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Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Tuesday, May 23rd, and the news driving the day is...

Yep, you probably guessed it, the dead ceiling. But before I get to that, a little scooplet and playbook this morning. We got our hands on a new Nikki Haley memo that knocks Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

just 24 hours before he's set to officially launch his presidential campaign.

Nikki Haley's campaign manager is going to be sending out a memo to surrogates and allies today,

saying that DeSantis is essentially Trump without the drama.

The document pushes back on this narrative out there that DeSantis is the credible Trump alternative

that many Republicans are going to be looking for in 2024. Instead, she argues that DeSantis

has just as much baggage as Trump. The campaign cites that DeSantis made it easier to sue the media,

repelled some of his own Florida delegation members,

passed a bill to hide his own travel records from the public,

flip-flopped entitlement reform,

started a war with Disney that drove jobs from Florida,

and has been pretty unwilling to shake hands with

average Joe voters on a regular basis the way that Haley does.

Now for the real news, the debt ceiling talks.

President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy emerged from their debt ceiling huddle at the

White House yesterday saying they made progress, but acknowledging that they still

have not landed a deal. And yes, we are now nine days from a potential default. And this comes,

despite top negotiators working through the night on Capitol Hill, due to the lack of progress,

we spend some time in playbook this morning asking a question. A lot of lawmakers are frankly afraid to ask. What happens if Biden and McCarthy actually never come up with a deal? Yesterday afternoon and evening, I spent a number of hours working the phones talking to top aides and lawmakers. There's basically four scenarios that we could see if these talks fail to come to

fruition. The first one and most likely one is a kick of the can. Yes, time is running out, and

...