Aftermath of a Doodle

Today’s notice: Deny, deny, deny. The latest on a short-term spending bill. The raise Congress wants but won’t give itself. The courts make big moves. And: How House Democrats built a new legal fighting machine.

THE LATEST

Doodle what? Doodle who? “I’ve got to activate my Wall Street Journal subscription, I guess,” Rep. Tom Barrett told NOTUS’ Hill team after Donald Trump’s alleged birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein was revealed by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

This was the common reaction among Republicans: “I haven’t seen that,” John Thune said.

The White House saw it, and denied it was real. “DEFAMATION!” a White House official posted on X, arguing that the signature shown does not match the one on documents Trump has signed recently.

Republicans definitely heard that. “I just saw in the news he didn’t have anything to do with it,” Rep. Ronny Jackson told NOTUS.

Democrats are laughing at these responses, but… as of last night, no new Republicans had signed onto Rep. Thomas Massie’s discharge petition to release more DOJ Epstein documents. “Having a birthday card from Trump doesn’t help the survivors and the victims,” Massie said. “It doesn’t name an additional new person who could be indicted. I think it’s just a distraction.”

Also released by Oversight: Epstein’s will, entries from his address book and the disgraced financier’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement signed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Open tabs: France’s government collapses (Politico); Murdochs Reach Deal to Resolve Succession Fight (NYT); Trump helps pad JD Vance’s political fund (NBC); Man accused of Trump assassination attempt heads to trial (Axios)

From the Hill

Clean CR? “We’re making good progress,” Rep. Tom Cole told our Hill reporters of the prospects for a short-term spending bill, which seem to be improving.

There’s still a lot to work out. “We’re going to need to work in a bipartisan manner to get this done,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin said. “And right now I haven’t seen a lot of that bipartisan outreach, and that’s concerning me significantly.”

Something that is attracting bipartisan attention: raises. Members of Congress have not had an increase to their paychecks since 2009. Their $174,000 annual salary has lost 31% of its purchasing power in the subsequent 16 years.

Everyone thinks this matters. Lawmakers as ideologically disparate as Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Tommy Tuberville told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson, Ursula Perano and Em Luetkemeyer that they need at least a cost-of-living increase to make this important job open to a broad swath of Americans. That said… don’t hold your breath.

“It’s too controversial,” Sen. Dick Durbin said. This is a wage-growth policy no committee is going to touch this Congress, they report.

From the courts

What to make of a busy Monday? Rulings in significant cases involving the president’s power and personal life are not the end of the story but important chapters.

Racial profiling: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh cast doubt on any effort to stop federal law enforcement from relying on racial profiling tactics in his ruling overturning a stay on ICE tactics in Los Angeles.

Control over independent agencies: An order, signed by SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, allowed the Trump administration to temporarily remove a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, as the broader case plays out. She called the ruling “one procedural step” and vowed to “stay in the fight.”

And: An appellate panel tells Trump to pay up. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an $83.3 million verdict against the president for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. The judges accused Trump of “extraordinary and unprecedented conduct.”

THE BIG ONE

House Democrats’ new legal engine: “The times that we are in have forced us to think not just like legislators, but like litigators,” Rep. Jamie Raskin told NOTUS’ Oriana González for her deep dive into the caucus’ carefully managed legal fight against the White House.

What it is: At least 45 members, most of whom have backgrounds as attorneys, make up the Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group, a whole-of-caucus project that coordinates how and when House Democrats get involved in legal cases.

Who’s who: Raskin and Rep. Joe Neguse are the point people on legal fights. Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Robert Garcia run the legislative responses. The team was picked by Hakeem Jeffries, who started crafting the plan on a phone call with Raskin in the days after Trump won reelection.

What’s different: Traditionally, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee had the job of running the caucus’ legal fights. But Oriana reports that the new approach, tailored to this presidency, makes fighting Trump in the courts central to the entire membership.

How it works: “We are acting as a clearinghouse for the many ongoing lawsuits, and also we are leading the way on the amicus briefs that the House Democrats are filing,” Rep. Diana DeGette, a member of the working group, said. “It’s kind of falling on us to aggregate all that information and then present it to our colleagues and see how we can help.”

Lawyers helping lawyers is the takeaway here. The volume of legal responses required to keep up with this White House has created a workload that has Democratic state attorneys general and activist groups rethinking how they do things. “We have stepped into that void,” Neguse said.

NEW ON NOTUS

‘Operation Midway Blitz’: That’s what DHS is calling its new immigration operation in Chicago, which it officially launched Monday. In a statement to NOTUS’ Amelia Benavides-Colón, Mayor Brandon Johnson said that despite Trump’s social media posts, city officials “received no notice of any enhanced immigration action by the Trump administration” in advance of Monday’s announcement.

Second time’s the charm: Rep. Eric Swalwell has been picked to serve as the top Democrat on the new, Republican-led select subcommittee to investigate Jan. 6. It’s the second panel convened by Congress to investigate the events of that day — after a Democratic-led select committee found in 2022 that Trump bore much of the responsibility for the attempted insurrection.

Other Democrats set to serve on the new subcommittee include Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Jasmine Crockett, as well as Raskin as an ex officio member. “I’m not sure why House Republicans keep picking the scab of their massive self-inflicted political wound,” Raskin, who served on the previous committee, said of the effort.

The positions are subject to final approval from Mike Johnson.

NOT US

• States Heading Toward Constitutional Showdown Over Abortion Shield Laws, by Pam Belluck for The New York Times
  
• After a robbery, a D.C. store sought help. The White House sent a film crew. By Marissa J. Lang for The Washington Post
  
• The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security, by Eli Hager for ProPublica
  
• The Job Market Is Hell, by Annie Lowrey for The Atlantic

Thank you for reading! If you like this edition of the NOTUS newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was shared with you, please subscribe — it’s free! Have a tip? Email us at tips@notus.org. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter at newsletters@notus.org.