Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, January 27th. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Today on the show, five fired Memphis police officers are charged with murder and Tyree

Nichols' death. Plus, population shifts were wide and why they matter. But first, R&C

elections and more. The Weekend Politics is today's one big thing.

McConnell takes a more centrist role in Congress. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis calls for new

blood to lead the R&C. In California, Representative Adam Schiff enters the race to replace Senator

Diane Feinstein. Here for a Friday politics state of play is David Lindsay, the new managing

editor for politics at Axios. Hi, David. Welcome to Axios in the podcast. Thanks a lot. Glad to be here.

David, to start, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's role seems to be shifting.

What's happening this week? He is for years has been known as the grim reaper of progressive policy.

That's a self-proclaimed label he's put on himself because he's always been a foil for Democrats.

But more recently, he's shown kind of an impatience with the chaos in the house and he is left the debt ceiling

negotiations to Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker. But he's also said there won't be a default. So he's kind of promising no crisis.

He infuriated a lot of right wing Republicans in the past few months by backing the big omnivast spending bill in December.

And then in January, appearing with President Biden to a south of the infrastructure bill.

It's drawn criticism from far right Republicans.

Today the Republican National Committee will vote on its chair. Who's involved in that? And what's at stake for this position?

Big surprise on this when Ron DeSantis, who is of course seen as a rival to President Trump in a potential presidential race in 2024.

He backed Ron DeSantis did Harmeet Dylan for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

Ron and McDaniel had been can long considered the favorite. She has the votes so it had them last year anyway.

But Harmeet Dylan is running an aggressive campaign to lead the party. And so it'll be interesting to see if DeSantis's voice on this carries some weight with Republican voters on the chairmanship.

So there's kind of a through line to what we've been talking about, which is basically the 2024 election, which brings me to the question about California Senator Diane Feinstein.

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