SHOW TIME — Tucker Carlson might be out at Fox News, but he’s still in a position to shape the direction of the 2024 Republican primary.

On Friday, Carlson is hosting a presidential forum in Des Moines, Iowa, sponsored by influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. A few candidates will be missing but the roster includes six of the most prominent presidential contenders: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

The six have disparate relationships with Carlson that will go a long way toward determining how they prep for the event. No candidate has been on Tucker’s new show on Twitter. But their appearances on his Fox show before it was canceled gives us some clues into how Friday’s forum could go.

Ramaswamy is probably sleeping the easiest. He went on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” dozens of times, and the program helped turn him into a (semi) known entity within the party. When it came time to announce his candidacy for president, Ramaswamy decided he’d get the most reach if he went on Tucker’s show to do so. Finally, when Fox News canceled “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Ramaswamy made it known that he thought Carlson would be a “good addition” to the 2024 race himself.

At one point, DeSantis was in a similarly advantageous position. He was a regular on Carlson’s Fox program, and his consistent discussion of “woke” politics (he used the word “woke” six times in his announcement that he was running for president and hasn’t slowed down since) dovetails with Carlson’s political sensibilities, which tend to focus on cultural issues. But Carlson’s former employer Fox News has reportedly soured on DeSantis of late, concerned his campaign is leading nowhere. Whether Carlson agrees will be clearer after Friday.

After Carlson’s two former favorites, things get a little trickier. Scott was on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” just once in 2020, and the two don’t seem to have much of a relationship. Pence appeared on the show multiple times while serving as vice president, discussing topics like sanctions against Russia. More recently, though, Pence slammed Carlson’s portrayal of Jan. 6 and Carlson called Pence “delusional” and argued “[Pence] spent four years getting bossed around by Trump like a concubine.”

The final two candidates are likely the ones prepping the hardest for a rough ride with their host. Not long after Haley’s campaign launch, Carlson submarined her candidacy by saying, “Nikki Haley believes in collective racial guilt. She believes identity politics is our future. ‘Vote for me because I’m a woman,’ she says. That’s her pitch.”

As for Hutchinson, in 2021 he and Carlson got into a heated back and forth on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” about the then-governor’s decision to veto a bill that would have banned surgery for transgender youth. Hutchinson, who’s trying to carve out a moderate conservative lane in the primary, has also attacked Carlson for questioning America’s support of Ukraine.

Carlson himself remains one of the biggest wildcards in the Republican primary. Viewership for “Tucker Carlson on Twitter” has been in a nosedive since his first show. In response, he’s gotten even more unbridled than he ever was on Fox. He recently interviewed Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer who’s garnered internet fame for his crude comments about women (he is a self-described misogynist) and was arrested in Romania earlier this year on charges of rape, human trafficking and setting up a criminal gang.

With flagging numbers in tow, Carlson has an incentive to prove that he remains a force that shapes Republican Party thinking. The candidates at the forum will likewise have to make a calculation: what’s the best way to approach the latest iteration of the one-time most watched personality on cable news?

Hanging over the event, of course, is the front runner in the polls: former President Donald Trump. Trump, who is still courting the evangelical vote in Iowa, reportedly asked Vander Plaats if he could send surrogate J.D. Vance in his place. Vander Plaats refused. Instead, despite Carlson’s recent effusive praise of Trump, the former president will appear in Cedar Rapids next week at a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, recently called Carlson the “dad of the conservative movement” and “this generation’s Rush Limbaugh.” With six serious presidential candidates in the mix on Friday, Carlson will have a chance to prove if those descriptions still apply.

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— House intel committee pushing new legislation to help CIA sexual assault victims: After CIA employees told Congress that their cases of sexual assault at the agency were mishandled, the House intelligence committee is pushing new legislation that would make it easier for victims of sexual harassment and assault at Langley to seek assistance. The committee, driven by Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.), is including the provision, details of which were obtained by POLITICO, in the Intelligence Authorization Act that was marked up this morning in a closed-door session. The provision creates an Office of the Victim and Whistleblower Counsel at the CIA to serve as a single point of contact for alleged victims and to provide them with legal assistance and advocate on their behalf as they try to get justice.

— ChatGPT faces consumer protection probe: The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether ChatGPT is violating consumer protection laws, a person familiar with the matter confirmed today. The 20-page investigation document, first obtained by The Washington Post, asks OpenAI to hand over documents for a probe looking at whether the company behind the popular ChatGPT chatbot has engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to consumer harm or privacy or data security practices. This includes documents and communications involving complaints involving people’s privacy and safety, in addition to instances of ChatGPT making inaccurate or disparaging comments about individuals.

— Biden ‘serious’ about prisoner swap for WSJ reporter detained in Russia: President Joe Biden today made his strongest public promise yet that the United States is “serious” about orchestrating a prisoner swap to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia. “I’m serious on a prisoner exchange,” Biden said at a news conference in Helsinki. “And I’m serious about doing all we can to free Americans being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter, and that process is underway.”

— Begich challenging Peltola for House seat in Alaska: Republican Nick Begich announced today he would run for Congress again in Alaska, setting up a possible rematch against incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), the state’s only statewide elected Democrat. Begich, a Republican activist in the state, ran for Congress in both the August 2022 special election to succeed the late Rep. Don Young — the state’s longtime member of the House who died while traveling back to Alaska in March 2022 — and the November general election. He came in third, behind Peltola and Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska governor, in both contests.

LEAKY SHIP — An Iowa state senator who’d previously endorsed Donald Trump is flipping his support to Ron DeSantis just days after the former president attacked Iowa’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, reports POLITICO’s Alex Isenstadt.

Jeff Reichman, who is serving his first term in the state Senate, announced today that he is defecting to the Florida governor’s presidential campaign. In a statement, Reichman singled out praise for Reynolds, who Trump has targeted for her warmness toward DeSantis, his main rival for the GOP nomination.

“Iowa Republicans must be united if we are going to take our country back and reverse Joe Biden’s failures,” Reichman said in a statement. “Gov. DeSantis has achieved the same type of commonsense policy victories in Florida as we have in Iowa under Gov. Kim Reynolds, and he will deliver historic success for the conservative movement as president as well.”

SOUR TASTE — With Ron DeSantis stalling in the Republican presidential primary, some wealthy donors who’d hoped he could beat Donald Trump are now souring on DeSantis and giving Tim Scott a serious look, report POLITICO’s Sally Goldenberg and Natalie Allison.

Billionaire businessman Ronald Lauder, the Estée Lauder makeup heir who supported Trump in 2020, recently flew to South Carolina to meet with Scott, the state’s junior senator and longshot presidential candidate, according to three people aware of the late June meeting.

The meeting comes amid widespread angst among wealthy GOP backers about the emerging 2024 field, and DeSantis’ bumpy start in particular. Many high-dollar donors in Trump’s native New York City have tired of the former president and worry about his general election chances. But they say their faith in the Florida governor has been shaken by early campaign missteps and his hardline positions on abortion, transgender rights and other culture-war issues. They fear time is running out for anyone else to break through.

Now, several donors are starting to more seriously mull backing Scott — a more traditional Republican alternative to the populist and combative Trump and DeSantis.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL — Spain’s conservatives have a new boogeyman: The postal service.

Ahead of next weekend’s national election, post offices across the country have been mobbed by voters seeking to sign up for mail-in balloting before the deadline for that option expires today. Spain’s center-right Popular Party, however, isn’t happy — and is accusing the postal service of meddling in the election, writes Aitor Hernández-Morales.

According to Correos, the state-owned postal service, a whopping 94,000 Spaniards filed for mail-in voting on Wednesday.

It’s the first time that Spain is holding an election so late in the summer, when more than a quarter of registered voters are expected to be on vacation. From the beginning, record numbers of mail-in votes were expected, but far more electors than anticipated have gone this route.

By today, 2,456,826 mail-in applications had been registered, accounting for nearly 7 percent of all registered voters who are residents in Spain and more than doubling the 997,530 mail-in ballots filed in November 2019, when Spain last held a national election.

Although some of the postal service’s trade unions have complained that Correos was not showing sufficient alacrity to deal with the avalanche of applications, the entity insists the process is under control, in part thanks to the extended operating hours its offices are offering across the country in order to accommodate the procrastinating electors.

TOUGH TALK — Germany today accused China of “grave violations of human rights” in its first public China strategy, but took a softer line on economic measures like investment bans, write Hans von der Burchard and Peter Wilke.

The 64-page document calls China an indispensable partner but, increasingly, also a rival and competitor.

“Without China, we will not succeed in curbing the climate crisis, nor in achieving more fair prosperity in the world,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said as she presented the strategy at the MERICS China think tank in Berlin.

However, Baerbock also raised the need “to protect our European economy against unfair competition” from China, making an indirect reference to Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial strategy and massive state subsidies for key sectors like electric vehicles.

The strategy describes such unfair practices as a “threat” to Germany’s “security, sovereignty and prosperity.” Concretely, the document warns that “China strives to create economic and technological dependencies in order to then use them to achieve political goals and interests.”

While Baerbock’s hawkish foreign ministry drafted a tougher first version late last year, the final version was softened — particularly regarding investments by German companies in China — reflecting Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s more moderate line toward Beijing.

TRACING BACK — San Francisco has a persistent drug problem. But until now, no journalists have traced the source of many of those drugs so distinctly: to a small cluster of villages about 80 miles north of Honduras’ capital. There, as Megan Cassidy and Gabrielle Lurie reported for The San Francisco Chronicle, signs of San Francisco abound — from Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers t-shirts to a house that pays homage to the Golden Gate Bridge. Through interviews with migrants, court documents and reporting trips, Cassidy and Lurie revealed the fascinating connections between the two places. Read their investigation here.