Good Friday morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing, sponsored by BP.

And I'm Jake Sherman. Sneak peek for Playbookers, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report,

the foremost expert on House elections. We'll send an email to subscribers this morning with this

headline, House, the bottom line in Republicans' 42 open seats. Here's what he writes.

With 102 days to go, Democrats remained substantial favorites for House control.

A big reason, Republicans are defending 42 open or vacant seats, a record since at least

1930.

The retirements of Speaker Paul Ryan, as well as powerful committee chairs like Ed Royce, Rodney

Friedlingheisen, and popular moderates like Ileana Ross Leighton and Frank Lobiondo have given

Democrats stellar pickup opportunities. Of Republicans' 42 incumbent less seats, Wasserman writes,

eight are in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and an additional 13 are in districts

where President Trump received less than 55%. History is working against the GOP in many of those seats,

he writes. We found that since 1992, in situations when a president's party was stuck defending

an open seat two years after the president

failed to carry it, that party has batted zero for 23, keeping it in their column.

Alex Eisenstadt went to Dallas and has a story on Pete Sessions' tough political calculus.

We scooped yesterday that the Congressional Leadership Fund raised $3 million between July 1 and July 18th.

A big chunk of that money, $1.5 million, came from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, per an FEC report made public early this morning.

Anheuser Bush kicked in $50,000.

Here's a potential bombshell CNN is reporting that Michael Cohen claims President Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, where Russians were expected to offer information on Hillary Clinton.

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that Trump's finance chief is being called to testify before the federal grand jury.

The North Korean military has begun the process of returning remains to the United States

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