‘A Necessary Disaster’

Today’s notice: Democrats are ready to back Trump’s Iran deal. The left leads in D.C. A controversial White House appointment. New House campaign spending. Food industry lobbyists vs. MAHA. And: Some new details on the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

THE LATEST

We hate this and we’re wholeheartedly supporting it. That’s the early line from Senate Democrats in response to Donald Trump’s deal with Iran. They haven’t seen the full details — no one has, except for (theoretically) a tight-knit group of Trump officials and some Iranians — but Democrats say they are ready to sign on to a plan if it actually means the war is over, our Igor Bobic reports.

“I think the only thing we can do is end the war, but I mean, Iran gets everything they want out of this — sanctions relief, implicit control of the Strait of Hormuz, no commitments on nuclear program,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told NOTUS. “It’s a disaster, but it’s probably a necessary disaster.”

The rollout of the so-far secret deal has not impressed many in the legislative branch. “If it was so great, wouldn’t the president have printed it on gold leaf paper and sent it out to all of us?” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) said. But Democrats seem ready to sign on the dotted line if Trump asks them.

What they’re not willing to do is continue to back Trump’s calls for increased defense spending. NOTUS’ Joe Gould reports on how the bipartisan coalition that has generally supported an ever-increasing Pentagon budget is fracturing. Last week, more Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee voted against the National Defense Authorization Act than voted for it. Last year’s NDAA was passed out of the committee 26-1.

“We had two days of negotiation and conversation, and didn’t talk about the cost of the Iran war, when we all know that’s the elephant in the room,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), one of those “no” votes, said. “So, what’s the bill on that? When’s that coming? That should affect us when we’re talking about a trillion-dollar budget.”

Open tabs: Trump’s ‘American Flag Blue’ Reflecting Pool is Green With Algae (NOTUS); Pentagon used Musk’s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran, official says (Independent); Democrats Prep for Shrinking Southern Delegations (NOTUS); U.S. Set to Offer Iran Broad Financial Gains in Peace Deal (Bloomberg)

Primary night roundup

Progressives’ big night in D.C.: People were still voting two hours after polls were scheduled to close in the District’s primaries last night, which included the first open race for mayor since Democrat Muriel Bowser took over in 2015. Early results showed the left carried the evening in the all-important Democratic primary. Council member Janeese Lewis George was way ahead in the first results, crushing the hopes of many moderate supporters of former Council member Kenyan McDuffie.

There are still plenty of ballots to be counted, our local news team reports, but Lewis George shared her supporters’ elation in a speech at her election night HQ: “What seemed like a distant dream is history unfolding before our eyes,” she said.

Trump’s mixed night: Tuesday’s Republican primaries once again featured the president’s endorsements looming large. In Georgia, Republicans picked Rep. Mike Collins as their U.S. Senate nominee, following Trump’s last-minute endorsement, NOTUS’ Adora Brown reports. But in the state’s gubernatorial primary, voters rejected Trump’s pick, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and gave the nomination to billionaire Rick Jackson, who spent a fortune on the race.

Oklahoma keeps voting: State Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei are headed to a runoff in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Trump endorsed Mazzei a few weeks ago, giving his candidacy a significant boost in the crowded field to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, Adora reports.

From the White House

Charlton Allen’s past: Trump’s nominee for general counsel at the Federal Labor Relations Authority is headed to the Capitol for a confirmation hearing this morning despite his litany of controversial statements about minorities, NOTUS’ Eric Katz reports.

For example: A series of bigoted articles published in a conservative newspaper Allen founded in law school that dogged him but did not prevent Republicans from confirming him to a state board in North Carolina in 2014. Those articles and other statements are surfacing again ahead of Allen’s cattle-call confirmation hearing today, in which he’ll appear with a dozen or so other nominees.

From the campaign trail

Running on the map you got: House Majority PAC, which is closely aligned with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, has reserved $11 million in new TV ad time to press the midterm fight on maps Jeffries hoped would not exist this cycle, Elena Schneider reports first for NOTUS. In Florida, nearly $5 million in reservations will go toward defending Rep. Jared Moskowitz, whose seat got redder after the state’s Republican-led legislature redrew district lines. New spending in Virginia has the goal of flipping seats held by Republican Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans, two tough races Democrats had hoped to make easier through their own (dashed) redistricting effort in the commonwealth.

From K Street

The food industry turns its lobbying ammo on MAHA: A proposed rule that would alter the so-called “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, classification at the Food and Drug Administration has been championed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., consumer advocates and the Make America Healthy Again movement, all of whom say that manufacturers use broadly defined GRAS rules to skirt the spirit of the FDA’s regulation of processed foods.

Manufacturers hate the rule change. They are putting their money where your mouth may soon be, NOTUS’ Paige Winfield Cunningham and Taylor Giorno report. The number of trade associations, companies and organizations that reported lobbying on the pending regulation has nearly tripled, and in-house and hired lobbyists for 35 organizations related to the processed-food industry disclosed lobbying around GRAS in Q1 of 2026, up from 12 in the same period in 2025 and one in 2024.

As for the proposed rule change, it is languishing. The White House has been reviewing the FDA’s proposed GRAS regulation for six months and has yet to release a federal definition of ultra-processed food, something Kennedy had promised by April.

NOTUS METRO

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Local news: This D.C. Housing Complex Is So Bad It Might Get a Tax Break, by Zara Norman

Sports desk: Something Is Different About This U.S. World Cup Team, by Dave Sheinin

NEW ON NOTUS

Did Kevin McCarthy really think Democrats would save his speakership? A new book dropping next week from top McCarthy aide John Leganski tells the story of a (brief but real) effort to convince some House Democrats to vote for McCarthy in late 2023 and defeat the effort to oust him led by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida). NOTUS’ Reese Gorman obtained a copy of the book, which details some preliminary talks between McCarthy and Jeffries as Gaetz stoked the coup. The Democratic leader said he was sympathetic to McCarthy’s plight but added that the idea had about zero traction in his caucus.

This news was not a surprise. I “cannot imagine we would have been likely to step in to save him or Nancy Pelosi if the shoe were on the other foot,” Leganski writes.

More: Republicans Aren’t Sure They Can Block Trump’s IRS Audit Exemption, by Avani Kalra

NOT US

• The Legend of Susan Collins, by Jim Newell for Slate
• ‘They Don’t Know How to Accept Him’: Vivek Ramaswamy Navigates Identity in Ohio, by Samuel Benson for Politico
• Meet the DC Hostage Negotiator Bringing People Back Home, by Andrew Zaleski for Washingtonian
• The Next Black President, by Ta-Nehisi Coates for Vanity Fair
  

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The newsletter was produced by Kelly Poe, Brett Bachman, Thomas Burr and Andrew Burton.