Axios

President Trump will officially announce his picks for two ambassadorial posts tonight, an administration source tells Axios.

• Lew Eisenberg, the financier and former Goldman Sachs partner who served as chairman of the Trump Victory Fund, will be the next ambassador to Italy.
• Steve King, a businessman from Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, will serve as ambassador to the Czech Republic. King has known Ryan and WH Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for years and is a member of the Republican National Committee.

Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel tells Breitbart and Fox News that Congress should delay or cancel their August break until they've repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act.

"Our voters are depending on them and that's part of why we were elected to lead and we need to get that done."

Why this matters: McDaniel joins a growing chorus of Republicans pushing leadership to work on critical legislation through the August break. David Perdue of Georgia is leading the charge in the Senate. He initiated a letter, co-signed by 9 colleagues, urging McConnell to consider forgoing the summer break so they can finish health care and deal with other urgent priorities like the budget and debt ceiling. Perdue and a number of colleagues will hold a press conference on his tomorrow, a source familiar tells me. Republicans in the House have their own letter and resolution to delay or forego the August break

Critics pounced when Ivanka Trump briefly sat in for her father at the G20 summit in Hamburg, contending that the president's daughter — particularly one who has said she tries to "stay out of politics" — wasn't the right person to represent the U.S. on the world stage.

But while Ivanka's role has been particularly visible, she was far from the first the first child of a president to join his administration.

Per Reuters, Donald Trump Jr. has hired white collar defense lawyer Alan Futerfas to represent him in the government's ongoing Russia probe one day after admitting to meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton at Trump Tower last year.

Learn about the major players behind Trump Jr.'s Russia meeting.

Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders dodged questions Monday on whether President Trump accepted Vladimir Putin's denial of Russian election interference, stating instead that Trump heard what Putin had to say, and "decided to move on from that part of the conversation."

Sanders also said that Trump had only learned about his eldest son's June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer "in the last couple of days," and described it as "very short" with "no follow up". She later added that "the only thing inappropriate" about the meeting is "the people who leaked" details, stating firmly that "Don Jr. did not collude with anybody to influence the election." Other highlights from the off-camera briefing:

A New York magazine excerpt of Josh Green's book on Trump and Bannon — "Devil's Bargain," out a week from tomorrow — argues that the White House chief strategist (and CEO of Trump's campaign for the fall) is the reason for Trump's "double-down every time it seems like he should retreat":

The president has weighed in on a new report from The Hill, which cites "officials familiar with the documents" to claim more than half of fired FBI Director Jim Comey's memos contained classified information.

The new story about Trump's inner circle meeting a Russian is damaging because of who was there, when it happened, what they were up to, and the fact that the explanation changed radically over the weekend.

Be smart: Intent will be a crucial consideration in whatever special counsel Bob Mueller comes up with. So the reason for this meeting, the changing story, and the foot-dragging on disclosure are all going to matter. It's why veteran Republicans operatives remain mystified that Trump's orbit is going the drip-drip route rather than disclosing all at once what's known about meetings with Russians.

On Saturday, N.Y. Times had disclosed that the Trump Tower meeting last June with "a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin" had been convened by Don Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, and included son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

A day later, the bombshell: The meeting was not primarily about adoption policy, as Trump Jr. had suggested in a statement. Don Jr. had been "promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton."

The NYT's Maggie Haberman pointed out on Twitter: "This meeting took place at a pivotal moment for Trump, winning Indiana but facing delegate slog prospect."

Under the for-history headline of "TRUMP TEAM MET RUSSIAN OFFERING DIRT ON CLINTON," The Times says: "The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help."

• From Don Jr.'s statement: "[T]he woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."
• Just hours before the new story, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on "Fox News Sunday" that it was "a nothing meeting": "[I]t was a meeting apparently about Russian adoption."
• Intrigue, tweeted by Axios' Jonathan Swan: "Sources close to Trump are discussing which 'advisers to the White House' [how The Times described sources] might want revenge against Don Jr."

Email du jour, from a top Republican: "[T]ranquilize the president so he does not tweet about it."

A Democratic senator is working on a bill meant to prod the federal government to grapple with the potential impact of artificial intelligence on everything from workers to privacy.

Washington state's Maria Cantwell has circulated draft legislation — which has yet to be introduced and could still be edited — to create a board that would provide advice on a broad range of AI-related topics to the federal government.

Why it matters: As it stands, the U.S. has no policy on the potential threat of robotization to jobs, or even a legal definition of AI. The draft bill falls short of ordering action or formulating policy. But, if it moves all the way to President Donald Trump's desk and is signed into law, it would push the executive branch to begin wrestling with the issues, and could officially define A.I. in a federal law for the first time.

DLA Piper's 3,600 attorneys work in 40 countries, making it one of the world's largest law firms. One of those countries is Ukraine, which on June 27 placed the firm on the front lines of one of the most penetrating commercial cyberattacks ever: Petya. When it hit, it took down DLA Piper's global computer systems, which appear still not to be fully back up. But DLA Piper was only one of hundreds of thousands of victims of the malware in more than 60 countries.

Can't artificial intelligence protect us? AI and machine learning are now crucial to protection (see below). But when it comes to malware like Petya, that will be too late — your data and your entire hard drive will already be encrypted. Petya victims lost much of their stuff to eternity.

One conservative group that will announce a set of demands for the debt ceiling is the House Freedom Caucus. Sources tell me Mark Meadows and his group of some 40 members will call on Republican leadership to pass a bill in July to deal with the debt ceiling and avoid a last-minute stand-off in October.

Our thought bubble: Democrats are very unlikely to support the Freedom Caucus' first plan, meaning there's no path to 60 votes in the Senate. Also, a number of Treasury officials, past and present, believe asset sales are not a viable way to avoid or delay raising the debt limit. As for the other more aggressive options, a source familiar with House leadership's thinking told me such approaches are unrealistic and "typical of the Freedom Caucus."

Conservatives are curiously zen about the debt ceiling hike, which points to a tectonic shift in the politics of debt now that we've entered the Trump Era. Not a single major conservative outside group is demanding the White House slash spending in exchange for their cooperation raising the debt ceiling (which will have to happen in October). Privately, most top Trump administration officials are delighted conservatives aren't pressuring them.

One high-profile conservative leader — summing up a view I'm hearing across the movement — told me his group doesn't think it's a good idea to play chicken with Republican leadership and the President over the debt ceiling as they often did with Barack Obama. "We've been there before, and Republicans always lose," he said.

Between the lines: The politics of debt have shifted under Trump; top White House officials are now weighing tax cuts that could substantially increase the deficit in the short-term.

Donald Trump Jr. has acknowledged that he met with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin in June, 2016, accompanied by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. Now the New York Times reports he did so after he was promised "damaging" information about Hillary Clinton.

The new evidence was revealed to NYT by three White House advisers who were briefed on the meeting and two others who knew about it. Trump Jr. previously said the meeting centered on adoption.

Why it matters: If the report is true, this is evidence that a Trump associate was willing to accept help from Russia in influencing the U.S. election

The "damaging" info, according to Trump Jr.'s statement: "[T]he woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."