Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Abby Livingston.

In tonight’s issue—arriving on the cusp of Joe Biden’s first address to the nation since his shocking-if-predictable withdrawal from the race—my conversation with Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report, where we discuss how Kamala Harris’s campaign will impact the Senate races this fall. Then, Tara Palmeri takes the wheel to present her fascinating chat with CNBC’s political finance whiz, Brian Schwartz, about the unprecedented $100 million Kamala donor windfall, her veepstakes calculations, Trump’s Silicon Valley backers, and much more.

🎧 Also, in case you missed it, on today’s episode of The Powers That Be, Dylan Byers swung by the pod to chat with Peter Hamby about how the media has pounced on the Harris story and covered Biden’s historic exit from the race—and whether the White House press corps will actually get along with Biden’s former campaign staff. You can listen here, here, and here.

But first, here’s Eriq Gardner with two legal updates for the Cafe Milano crowd…

• Lou Dobbs’ death delays Fox defense: Electronic voting system company Smartmatic will eventually get to trial against Fox News over 2020 election conspiracies, but don’t count on it happening soon. Lou Dobbs was a co-defendant in the case, and his passing last week triggers a New York law that puts proceedings on pause until his estate can be properly substituted. From what I hear, Fox wants to delay the all-important summary judgment stage, where evidence in the case would be laid bare.

  Once the drama resumes, the absence of Dobbs will undeniably shape the proceedings. Known for his explosive comments on air, including dubbing the 2020 vote tabulation a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” Dobbs was a central figure in the case. His deposition can be played at trial, yet under New York’s “Dead Man Statute,” the jury won’t hear any witnesses testify about what Dobbs told them. I’m sure someone could concoct a conspiracy theory about that.

• MSNBC’s day in court: Speaking of defamation: Mahendra Amin, the ob-gyn suing NBC for $30 million after MSNBC falsely reported that he had overseen “mass hysterectomies” at an immigration detention center in Georgia, has now had her case set for a trial. We’ll have to wait until April 22 to find out whether Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Nicolle Wallace—all of whom covered the original story—will take the stand and testify in MSNBC’s defense.

Abby Livingston: Which Senate race will Harris impact the most?

Jessica Taylor: I’ve always seen Maryland as a stretch, despite former Gov. Larry Hogan being a top-tier recruit. But voters look at a choice for governor and Senate differently. Hogan needed depressed Democratic turnout in a state Biden carried by 33 points, and now there will be a Black woman leading the ticket at the same time he’s running against Angela Alsobrooks—a Black woman—for Senate.

Maryland remains on the table because Hogan is a good candidate, but I think it’s tougher now. In Virginia, even when we were seeing tightening presidential numbers in the state, the Senate race remained safe for Tim Kaine. Remember he was a popular former governor as well. He has a clear brand apart from Biden—or Harris for that matter.

Increased Black turnout could help in Detroit and Philadelphia, too, but how does Harris play with the blue-collar voters Democrats need to keep in their corner? Last week at the R.N.C., I heard a lot of (perhaps too early) optimism that she’ll hurt more in the Midwest—in Ohio, for instance—than even Biden would have. We have to wait for the data to bear that out.

What will be the most significant Republican strategic shift in response to Harris becoming the nominee?

You can’t make this fully about Biden and his competency any longer. Harris is a candidate almost two decades younger than Trump. It’s a completely different dynamic in the way voters have been looking at these two candidates. You’re already seeing Republicans struggle to message against her, calling her a “D.E.I. hire” and G.O.P. leaders cautioning that language can backfire.

Even before Biden stepped down, a Democratic strategist I spoke with wondered if the vice president might hurt Jon Tester the most down-ballot. What do you think?

Given that Montana is the most Republican state where Democrats are on defense, it makes sense. Notably, Tester has yet to endorse Harris as the nominee. He needs to separate himself at every opportunity from his party, and that still might not be enough.

Most political observers are bracing for more shocks to the race. Do you think the Senate races are locked in or still sensitive to environmental changes?

This has been my eternal question. The history of the past two presidential cycles tells us that Senate candidates shouldn’t be running this far ahead of their party’s presidential nominee. Now, we don’t know where Harris’s numbers will come in compared to Biden’s. It felt like political gravity would set in at some point if Biden continued to be a drag, but this is such a reset. With as many June and July surprises as we’ve had, who knows what things will look like in September and October.

And speaking of political resets… here’s Tara with an update on the presidential money race…

Brian Schwartz: Donor money had a big role in pushing Joe Biden to end his campaign. Let’s be clear about that. Shortly after the debate in June, donors started to say to me, in public and anonymously, that they were done—they could no longer give or raise big checks—until he stepped down. They made that very, very clear—in some cases to me, and in private conversations with lawmakers and people close to the president.

Since Biden dropped out, however, the donor class has been coming home. Even when there was hesitancy, by some, to really buy into the vice president being the best candidate, even some of those people are coming back.

I’d been hearing for a long time, even before the debate, fear among Democrats that Kamala Harris wasn’t up to the job.

Some of those questions have subsided. Donors, strategists, and lawmakers wanted this to end one way or another, and she was it. Whether they think she can beat Trump in November is a different story. Some of these donors are going to be watching carefully how she performs on the campaign trail, which means this could be a different story in the coming weeks.

Do you think that there could be a rebellion?

If she doesn’t perform well, there could be questions about what to do here. I don’t think that means much in terms of whether she’s going to capture the nomination, but it’s a question of whether donors are going to stick with her beyond the convention. It’s a big test for her, because people have not forgotten what took place with her 2019 campaign.

It was one of the worst campaigns. It struck me that when George Clooney called on Biden to step aside, he didn’t immediately endorse Harris. Same with James Carville, who suggested a mini primary. Nancy Pelosi also said privately there should be an open process, but now she’s endorsed Kamala, and so has Carville.

The vice president has a war chest with more than $100 million. You’d have to be on another planet to be thinking, Let’s run a mini primary against her. She’s racking up the delegate count, and the people you mentioned who were not fully committed to her weeks ago are back in the fray. Where would someone come in and get support from?

That is unprecedented. It was just, boom, an immediate mobilization by the old crew to start calling people up, calling their contacts, and on top of that, grassroots support. People are jumping in on this and saying, Wow, we’re really excited about the vice president running for president. We’re excited that Joe Biden passed the torch, and then giving a few bucks here or there. That’s made a big difference.

Do you think Trump will have to spend more on advertising now? A lot of independents have no idea who Kamala is—or they know who she is, but they can’t define her.

They’re going to have to think about their strategy, particularly with on-air ads. Trump’s allied super PAC came up with an ad that suggests Harris was involved in a cover-up of the president’s health. That’s one way they could go about doing this—tying her to what took place, even though it may not be true. But it’s going to be very expensive for Trump and his allies to create those ads and shift gears to take on the vice president.

Have you heard any anxiety from Trump donors?

I don’t sense anxiety, but there is a real push to keep up the fundraising machine. In a matter of days, there’s going to be a Trump fundraiser in New Jersey featuring the likes of Steve Wynn, and there are going to be others that the Chera family is going to be involved with. This is according to an invite I received today. It’s out there that the vice president and Democrats are raising a ton of money, so they’re going to have to counter that with sellout events for Trump. It will be fascinating to see if they can pull that off.

It’s been thrown around that a billion dollars will be spent by each side in this election.

It’s at least a billion for each side. The vice president is charging to the nomination, and Donald Trump’s going to have to shift tactics. This is going to be a shootout with money until November. Money is going to be flowing from both sides to try to keep their narratives going, particularly in those key states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It’s going to be very expensive.

Second gentleman Doug Emoff is hosting fundraisers in Manhattan with Wall Street. Kamala doesn’t have a running mate, so she doesn’t have anyone to go out and fundraise and glad-hand for her. That’s lost time. Symone Sanders said they’ll probably make up their minds in the next week and pick a vice presidential candidate. From a money perspective, which candidates on the shortlist have the strongest donor backing?

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Those are the three. Pritzker obviously, because he has his own wealth and he knows people across the country in the business community who would come running to help him. Mark Kelly has been working the fundraising circuit for years. And Josh Shapiro has a very deep bench of donors and supporters.

He’s not a major donor. If you go off just what he’s saying, he’s created a PAC that’s going to be supporting Donald Trump, but I don’t buy that he’s going to be giving $45 million a month. But it won’t be nothing, either. There’s going to be a multimillion-dollar effort by him and people in the tech community to support Trump. That is the question mark for Democrats: Can they go to Silicon Valley and these tech communities and get some of these people on their side? Because they need these people to come up big, to push back on Musk and these guys from the crypto and tech-investment world who are getting behind Donald Trump as we speak.

Is Kamala less exciting to them? They know her. She was the district attorney of San Francisco, attorney general of California, she was a senator.

I just had a call with someone in the tech community, and I think there’s an enthusiasm for her. Her candidacy is going to push some people in the tech community to think about whether they’re going to go to Trump, or maybe not do anything, or go help her instead. Before Biden dropped out, in some parts of the tech community, particularly Silicon Valley, there was this visceral hatred toward Joe Biden and his administration.

Silicon Valley’s become red-pilled.

I understand the vice president is part of the administration, but she also represents something else. To your point, she was a California senator. She knows some of the big tech investors, like Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman, and those guys can go out now and say, Look, Biden’s gone, he’s not on the ticket anymore. She is the future of the Democratic Party. She could be helpful, if she becomes president, toward those industries. Maybe it’s not true, but that’s a pitch they could make to donors.

Do you think Trump’s grassroots is tapped out? There have already been so many moments for them to give money—the indictments, the conviction, the attempted assassination, the convention, choosing Vance…

I don’t think so. They’re so all in with him. I don’t think anything could happen for them to hold back on giving, and that’s been his jam, as you know, for years, tapping into that small-dollar donor network. He struggled with that during the Republican primary, when there were all those people running, like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, and some of the base was giving to different candidates. Many of them are coming back. Trump has also wrapped up most of the wealthy Republican donor apparatus. There are some on the sidelines, people who were waiting for him to pick a V.P. candidate, who may not be coming to help him. If these people don’t come back, I don’t know if he cares.