Good morning, everyone. I'm playbook co-author, Ryan Lizza. It's Friday, July 7th. Here's what's driving the day.

First, why hasn't Speaker Kevin McCarthy endorsed former President Trump, his political pal and the overwhelming frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination?

That's a question a lot of people are asking, and Sarah Ferris and Olivia

Beavers dig into the competing pressures on McCarthy that help explain his decision. The big takeaway,

McCarthy is trying to prevent the House GOP from descending into a civil war over 2024. Read

the full article over at politico.com. Next up, this weekend,

President Joe Biden is headed to Europe. His first stop, the UK. Biden is scheduled to meet with

both King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. On the agenda for these meetings, climate change,

the war in Ukraine, and a host of economic and security issues. On the agenda for these meetings, climate change, the war in Ukraine, and a host of

economic and security issues. On the deep dive podcast today, we talked to British ambassador to the

U.S. Karen Pierce about what Sunak hopes to get out of Biden's trip to London, Britain and

America's changing relationship through her many years of diplomatic service, and how the war in Ukraine is driving

our two countries closer and occasionally further apart. Check out the newsletter this morning

for key excerpts from that fascinating interview. And joining me now to discuss the NATO summit

portion of Biden's trip is national security reporter Alex Ward. Alex was a Pulitzer Prize finalist

and the author of the forthcoming book, The Internationalists, the fight to restore American foreign

policy after Trump. Good morning, Alex. Hey, thanks for having me. First time I've had anyone introduce

me with the book, so that's very exciting. Thank you very much for doing that. Well, you've got a lot of fancy stuff on your resume these days, sir. What are some of the big things we should be looking for out of Biden's trip to Europe? There was sort of this belief heading into Vilnius, Lithuania, where the summit will be next week, that it was going to be, as I've been calling it, like the Pope Ratzinger summit,

like sort of a transitionary type meeting, right, that the Ukraine's counterfeensive had just

sort of begun. It's unclear how far they're going to go, if they're going to be successful.

And so at this summit, it was just going to be a reiteration of, yes, the Allies back Ukraine,

we will continue to oppose Russia.

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