‘Going to Low-Key It’

Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for April 9, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!

THE LATEST

Donald Trump said he’s convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back strikes on Lebanon, one of the sticking points that has snagged negotiations between Iran and the U.S. and kept the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed despite an apparent agreement to open it.

• “I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it. I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key,” Trump told NBC News.
• Netanyahu said in a post on X: “In light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed at the Government meeting yesterday to open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.”
• He did not, however, say that Israel would cease its strikes: “There is no cease-fire in Lebanon,” he added.

Help is on the way: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, during an address in Washington, reflected on his “open and candid” conversation with Trump yesterday. He said that despite a “slow” start, European allies were now in lockstep with the U.S. in its war against Iran.

• “What I see, when I look across Europe today, is allies providing a massive amount of support,” he said. “Nearly without exception, allies are doing everything the United States is asking.”

Google ‘the Streisand effect’: First lady Melania Trump held a bizarre press conference in which she addressed, for the first time, her and her husband’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, effectively launching the saga back into public consciousness after it had largely fallen out of the headlines.

She denied that she had ever been trafficked by him, lashed out at media outlets that reported on interactions she and the president had with Epstein and his associates and called for Congress to hold a public hearing with his victims.

• “Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony,” she said. “Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record. Then and only then, we will have the truth.”

She also indicated that there are likely more unindicted co-conspirators who should face prosecution, contradicting the DOJ.

THE HILL

House Republicans blocked Democrats from passing a war powers resolution to restrict Trump’s military action in Iran. The seven-member group, led by Rep. Glenn Ivey, told reporters that they plan to force a vote when Congress returns from recess next week.

Democrats are already lobbying their GOP counterparts to support the measure, NOTUS’ Kadia Goba reports. Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat from California on the Armed Services Committee, said some Republicans who stomached the conflict when it was an air war may turn against it now that Trump has massed American ground troops — Marines and Army paratroopers — in the Middle East.

A trip to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz went on a three-hour, unannounced oversight visit to the Florida detention center today. She told reporters that she wasn’t allowed to talk to any of the nearly 1,500 people housed there, despite obtaining privacy-release forms from detainees.

State emergency-management personnel who gave Wasserman Schultz the tour punted questions about the cost of running the site to an on-site ICE official, who refused to meet with her.

THE ADMINISTRATION

Survivors of a deadly Iranian attack that killed six U.S. service members are criticizing the Pentagon’s description of the incident, the deadliest since the war began. They spoke with CBS News and took particular issue with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s description of the drone as a “squirter” that snuck through the unit’s defenses.

• “Painting a picture that ‘one squeaked through’ is a falsehood,” an injured soldier told the network. “I want people to know the unit … was unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position.”

The Trump administration has put Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on what Bloomberg describes as a “low-risk messaging diet,” which has seen the firebrand embrace more broadly popular policies and steer clear of divisive issues, like his anti-vaccine views, during a crucial midterm year.

The outlet obtained an internal HHS memo issued earlier this year that instructed top officials to tout the department’s efforts to promote fitness and higher-quality foods, tackle health-care fraud and invest in “gold-standard” research, while implicitly steering them away from unpopular changes to the department’s vaccine recommendations.

THE STATES

Florida’s attorney general is launching a probe into OpenAI following allegations that the company’s chatbot, ChatCPT, helped a shooter kill two people last year at Florida State University.

• “AI should exist to supplement, support and advance mankind, not lead to an existential crisis or our ultimate demise,” James Uthmeier said. “As Big Tech rolls out these technologies, they should not, they cannot, put our safety and security at risk.”

STATEN ISLAND? DON’T ASK.

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