| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo and Teresa Wiltz
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POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | What up, Recast fam! More drama in Biden world amid fresh scrutiny about how the veep is utilized in the campaign and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seeks to squash speculation about his future following his very public freeze this week. Today we’re going to focus on the public feud that’s thrust Rep. Byron Donalds in the middle of the 2024 GOP primary campaign. Many Black Republicans didn’t expect a race-based, intraparty feud to erupt during the presidential primary. After this week’s sustained attacks by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies on Florida’s lone Black GOP member of the congressional delegation — who faintly disagreed with a line regarding slavery in the state’s newly revised African American history standards — battle lines are being drawn. On one side: DeSantis. On the other: Byron Donalds, who is seen as a rising star in the Republican Party and who is rumored to be considering a gubernatorial run in Florida in 2026. And few Black conservatives are siding with Florida's governor. Many see this episode as unfortunate in light of the strides Black Republicans have made within the party, but also for elevating the issue of slavery as a campaign issue that will do little to win over voters in a general election — playing into Democrats’ criticism that Republicans favor whitewashing American history. “It raises eyebrows,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation. “Ron DeSantis is not the candidate for Black conservatives and that’s what [he] constantly, constantly exhibits to us.” At issue is the controversial provision which requires Florida educators to instruct middle schoolers that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
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Donalds largely praised the educational standards in a social media post Wednesday, calling them “good, robust and accurate.” But like others, including Vice President Kamala Harris, he took issue with the characterization that the enslaved enjoyed a “personal benefit” from their subjugation. Donalds argued the provision is “wrong and needs to be adjusted.”
A vitriolic onslaught from the DeSantis camp ensued. Christina Pushaw, the director of rapid response for the DeSantis presidential campaign, mused in a social media post, “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?” Manny Diaz, the Florida commissioner of education, added: “We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.”
|  DeSantis speaks to reporters following a campaign event Thursday in Chariton, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo | During a campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday, DeSantis himself called Donalds’ conservative bona fides into question: “Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?”
Johnson called the DeSantis camp's critiques of Donalds both “offensive and nonsensical,” adding, “It’s just not a good position for the DeSantis campaign to take. And they're doubling down and that's what's even more disgusting.” Both Johnson and Donalds are supporting former President Donald Trump in the GOP primary. (Earlier this month, Donalds was named chair of the Black Conservative Federation advisory board.) DeSantis is using cultural issues — particularly how race is taught in school — as a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He has branded himself as a champion of the “war on woke” and derided the teaching of critical race theory as liberal indoctrination of children. It’s a stance many of his GOP rivals have adopted as well, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is among the five Black GOP members of Congress, a number not seen since Reconstruction. On Thursday, he added to the chorus of Black conservatives criticizing DeSantis for supporting Florida’s new educational standard. “There is no silver lining in slavery,” Scott said. “Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.” Longtime Republican strategist Deana Bass Williams, who is staying neutral in the GOP presidential primary, says she is impressed by the restraint Donalds has shown. “There's no way that any common sense person is going to say that Blacks benefited from slavery,” says Williams, who worked on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in 2016 and later served as deputy chief of staff when he served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. |  | | In a tweet yesterday, Harrison Fields, Donalds’ spokesperson, talked about the quandary many Black Republicans face. “If you condemn CRT & refuse to support BLM, black Republicans are called a coon, sellouts, & Uncle Clarence,” Fields tweeted. “If you vocalize minor distaste with a sentence in a curriculum that lauds skills developed by slaves during slavery, black Republicans are called Democrats and frauds.” Last night, during a sitdown interview with Donald Trump Jr.’s “Triggered” podcast, Donalds tiptoed around the brouhaha. “The way I look at it is that the stain of racism in America is not something you can get rid of,” Donalds said. “It's a terrible part of our fabric, but it's there.” While never addressing the slavery issue during the interview, Donalds praised Trump as one of the “real standard-bearers of modern politics.”
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Donalds greets former President Donald Trump during the Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors national summit June 30, 2023 in Philadelphia. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images | Mandie Jones, a longtime Republican strategist in Florida and former aide to former Republican Gov. Rick Scott, says she does not read much into the public riff between DeSantis and Donalds, who were once seen as allies. The congressman, she points out, introduced DeSantis at the governor’s reelection victory last year and when Donalds served in the state Legislature during DeSantis’ first term as governor, there was very little daylight between the two. “This in particular is beneficial to the larger discussion of race and politics,” Jones said, which is appropriate during primary season “when we get to see those nuances in the conversation” — compared to the general election, when the party unifies around the presidential nominee. Since the outcry over Florida’s African American history standards, DeSantis has dug in, arguing his political detractors are deliberately misrepresenting what the curriculum outlines. The vice president, perhaps DeSantis’ biggest detractor on this issue next to Donalds, has used this issue to pummel the Florida governor, both last week during a campaign stop in Jacksonville and again this week at the White House.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Ritz Theatre in downtown Jacksonville, Fla., July 21, 2023. | Fran Ruchalski/The Florida Times-Union | On Tuesday, just before President Joe Biden signed a proclamation dedicating national monuments to Emmett Till, Harris said, “There are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past. Those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery; those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who try to divide our nation with unnecessary debates.” Many Black Republicans find themselves in a bind: on the one hand pushing back against perceptions that slavery has positive attributes, but also fighting the perception they’re insufficiently conservative if they criticize stances white Republicans take. “I think it's absurd we’re having a debate about whether slavery is good for Black people in 2023,” said conservative commentator CJ Pearson, the host of podcast series, “The Wrap Up with CJ.” “Republicans are and always have been the party that’s been anti-slavery,” Pearson said, “and there is no reason that we should be having a debate about the merits of slavery in 2023.” We’ll keep tabs on how this all plays out! All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO
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The vice president has helped raise millions. But even her supporters think she could (and even should) be deployed differently. | Amy Harris/Invision/AP Photo | Harris Facing Skepticism — Even as she’s being dispatched to court donors, the party’s funders remain lukewarm on the vice president’s place on the 2024 ticket. POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs, Holly Otterbein and Eugene Daniels have more. Goff to White House — Biden has tapped Shuwanza Goff, a longtime aide to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and his floor director as majority leader, to lead the White House’ legislative affairs shop. She’s the first Black woman to hold the post, POLITICO’s Nicholas Wu reports. Dems Look to the South for House Majority — After turning to courts to combat what they see as heavy GOP gerrymandering in Deep South congressional districts, Democrats are increasingly confident about their ability to pick up seats in Alabama, Louisiana and possibly Georgia, POLITICO’s Sarah Ferris, Nicholas Wu and Ally Mutnick report.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Gigi Saldaña and Cita serve up bilingual summer vibes in “Whine for Me.” Check out “War Pony,” a gritty, coming-of-age tale about life on a Lakota rez, now in theaters. In the new mumblegore film “Jethica,” protagonist Jessica must seek supernatural assistance when a stalker returns. It’s streaming on demand now.
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| Rosario Dawson, Danny DeVito, Owen Wilson, LaKeith Stanfield and Tiffany Haddish star in Disney’s “Haunted Mansion,” which looks like a hoot. The late writer Randall Keenan was known for fiction writing, but in “Black Folk Could Fly: Selected Writings by Randall Keenan,” he gets personal, writing about the three women who raised him in rural North Carolina. It’s out in paperback next week. A new documentary, “The Lady of Silence: The Mataviejitas Murders,” streaming now on Netflix, looks at the systemic failures in Mexico City that allowed a serial killer posing as a social worker to roam free, killing a series of women over 60, earning him the sobriquet, “The Old Lady Killer.” Vibing to Stormzy and Raye’s “The Weekend” will have you looking forward to just that. Check out the new music video.
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| TikTok of the Day: Nope. | 
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