing by the administration, specifically withholding the agencies from working with Congress,

would rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry. In short, it's not time, at least not yet.

And to be sure, he wouldn't have the votes even if he wanted to right now. There are still

moderate Republicans in the House who do not think there's enough evidence to begin an

impeachment inquiry of Biden. So we'll be following this closely, but for now, push pause. Also in the House,

there's now a question about whether Republicans will have the votes to pass the spending bills

that they were hoping to take up this week, specifically on military construction in the VA

and the Agriculture Department. The House Freedom Caucus yesterday had a press conference where they

blasted leadership and insisted that lawmakers write spending bills at lower spending levels.

That is obviously causing some consternation with some of their colleagues. So we'll be watching

that on the floor closely today and tomorrow as they try to get these bills done.

But of course, the big news yesterday was the shakeup in Ron DeSantis' world, with another

announcement that they were going to be laying off additional campaign staff.

And joining me to discuss that is the one and only scoop machine Alex Eisenstadt, who broke

this story yesterday. Good morning, Alex. Thanks for having me.

So tell us about this latest shakeup in DeSantis world. It's a big moment in the sense that you have a

campaign that is now laid off approximately third or even a little bit more than a third of its

entire paid staff. And it shows you the degrees which the DeSantis

campaign feels like it needs to really get in front of what people on the campaign now openly

admit is a financial problem. They've got to tighten their belt. But it also comes at a really

tough time in the campaign where you've seen his poll numbers dwindle. You've seen talk about

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