North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was hardly a MAGA flamethrower. “Until recently,” writes Stephen Rodrick, Burgum “was a goateed software geek who spoke of gratitude, urban infrastructure and how abortion was none of his business.”

But these days, as Burgum chases a potential spot as Donald Trump’s running mate, he’s undergoing a rebrand that has shocked the North Dakotans who thought they knew him well.

“The new souped-up Burgum has been reimagined as a warrior for Trump,” Rodrick continues in this week’s Friday Read. “He now describes President Joe Biden as a dictator and a Hamas collaborator. He derides the American judicial system as a sham.”

Or, as one North Dakota lawmaker put it: “Doug started playing the game.”

Read the story.

“We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”

Can you guess what Democrat said this about President Joe Biden? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**

When an Incumbent Quits the Race … Calls are mounting for President Joe Biden to step aside as the Democratic nominee following an excruciating debate performance, and with those calls comes a valid question: What, exactly, would that look like? Historian Joshua Zeitz has an answer: A mess. After President Lyndon B. Johnson stepped aside in 1968, the DNC devolved into chaos. This time around, “an open convention could well be a ‘Dems in Disarray’ moment,” Zeitz writes. “But it could also provide a jolt to the system and wake many unhappy voters, who are currently disappointed with their options, from their slumber.”

The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is sure to come up in conversation this weekend. Haven’t kept up with the case? Use these talking points to get through happy hour. (From Associate Editor Dylon Jones)

— Get a jump on the topic by bringing up the most immediate impact: “The odds of Trump standing trial in D.C. before Election Day just got a lot, lot slimmer.”

— Does this really mean Trump could have a political rival assassinated? This hypothetical will be floating around following Justice Sotomayor’s blistering dissent. Here’s your response: “Well, according to constitutional law experts, yes.” Then pull up this POLITICO story on your phone.

— Show off some knowledge of the legal particulars: “This guts Jack Smith’s charge that Trump weaponized the Justice Department. But he could still try to provide evidence that Trump doesn’t deserve immunity for other allegations — like trying to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — because ‘criminalizing the particular conduct at issue would not intrude on the authority and functions of the executive branch,’ as Ankush Khardori wrote in POLITICO Magazine.”

— Remind your friends that this doesn’t just affect Trump’s D.C. case: Trump has claimed presidential immunity should also protect him from the election interference charges against him in Georgia and the classified documents case in Florida. The Supreme Court ruling could impact how judges in both those cases proceed.

What Should Biden Do? … Biden’s debate debacle caused panic among Democrats — and profound disagreement among top political thinkers. We reached out to a range of experts following the debate, from academics to sitting lawmakers, to ask what advice they’d give the president, his advisers and his party. Some “refuse to join the Democratic vultures panicking about Joe Biden,” while others say, “Biden should bless a new nominee.”

The Dawn of a New Nuclear Age … For 70 years, the U.S. nuclear umbrella has protected its allies in Europe, allowing them to devote their resources and attention to rebuilding after two world wars, rather than developing complex and costly nuclear arsenals of their own, with the exception of France and the U.K.’s comparatively modest stockpiles. But Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has some Europeans feeling threatened, and Donald Trump’s skepticism of NATO has them feeling like they can’t count on the U.S. to back them up if he returns to the White House. “European officials have reluctantly — and quietly — begun to debate whether Europe should do something that’s been unthinkable for most of NATO’s existence: develop a security architecture that’s not so dependent on the United States,” write Laura Kayali, Thorsten Jungholt and Philipp Fritz, “including for nuclear deterrence.” 

Veterans Are Driving the GOP’s Ukraine Skepticism … Support for Ukraine has opened up a rift in the GOP between an old guard committed to resisting Putin’s invasion and skeptics who say the U.S. can’t afford to contribute to the war. One under-appreciated dynamic offers insights into that divide: “The rise of the GOP’s anti-intervention faction has been led in large part by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Ian Ward. “Having witnessed the failures and lethal consequences of the U.S. wars firsthand, they said, they have grown skeptical of the efficacy of U.S. military power, distrustful of civilian and military leaders and weary of getting the United States involved in overseas conflicts that could cost additional American dollars and, in a worst-case scenario, American lives.”

Is This Blue-Collar Millennial the Future Democrats Want? … Democrats’ evolving thinking on Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez becomes apparent when you compare two pieces about her in Slate. After Gluesenkamp Perez flipped the last red district touching the Pacific blue, the publication called her a “darling of the Democratic party.” Then she started voting — against Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, for funding Israel — and by August, Slate had pivoted to calling her a “Kyrsten Sinema wannabe.” “The intense anger directed at Gluesenkamp Perez reveals an interesting and fraught divide inside the Democratic Party,” writes Natalie Fertig. “While party leaders are quite happy to retain her seat in a closely divided House, she has become engaged in a generational ideological debate with much of the party’s left flank … over who gets to define what helping working-class Americans actually looks like.”

The Boys Are Not Alright … Contrary to the notion that younger generations are always more progressive, a stark ideological divide is separating the men and women of Gen Z, and nowhere is that divide more striking than South Korea, where young men’s embrace of anti-feminism has reshaped the country’s politics and as violence against women is on the rise. “These days, for both men and women in Korea, anger is the dominant emotion,” writes Catherine Kim. “Nobody comes out winning.”

From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker.

**Who Dissed answer: That would be Democratic Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

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