By Adam Wren

A plane flies over the Iowa State Fair pulling a banner with a message for Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. | Jeff Roberson/AP Photo

IOWA ILL WILL — No one expected the 2024 Republican presidential primary to be a pillow fight. But no one was quite ready for the smashmouth campaigning that took place over the weekend at the Iowa State Fair, a traditionally joyous few days on the campaign calendar.

The bad blood between supporters of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis suggest a brutal primary ahead — months of trench warfare between two camps that really, really don’t like each other.

Instead of relishing a ride on the Sky Rider or snacking on a pork chop on a stick at the state fair this past weekend, DeSantis supporters wearing navy blue DeSantis 24 t-shirts clashed with Trump supporters wearing white “Team Trump” shirts and carried green, white and yellow signs that read: “President Donald J. Trump. Back to Back Iowa Champ.”

As DeSantis flipped pork burgers at the pork tent, Trump managed to put his finger in what increasingly feels like an unmendable wound — overhead, the Trump-branded plane buzzed the fairgrounds while a separate plane hired by the Trump campaign flew even closer above with a banner that read: “Be likeable, Ron!”

The sign featured the same typeface as Jeb Bush’s campaign logo, suggesting that the current Florida governor could be headed for the same early burnout the former one faced in 2016.

That wasn't all: In his less than 90 minutes at the fair, Trump needled and trolled DeSantis at every turn, bringing with him a cadre of Florida lawmakers who endorsed Trump over DeSantis and trotting them out on stage at the Steer 'N Stein, a ski-themed restaurant on the fairgrounds.

The weekend even featured a near-bar brawl between the two warring camps.

Matt Wells, the Washington County chair for DeSantis’ Iowa operation and a former Ted Cruz backer in the 2016 caucuses, told POLITICO Nightly that hard feelings date back nearly eight years. And his frustrations — and those on display at the fair — raise questions about whether whoever wins the party’s nomination can maintain a larger coalition of Republican voters.

“They do this kind of garbage,” Wells said of the Trump campaign, citing what he called dirty tricks. “They'd like to divide people. I've never voted for Donald Trump.”

As I followed the rolling mass of DeSantis backers from his fair-side chat with Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, I watched as Wells and nearly a half dozen other DeSantis-t-shirt clad people engaged in what seemed like hand-to-hand political combat, explaining to anyone who would listen why DeSantis was a better candidate than Trump.

“I knew that he was going to do what he was going to do with spending and with domestic policy, and I just can't countenance that,” Wells told me before recycling similar DeSantis talking points with other fairgoers and Trump supporters, citing trillions in Trump’s domestic spending.

The next slugfest could come on Aug. 23, the date of the first Republican debate — if Trump decides to attend, that is. But even if he doesn’t, the Iowa State Fair experience seems to indicate that neither campaign plans to follow Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

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— Judge overseeing Trump’s hush money case won’t recuse himself: The judge overseeing the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal case against Donald Trump denied the former president’s effort to have the judge recuse himself, writing in an opinion that “this Court has examined its conscience and is certain in its ability to be fair and impartial.” The judge, Juan Merchan, is presiding over the case in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records linked to a hush money payment to silence a porn star who claimed she had an affair with Trump. A trial is scheduled for March 2024.

— Biden administration unveils new college admissions guidance: The Biden administration on Monday released new guidance to help colleges navigate what remains legally viable in admissions to ensure their campuses recruit and admit diverse classes.

In seven pages of questions and answers from the Departments of Education and Justice, along with a companion “Dear Colleague” letter, colleges are asked to identify potential barriers to higher education for underrepresented students. The guidance also presses colleges to reexamine admissions preferences, including legacy status or donor affiliation “that are unrelated to a prospective applicant’s individual merit or potential, that further benefit privileged students, and that reduce opportunities for others who have been foreclosed from such advantages.”

— Education Department readies latest tranche of student debt relief: The Biden administration today is set to begin discharging $39 billion of student debt for hundreds of thousands of borrowers who’ve been in repayment on their loans for more than 20 years. It’s the latest bucket of student debt relief that the Biden administration is pursuing amid legal obstacles and major political pushback from Republicans. The program is aimed at compensating federal student loan borrowers for what administration officials have said were longstanding failures in how the Education Department and its contracted loan servicers have managed federal income-driven repayment programs.

OFF-LIMITS — Joe Biden is on the cash trail, preparing for a likely rematch against Trump. He’s already hit Manhattan, the Bay Area, and Chicago, plus destinations as far-flung as Freeport, Maine, and Albuquerque, New Mexico — but not Los Angeles. The liberal goldmine of Southern California that’s pumped millions into Democratic campaigns for decades has been missing from his itinerary — declared off-limits ever since Hollywood’s writers and actors went on strike against the people who run the town, some of whom also happen to be among Biden’s biggest donors, writes New York magazine.

It’s a calculation by Biden’s campaign that the president can’t risk raising money in person from the very people the strikes are aimed at, folks like Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Reed Hastings, and Sony’s Tom Rothman, especially since Biden’s been so open about supporting the walkouts. As a result, with a billion-dollar presidential campaign already here and no sign that the strike will resolve soon, some of the Democratic Party’s heaviest financial hitters, and some of its most prominent celebrity surrogates, are on the political sidelines.

THOSE WHO KNOW HIM BEST — Ron DeSantis’s struggles to get off the ground have surprised many leaders inside the Republican Party, who hoped he would be a strong contender and would translate his governance of Florida into a center-right coalition that could capture the presidency.

But interviews with more than 30 people in Florida and Washington who worked closely with DeSantis — many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their interactions with him — indicate that expectations were lower among some who knew him closely in Tallahassee— and that they always expected the candidate to be the challenge, according to The Washington Post.

“The more he is met by people, the more they are not going to like him,” said Joe Gruters, a former Florida GOP chair who is also a state senator. “The more he’s out there, the more his numbers go down. It’s not a good long-term scenario for him. I fully expected the downfall of his campaign a long time ago.”

STALLED DEBATE — Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis have reached an impasse in their Fox News debate planned for November, a person with knowledge of the stalemate said Sunday.

POLITICO reports that DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is pushing for the faceoff to occur in front of a live audience, which the Democratic California governor prohibited in his proposal to Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Even in an age of constant televised town halls, the prime-time event between the ambitious governor who may one day make a White House bid and the Republican candidate for president would be unprecedented in modern politics.

NEVADA SETS A DATE — 2024 GOP presidential caucuses will be on Feb. 8 of next year, jumping ahead of the South Carolina primary for the first time in an open race since 1988, POLITICO reports.

The caucuses are the latest piece of the 2024 GOP primary puzzle to fall into place: Iowa’s state Republican Party already said it will hold the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 15, while South Carolina’s party-run primary has been set for Feb. 24.

New Hampshire’s secretary of state won’t announce its primary date until later this year, but it’s widely expected to occur on or around Jan. 23. That schedule would put Nevada squarely between New Hampshire and South Carolina on the GOP calendar, and a state party statement said its caucus date “amplifies Nevada’s significance in the national political landscape.”

Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš told his center-right New Unity party that he plans to submit a letter of resignation to Latvia’s President on Thursday. | Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images

LATVIAN PM ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION — Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš announced his resignation Monday, days after his government coalition fell apart, writes Claudia Chiappa.

Kariņš told his center-right New Unity party that he plans to submit a letter of resignation to Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkēvičs on Thursday and he invited the party to nominate a new candidate for prime minister.

On Friday, Kariņš announced he was going to dissolve New Unity’s coalition with the National Alliance and the United List parties after they rejected his plans for a ministerial reshuffle, according to local media. When announcing his resignation, Kariņš accused the coalition partners of “blocking work for welfare and economic growth.”

THE WEAKENING RUBLE — Russia's central bankers are expected to hike interest rates at an emergency meeting on Tuesday to respond to an accelerated weakening of the ruble and a deteriorating economy, as the war against Ukraine and sanctions bite hard, writes Izabella Kaminska.

The big paradox for policy experts in Moscow is that the currency is plummeting just as oil prices — Russia's export lifeblood and budgetary mainstay — have risen. Prices for Russian Urals grade crude are rallying beyond an internationally agreed price cap of $60 per barrel, but the ruble spiked to more than 102 to the dollar on Tuesday. That's almost half the value it fetched in June 2022, when it traded at 54 to the dollar. The central bank last raised its key interest rate to 8.5 percent from 7.5 percent on July 21, its first hike since September 2022.

DON’T MISS POLITICO’S TECH & AI SUMMIT: America’s ability to lead and champion emerging innovations in technology like generative AI will shape our industries, manufacturing base and future economy. Do we have the right policies in place to secure that future? How will the U.S. retain its status as the global tech leader? Join POLITICO on Sept. 27 for our Tech & AI Summit to hear what the public and private sectors need to do to sharpen our competitive edge amidst rising global competitors and rapidly evolving disruptive technologies. REGISTER HERE.

STEM CELL TIMELINE — Twenty-five years ago, researchers in Wisconsin isolated powerful stem cells from human embryos. It was a fundamental breakthrough for biology, since these cells are the starting point for human bodies and have the capacity to turn into any other type of cell—heart cells, neurons, you name it.

The promise of a medical revolution in which ailing organs and tissues are repaired with living replacements seemed to be the dawning of a new era. Yet today, more than two decades later, there are no treatments on the market based on these cells.

It turns out the long delay is no surprise — that’s how long it can take for a truly novel biotechnology to develop. Melding stem cells into medicine has proved surprisingly difficult. But there are signs that stem-cell-based treatments are finally poised for a breakout, writes Antonio Regalado in the MIT Technology Review.

On this date in 1982: Mother Teresa holds one of 37 mentally ill children who were moved to East Beirut, Lebanon, from a West Beirut hospital after it was destroyed by Israeli forces during the siege of Beirut. | AP

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