Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels. It's Monday, July 31st, the first day of August recess, a time for quiet and reflection as members of Congress head home to get yelled at during town halls and get some rest from questions from us about the impending presidential election. As we have this time to kind of take a breath and look back,

we didn't want to take a look at their long-to-do list, which they have much of, but take a look

at the big questions we have about some of the upcoming Senate races as they are continuing to shake out.

It's early, so a lot of things can change, but here are some of the ones that we have and we're

looking at in Playbook Top First. The biggest questions on the left side of the aisle are

whether or not Carson Cinema and Joe Manchin are actually going to run for re-election.

They are both being coy, as they always do, so we haven't really heard. But a lot of folks

I talked to today said that Mansion, at the very least, has made it clear to folks that he is probably going to make a decision and let us note the decision toward the end of the year.

On the Republican side, the list is much longer.

So I'm just going to run through some of the states that we looked at.

Montana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Some of those primaries are

going to be really damn interesting. So you guys should take a look at the top of playbook and dig into

that. I think largely what we're seeing is Steve Danes, the chair of the National Republican

Senatorial Committee, making good on his promise to keep his thumb on the scale during some of these

primaries. He has already endorsed in West Virginia, Montana, Nevada, and Indiana. He has made

clear who he wants to run in some of these other states that I mentioned. That is something that

Republicans wish they would have done more of in 2022. The key here is to not have the problem

they had in 2022, which is a primary where

the victor is far-right conservative who can't win in the general election. And while Congress is

at home working there, the Biden administration is getting back on the road for all of these

White House reporters. I know you guys are

packing your bags as we speak. They're going to be touting binomics, marking the anniversaries of

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