Good morning! Did you know Ken isn’t just “Ken”? He’s actually Kenneth Sean Carson, Jr. Dump the calculus you don’t use anymore and hang onto that bit of knowledge. Far more useful.

Don’t panic when you don’t receive your issue of The Elective on Friday morning. We’re taking a day off. In place of our email, you can get your news fix straight from the source: the C-SPAN live feed of the Senate floor. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Promise. ^{(jk, it’s extremely boring)}

In lighter news, a government-commissioned report says we need to act quickly to prevent an AI-driven “extinction-level threat to the human species.” Fun!

LEAD

🗳️ Biden, Trump clinch nominations

Sequels. So hot right now. Six states and territories held presidential primaries last night. In them, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump won enough delegates to clinch their respective party nominations. For the first time in decades, we’ll have the same two candidates in back-to-back elections.

What’s next?: The two parties hold their conventions over the summer this year. That’s where they’ll make these nominations official. The (thousands of) delegates these candidates are winning in these primaries will meet and vote for the nominees at the national party conventions (the RNC and DNC).

Veep?: Mike Pence is so 2016. So Trump will need a new vice presidential candidate. Whomever he selects will need to be approved by the same convention delegates that officially nominate him. But that’s more of a formality. This pick is typically announced the week before the party convention (so, mid-July).

President Biden says he’ll be running with Vice President Kamala Haris again this year. No incumbent VP has been dropped from the ticket since 1944.

The general: The general election (that's the main show, as opposed to the primary elections that chose the nominees) is heating up already. Here’s what’s happening:

• As part of their plan to make TV commercials even worse, Team Biden is up with a $30 million ad buy. Team Trump won’t be far behind.

• Biden’s out this week on a blitz through five swing states.

• Team Trump is (sort of) merging their campaign operation into the Republican National Committee to save resources.

Also: Special Counsel Robert Hur testified before Congress. He’s the government investigator who released his report on Biden last month. It basically claimed Biden is senile and couldn’t even remember when he served as VP.

• The full transcript of his interview with Biden is now available.

• You can decide whether Hur was right or this is being blown way out of proportion. Republicans are pointing to pages 83 and 204.

GOVERNMENT

🏠 Secretary Fudge: “It’s time to go home."

A guy named “Moon.” A record-setting NFL quarterback. Mitt Romney’s dad. Marcia Fudge. These are just a few of the luminaries who have served their country as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Marcia Fudge spent the past three years serving in President Biden’s Cabinet as HUD secretary. But, next Friday, she will become only the second Biden department head to resign.

What's HUD do? Congress created HUD in 1965 to (wait for it) oversee various federal housing programs and regulations, like:

• the Federal Housing Administration. They issue FHA mortgage loans.

• Section 8 housing. This is subsidized housing for Americans with lower incomes.

• They enforce anti-discrimination laws in housing.

• ..and more. But you get the gist.

HUD does good work. But it’s one of the smaller, less-prestigious Cabinet departments. The show “Designated Survivor” emphasizes this perceived low rank — Kiefer Sutherland was HUD secretary when he became president (after everyone else died). His character was seen as an unprepared nobody.

It’s late in the game for Cabinet resignations. Replacements need Senate confirmation, which can take months. That’s why President Biden (much like his predecessors) asked his Cabinet last summer to either quit then or stay on through 2024. This way they avoid confirmation battles and, if Biden loses, weird short-term secretaries who only get to serve for a few months.

Biden’s cabinet has been remarkably stable compared to that of other presidents. Only one department secretary has resigned until now. And that was to take a much cooler job with the NHL.

Fudge’s replacement: Deputy Secretary of HUD Adrianne Todman will take over as “acting secretary” until an official replacement is confirmed by the Senate or President Biden’s term ends.

POLITICS

🔴 Well. That’s weird. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is viewed by Donald Trump as a VP contender. Now, thanks to her rock-solid PR team, she’s also viewed as the strange lady who just posted a 5-minute infomercial-style video extolling the great dental work and customer service of her “new family” at Smile Texas®.

⚪ They’re not quite scraping the bottom of the candidate barrel yet, but they’re getting close. Centrist group No Labels confirmed last week they’re moving forward with an independent presidential “unity” campaign. But they need a candidate. The biggest name who hasn’t outright refused yet is former Ambassador and Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. But… he just took a gig as an exec at Mastercard. Next on their list? The, uhh, former lieutenant governor of Georgia.

🔵 What would you do if you won the lottery? Gil Cisneros (D) got laid off from his factory job, bought a lottery ticket, and won $266 million. He proceeded to set up a foundation, get an Ivy League master’s degree and then get a much-needed second master’s degree. Only then did he run for Congress (in 2018). And he won! But he lost reelection in 2020. So President Biden appointed him Under Secretary of Defense. Well, Gil got sick of that and ran for Congress again. He’s now poised to return to the House in a much more Democratic district.

🔴 He’s done! Colorado Rep. Ken Buck (R) is resigning from the House next Friday. He says Congress has “devolved into this bickering and nonsense” and no longer wants anything to do with it. Buck’s absence will trim the slim Republican House majority to just two seats.

TRIVIA

It’s all but official. We’re set for a rematch of the 2020 presidential election this year. It’s rare today, but rerunning old candidates used to be more common. When was the most recent presidential election that featured the same two major candidates as the previous election?

WORLD

🇺🇸 United States: The House will vote (around 10 a.m. Eastern) today on the bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner (ByteDance) to sell the app or pull it from the U.S. It’s expected to pass. But it would still need to get through the Senate, and that could be tougher. The FBI and intel services briefed Congress yesterday with classified info on this topic. If the bill passes both the House and the Senate, President Biden says he’ll sign it.

🇭🇹 Haiti: The Haitian government’s freefall continues as global diplomats flee. The U.S., Canada, and Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors met this week in Jamaica on how to proceed. Soon after, Acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation. It will take effect as soon as a "transitional council" is created to choose a new temporary PM.

🇨🇳 China: China’s annual “two sessions” meetings are over. That’s when the nation’s two main ruling bodies — the national legislature and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — meet in tandem. The very scripted meetings saw President Xi continue to centralize his power. The most controversial vote still received an insane 98.5% support.

BRIEFS

• An American man got a parasitic worm in his brain after years of eating undercooked bacon

• France has overtaken Russia as the world’s #2 arms exporter, but the U.S. is still on top

• Thailand wants to ban the party that won the election over concerns it will legalize insulting the country’s monarchy

• Brussels, Belgium is packed with international organizations and, as a result, spies — but it has a new plan to fight them off

• Your car might be secretly sharing your driving habits with your insurance company, driving up your insurance rate

• The battle for clear Red Sea shipping lanes continues as the U.S. conducts six more strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen

• Prices rose by 0.4% from Jan. to Feb., up a total of 3.2% in the past year, per BLS data (that's the Bureau of Labor and Statistics)

• JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says the Federal Reserve should hold off on cutting interest rates

• Some airlines are pausing new pilot training and cutting growth plans due to the lack of new planes caused by Boeing’s dumpster fire

QUOTE

SNACKS

🪙 Taxes: DirectFile, the IRS’s new, free TurboTax (booo!) knockoff is now available in 12 states. The lucky winners are Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Everyone else? Pay $200 and pray you don’t screw it up.

🍿 Movies: Warner Bros. is pushing Matt Reeves’ “The Batman 2” back by a full year due to the 2023 acting and writing strikes. The follow-up to his dark (literally) take on the Dark Knight will hit theaters on October 2, 2026. Don’t forget your flashlight.

🤑 Doodling: Sick of Wordle? Need to burn a few minutes? See if AI can guess what you’re doodling.

ANSWER

Democrats once ran the same loser three times (1896, 1900, 1908). But his Republican opponents were all different. Republicans ran the same guy back-to-back in 1944 and 1948. He, of course, lost both times (to different Democrats).

But the most recent election in which both parties ran the same two candidates, one of whom was the incumbent president like today, was in 1956. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower defeated the same guy he’d beat in 1952 — former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson.

If you or someone you know is having a baby soon, the name "Adlai" is primed and ready for a big comeback.