Presented by Altria.

Everyone, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author, Ryan Lizza. It's Wednesday, May 24th.

On the debt limit negotiations, Tuesday was another day without any major public breakthroughs,

but the talks also didn't break down, at least publicly. The White House seems fairly dug in on a budget that

neither cuts or increases spending, while Republicans are insisting that next year's budget

must reduce spending compared to this year. Obviously, it's a rapidly moving story for the

latest up-to-the-minute developments. Check out Politico throughout the day.

The second thing to know this morning is that the criminal trial for Donald Trump has a date.

It's now scheduled for March 25th, 2024. That's right. It will be in the middle of the

Republican primaries three weeks after Super Tuesday.

And the biggest news of the day is that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is officially entering

the Republican presidential field.

Joining me to discuss DeSantis and the Republican presidential primary is national political correspondent Meredith

McGrath. Good morning, Meredith.

Hey there, Ryan. Let's start with the field and the state of the Republican primary as

DeSantis jumps into the race. and how it's similar or different than the beginning of the year

when he was at his peak and thought that the Florida legislative session was the sort of key

to keeping that momentum going.

Yeah, we're seeing a increasingly crowded Republican field, but still a field that remains

dominated by former president Donald Trump, who has been on top of the polling for months now, even as we've seen

some star GOP candidates get in. Most recently, Senator Tim Scott, who announced on Monday,

Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramoswamy, who's captured the imagination of a lot of people, even though he

...