By Rachael Bade, Ryan Lizza and Eugene Daniels

With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross

BREAKING (PART I) — The Debate stage seems to just have gotten a little larger. ASA HUTCHINSON announced that he’s finally reached the requisite number of donors (40,000 individuals), having already passed the polling threshold to qualify. That slips the former Arkansas governor in just under the wire to join most of the other candidates in Milwaukee this week. Hutchinson told USA Today’s Francesca Chambers that his criticism of DONALD TRUMP helped trigger a donor surge that put him over the top last night. More from CNN

BREAKING (PART II) — MARK MEADOWS undercut Trump’s main defense in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, telling special counsel JACK SMITH’s investigators that he didn’t recall any conversations, let alone orders, about declassifying large batches of materials in office, ABC’s Katherine Faulders, Jonathan Karl and Alexander Mallin revealed on “This Week.” The former Trump chief of staff also said he didn’t know of any “standing order” to declassify documents, which Trump has claimed in an attempt to exonerate himself from criminal charges.

Plus: “ABC News has also reviewed an early draft of the prologue to Meadows’ book, ‘The Chief’s Chief,’ … which includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan ‘on the couch’ at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey … The reference to that document being in Trump’s possession was removed before the book was published. … Meadows acknowledged to investigators that he asked that the paragraph be changed, and that it would be ‘problematic’ had Trump had such a document in his possession.”

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: TRUMP SUPER PAC PIVOTS TO GENERAL ELECTION — MAGA Inc., the super PAC boosting Trump’s 2024 bid, is out tomorrow with a new ad slamming President JOE BIDEN on the economy — its second Trump/Biden contrast ad in two weeks. While the rest of the GOP field prepares for the first primary debate, the Trump team is already pivoting to a general election posture toward paid media, according to a person familiar with the super PAC’s strategy. MAGA Inc. is spending $1 million to air the new 30-second spot this week on Fox News, CNN and Newsmax, now up to a total of $3 million hitting the president since Aug. 7.

As for those anti-RON DeSANTIS ads that they ran for months? The super PAC hasn’t aired one since June 22, while the Florida governor has continued to bleed support. Trump’s campaign team in recent days has also sought to frame the race as merely a Biden/Trump rematch, putting out a series of videos attacking Biden’s economic and foreign policy, while spending much of his recent interview with Larry Kudlow zeroed in on Biden. (h/t Natalie Allison)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' aides were literally selling access to him to wealthy donors and lobbyists with interests before the state, per a new investigation. | Charlie Neibergall, File/AP Photo

TWO BIG DeSANTIS READS …

1. DESANTIS FUNDRAISERS LITERALLY SELLING ACCESS. On the campaign trail, DeSantis has been blasting Trump for vowing in 2016 to “drain the swamp” of influence-peddling in Washington but failing to follow through as president. By contrast, during a recent Fox News appearance, the Florida governor — whose schtick has long included slamming the influence of special interest money in politics — claimed to have done just that in Florida.

One problem: His aides were literally selling access to DeSantis to wealthy donors and lobbyists with interests before the state.

That’s according to a new WaPo investigation by Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey, which rooster-ed this morning. And just in case Team DeSantis tries to deny it, there’s this little detail: They actually wrote the policy down — and WaPo comes with receipts.

Just look at this quote: “I could sell golf for $50k this morning.” That’s HEATHER BARKER, a top DeSantis aide/fundraiser, boasting in a 2019 email to other DeSantis aides about a wealthy lobbyist willing to pay top dollar to play a round with the then-newly elected governor and his wife, CASEY DeSANTIS.

But there’s plenty more where that came from: According to the story, “to help them haul in large sums of money, the document [obtained by WaPo] suggested that lobbyists be allowed to offer their clients certain perks, such as meals and rounds of golf with DeSantis, who loves the sport. DeSantis’s fundraisers envisioned that some golf outings with the governor would net contributions of $75,000 or more.”

Beyond golf — a sport DeSantis loves — the document details other “METHODS FOR FIRMS TO DELIVER SUPPORT,” each with a threshold for donations, per the story: lunch, dinner, tours, meetings.

The stepback: “While it is common for politicians to seek donations from lobbyists, the efforts by DeSantis to effectively auction off his leisure time to those seeking to influence state policy created a special pathway of access for wealthy donors to the governor that is striking in the way that it was documented in writing, ethics experts said.”

The report also presents DeSantis’ foes with a golden opportunity to lambast him on the trail — or on the debate stage this week. The story says DeSantis was “personally” briefed on and approved the set-up, though his team told WaPo the money did not influence his policies.

2. DeSANTIS’ ‘RULING CLASS’ PARADOX — NYT’s Nicholas Confessore is up with a deep dive juxtaposing DeSantis’ rhetoric blowing up Ivy League schools with his past habit of leaning on his own Yale and Harvard education to boost his political rise. Some details on DeSantis’ Ivy obsession, and ways he has benefited from it:

— “He joined one of Yale’s storied ‘secret societies,’ those breeding grounds of future senators and presidents, but left other members with the impression that he would have preferred to be tapped by a more prestigious one.”

— “He shared with friends his dream of going to Harvard Law School — not law school, Harvard Law School.”

— “He was little-known to local Republican leaders and voters in the newly drawn congressional district he set out to win in early 2012, but he was a disciplined campaigner and proved a formidable fund-raiser. … Yale friends around the country — baseball teammates, fraternity brothers, fellow secret-society members — sent checks, helping drive a flood of out-of-state money. A Yale friend put him in touch with a political adviser to Mr. Trump, who praised him on Twitter as ‘very impressive.’ Law school classmates got him meetings with national Republican figures who went on to endorse his winning bid.”

The stepback: “DeSantis, 44, is not the first Republican politician of his generation to rail against his own Ivy League degrees while milking them for access and campaign cash. But now, as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination, he is molding his entire campaign and political persona around a vengeful war against what he calls the country’s ‘ruling class’: an incompetent, unaccountable elite of bureaucrats, journalists, educators and other supposed ‘experts’ whose pernicious and unearned authority the governor has vowed to vanquish.”

Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Who said Sundays were slow news days? Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.

A message from Climate Power:

One Year Into Our Clean Energy BOOM - One year after the landmark Inflation Reduction Act became law, our economy is booming, costs are coming down and we are reducing harmful pollution. Over 170,600 new good-paying clean energy jobs at battery manufacturing plants, electric vehicle facilities, wind and solar developments – with more jobs announced every day.

All made possible by President Biden’s Clean Energy Plan that invests in America.

SUNDAY BEST …

— RNC Chair RONNA McDANIEL on this week’s debate, on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures”: “I’m still holding out hope that President Trump will come.”

— Sen. BILL CASSIDY (R-La.) on Trump’s indictments, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “The charge that seems most likely — I mean, seems almost a slam dunk — is the one related to mishandling of classified documents. … I’m just very sorry about how all of this is playing out.” Kasie Hunt: “Do you think that Donald Trump should drop out of the race?” Cassidy: “I think so.”

— North Dakota Gov. DOUG BURGUM on whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I think there’s an entire cable news industry, there’s an entire social media industry built around trying to answer that question. … But if you want to fill this gap where you got — you mentioned 83% of Americans don’t trust our institutions. The way that starts is leadership at the top. … We’ve got to focus on telling our story and telling the story of what we’ve been able to get done in North Dakota.”

— A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds Trump’s lead nationally growing larger than ever: He sits at a whopping 62% in the GOP primary, compared to DeSantis at 16% (down several points since June).

— NIKKI HALEY on U.S. aid to Ukraine, on “Fox News Sunday”: “I too am worried about the domestic situation and inflation. I mean, Republicans and Democrats have spent like drunken sailors, and the Americans are paying the price for it at the grocery store and at the gas station. But keep in mind, less than 5% of our defense budget has gone to Ukraine. And remember that a win for Russia is a win for China.”

A message from Climate Power:

President Biden’s Clean Energy Plan already has meant over 170,600 new jobs in 44 states totaling $278 billion in new investments for local economies.

TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.

• “With local news under direct assault, our politics and towns suffer,” by Art Cullen for the Boston Globe

• “Appeasing Donald Trump Won’t Work,” by NYT’s David French

• “I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up,” by Tyler Austin Harper for The Atlantic

• “At a College Targeted by DeSantis, Gender Studies Is Out, Jocks Are In,” by NYT’s Michelle Goldberg

• “Why the Fulton County Indictment Is Different From Jack Smith’s Case,” by Rick Hasen for Slate

• “Republicans Are Making the Liberal Arts Scarce in the Poorest States,” by Leif Weatherby for the NYT

• “Oliver Anthony and the Incoherence of Right-Wing Populism,” by N.Y. Mag’s Eric Levitz

• “Mark Meadows Has Gone Quiet,” by NYT’s Katherine Miller

• “I chose to be childfree. (The correct response is ‘Congratulations!’),” by Ursula Taherian for the L.A. Times

• “Anywhere else, it would be assault. Yet schools can still hit kids,” by WaPo’s editorial board

PHOTO OF THE DAY

In Indio, Calif., residents pick up sandbags yesterday in preparation for Hurricane Hilary. | David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images

9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR

1. AD WARS: The Biden campaign is launching its third significant ad buy of the cycle, a $25 million barrage of TV and digital spots that aim to bolster his standing on the economy, CNN’s Arlette Saenz scooped. “Fought Back” touts Biden’s big-ticket legislative accomplishments, the low unemployment rate and the nascent manufacturing renaissance with a positive/forward-looking message that takes only a brief dig at Trump. The 16-week ad campaign will run across eight battleground states, including targeted placements for Black and Latino voters, as a bit of GOP debate counterprogramming that also aims to solve one of Biden’s biggest challenges: selling the electorate on his economy. Watch it here

2. HUNTER GATHERING: After the collapse of the HUNTER BIDEN plea deal, there’s a flurry of big new stories about what went wrong — including some buzzy revelations:

• Last year, Hunter Biden’s lawyer threatened that if prosecutors charged his client, he would force the president to take the stand in the case, Betsy Woodruff Swan reports. “The case has long been defined by politics, including for [Hunter] Biden’s own lawyers. During the private negotiations with prosecutors … Biden’s lawyers often invoked the case’s extraordinary political undercurrents,” arguing that Republican pressure was causing undue scrutiny of Hunter.

• At one point, Hunter Biden came close to extricating himself from the investigation without any charges — but prosecutor DAVID WEISS’ position “changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation,” NYT’s Michael Schmidt, Luke Broadwater and Glenn Thrush report. The plea deal seems to have hit shaky ground in particular when Weiss deputy LESLEY WOLF, who’d been a point person for Hunter’s lawyers, came under criticism from the IRS whistleblowers and took a reduced role in the case.

• Weiss also has a “little-known history” of working with BEAU BIDEN, Hunter’s late older brother, WaPo’s Michael Kranish reports from Wilmington, Del. It’s a small state, and the men helped land a fraud conviction together in 2010, when Weiss was acting U.S. attorney and Beau Biden was Delaware attorney general.

3. HORROR IN HAWAII: As Biden heads to Maui tomorrow to survey wildfire devastation, his response thus far is attracting plenty of scrutiny. It took the president five days to make fulsome public remarks about the tragedy, WaPo’s Toluse Olorunnipa notes, which upset some residents and undermined his image as an empathetic leader. Republicans have criticized his perceived aloofness, even as the Biden administration insists it was intensely engaged at a substantive level in responding to the historic damage.

On the flip side, Biden is also facing pressure from the left to declare a national climate change emergency in the wake of the Maui fires, Myah Ward reports this morning. “Their argument: If the latest environmental catastrophe won’t spur the president into action, what will?” Climate groups and congressional Democrats say the wildfires are just the latest example of climate wreckage that demand a more muscular federal response, though declaring an emergency would invite both political and legal challenges.

A message from Climate Power:

Biden’s Clean Energy Plan - One year: Over 170,600 new clean energy jobs and 270 clean energy projects.

4. BELLWETHER CAMPAIGN: “This obscure county commission race will tell us which party will has the upper hand in 2024,” by Zach Montellaro in Doylestown, Pa.: “Bucks County is one of the swingiest counties in one of the swingiest states in America. … This year it is home to a local race that has the hallmarks of a race for national office: Candidates sparring over book bans in schools, crime and public safety, and the security of democracy in the next presidential election.”

5. THE AGE-OLD QUESTION: NYT’s Shane Goldmacher diagnoses a fascinating dynamic in the GOP presidential primary: Republican voters have grown so confident of Biden’s personal weaknesses, both real and conspiratorial, that they think any candidate could beat him. And that’s undercutting everybody not named Trump from making an electability argument against the frontrunner. “[I]nterviews with pollsters, strategists, elected officials and Republican voters in early-voting states show that the dim Republican opinion of Mr. Biden’s mental faculties and political skills has complicated that case in deep and unexpected ways.”

6. CATCHING MITT: “Mitt Romney’s Political Journey Reaches a Crossroads,” by WSJ’s Eliza Collins in South Jordan, Utah, and Siobhan Hughes: “If he runs, [Sen. MITT] ROMNEY could face a wrenching primary contest, and one potential rival has piled up endorsements. He also will need to decide whether he wants another six potentially lonely years on Capitol Hill … He said he expects to make a decision in the fall, possibly around October. … Interviews with voters, officials and lawmakers indicate Romney would face a tougher fight than in 2018 … [H]e isn’t currently acting like someone running for re-election.”

7. UP FOR DEBATE: After Trump helped reorient the Republican Party toward skepticism of the existing nonpartisan debate structures, he might reverse course and undercut the RNC’s recent efforts to replace the Commission on Presidential Debates, NYT’s Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan report. That’s because, even as he plans to skip next week’s primary debate, Trump’s campaign is very eager to have him go mano-a-mano with Biden on a debate stage. Now, “Trump is open to returning to a C.P.D. debate if that format is the only way he can ensure a debate against Mr. Biden.” Both parties have had complaints about the CPD.

McDaniel, meanwhile, has tried to persuade Trump to join the primary debate stage by arguing that skipping it could set a precedent for Biden to dodge general-election debate with Trump.

8. SHELL GAME: “As Ukraine flies through artillery rounds, U.S. races to keep up,” by WaPo’s Missy Ryan, Alex Horton and Karen DeYoung: “The Biden administration’s sprint to supply Ukraine with weapons central to its military success against Russia has yielded a promising acceleration of arms production, including the standard NATO artillery round, output of which is expected soon to reach double its prewar U.S. rate of 14,000 a month. … But industry experts warn of major challenges in sustaining an elevated output of arms and equipment needed not just to aid Ukraine but to ensure the United States’ own security in potential conflicts with Russia or China.”

9. IMMIGRATION FILES: “Thousands more Mauritanians are making their way to the U.S., thanks to a route spread on social media,” by AP’s Jake Offenhartz, Patrick Orsagos and Renata Brito in Cincinnati: “The spike in migration was made possible by the discovery this year of a new route through Nicaragua … As word of the entry point spreads, travel agencies and paid influencers have taken to TikTok to promote the trip … The influx of Mauritanians has surprised officials in the U.S. It came without a triggering event — such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse — suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns.”

Vivek Ramaswamy won’t be anyone’s VP.

John Fetterman has a new look.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are “in the final chapter,” their grandson says.

Nancy Mace found common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ramaswamy.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Ted Cruz, Phil Murphy and other theater kids are taking over.

Steve Cohen and Matt Gaetz traded insults.

TRANSITIONS — Francesco Arreaga has left Rep. Dan Goldman’s (D-N.Y.) office, where he was a senior policy adviser, to run for Congress in California’s 30th District. Jesse Rodriguez is joining Goldman’s office, having previously worked for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) … Reps. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) … White House’s Ben LaBolt and Rachel Thomas … Larry Kudlow … CNN’s Oliver Darcy … Eleni Roumel … former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (9-0) … Gina Keeney … POLITICO’s Stephanie Vajito, Natalie Fertig and Doug Palmer … Targeted Victory’s Zac Moffatt and Ryan Meerstein … Jenny Backus … Michael Donaher … Matt Shapanka … Fox’s Tammy Bruce … Steve Pfrang … Elyse Ping Medvigy … Madeline Shepherd … Jeff Morehouse … Ari Goldberg of the Center for Democracy & Technology … Brad Fingeroot … Google’s Lauren Epshteyn … Susan Aspey … Jarrett Ray … Jim Hock of PSP Partners … Shannon Travis … Faryar Shirzad … former Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) … Al Roker … former USTR Michael Froman … Connie Chung … Lona Valmoro … Heather Samuelson of the State Department … Vox’s Julia Kurzius … Katie Peters of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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Send Playbookers tips to [email protected] or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Setota Hailemariam and Bethany Irvine.

Correction: Yesterday’s Playbook misstated Pete Ricketts’ current office. He is a GOP senator from Nebraska.

A message from Climate Power:

Joe Biden’s landmark Clean Energy Plan is one of the most successful pieces of legislation in history. Made-in-America manufacturing is back, with construction spending for manufacturing reaching its highest level in 60 years. Businesses have announced more than 270 new clean energy projects in the last year creating over 170,600 jobs, and we're on track to lower emissions beyond what was even thought possible just a year ago. Because of the ramp up in clean energy production, U.S solar manufacturing is expected to increase eightfold by the end of 2024 helping lower energy costs for families. Energy bills for the average family are estimated to drop by $1,000 each year with the expanded use of clean energy.