Gutter Politics

Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for February 11, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!

The Latest

We’re not saying it was the ugliest House hearing ever, but Pam Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was certainly a contender:

• Bondi apologized to victims of Jeffrey Epstein in the hearing room for the suffering “that monster” caused them. But when Pramila Jayapal asked Bondi to turn around and apologize for the DOJ’s role in the case, Bondi said she wasn’t going to “get in the gutter with these theatrics” and then called Jayapal “unprofessional.”
• Jerry Nadler asked Bondi how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators she’d indicted. Bondi tried to change the subject. When Nadler objected, she said: “I’m going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question,” then told Chair Jim Jordan that she wasn’t going to “get in the gutter with these people.”
• Ranking Member Jamie Raskin jumped in to say he’d previously told Bondi she couldn’t filibuster members. She shot back: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer.”
• After the hearing, Thomas Massie claimed Bondi’s staff gave her cue cards with insults prepared for her inquisitors, “but she couldn’t memorize them” so she had to “shuffle through them to find the flash-cards-insult that matches the member.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January. That’s way better than analysts predicted, and way better than Trump administration officials foreshadowed earlier this week. A spike in health care jobs offset a sharp decline in federal government jobs.

• Donald Trump said the January numbers show “the Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” He also said they should lead to lower interest rates.

• BLS revised its 2025 numbers downward, concluding that the U.S. added only 181,000 jobs last year.

New on NOTUS: Jose Pagliery explains how a retired OB-GYN became the driving force behind the FBI’s raid on a Georgia election office, and Dave Levinthal reports on a DOJ lawyer who recused herself from an antitrust case against Visa because of a conflict of interest — and was then told to work on the case anyway.

The Hill

Congress has one more day to avoid a DHS shutdown. We asked our congressional editor, Deirdre Walsh, for the state of play:

• “No sign of movement. Most lawmakers believe we are headed for a DHS shutdown. John Thune is still planning on a vote tomorrow on a CR, but without Trump and Chuck Schumer signaling talks are progressing it’s expected to fail.”

• Thune said senators should probably plan to be on recess next week: “I don’t know if there’s any point in keeping people around here, sitting around doing nothing.” Barring a change, some members will head to Germany for the Munich Security Conference.
• The top appropriator in the House, Tom Cole, is not amused: “I’m sure Munich is a great place … The beer is outstanding, but we don’t need to go to a defense conference someplace in Europe when we’re not taking care of the defense of the United States of America.”

The House will vote today on whether to rescind Trump’s tariffs. That’s the measure Mike Johnson tried to keep off the floor.

John Hickenlooper bought more than $100,000 in Uber stock last month. As NOTUS’ Tyler Spence notes, Hickenlooper serves on the Senate committee with jurisdiction over the rideshare industry.

The Administration

The IRS gave confidential taxpayer information to DHS to help it find people to deport, The Washington Post reports.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler invested $3 million in an AI start-up just before the company struck a $20 billion deal with Nvidia. The Small Business Administration said Loeffler has no “direction or input” on how her money is invested.

The FAA abruptly closed and then abruptly reopened airspace over El Paso. Officials offered conflicting explanations but seem to have settled on the need to test lasers to shoot down a drone from Mexican drug cartels. It was apparently a party balloon.

The former Miss USA contestant Trump put on his Religious Liberty Commission was kicked off the commission by its chair, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, because, he says, she hijacked a meeting to push her pro-Palestine views.

And The Survey Says ... Nothing?

Gallup said it’s going to stop tracking presidential approval ratings. Trump’s has dropped from 47% to 36% in a year. Several news organizations asked if these things are related, and Gallup told them: “This is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”

Thank you for reading! Today’s newsletter was produced by Kate Nocera and Andrew Burton. If you liked it, please forward it to a friend. If someone shared it with you, please subscribe — it’s free! Got a tip or comments to share? Email us at finalnotus@notus.com.