Break Time Is Over

Today’s notice: Congress comes back to several spinning plates, all of them full. Democratic second thoughts in Maine. What the people nodding and winking at a 2028 run sound like while they’re doing it. Leonard Leo’s dark money makeover. Democrats debate the I-word.

THE LATEST

Eric Swalwell drops out. The California congressman suspended his bid for governor last night after being accused of sexual assault and misconduct — but didn’t say whether he would serve out his term in the House, where he is facing a drumbeat of calls to resign from both sides of the aisle.

“To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past,” Swalwell wrote on X. “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.”

Swalwell’s exit throws the California governor’s race into flux just under two months before voters head to the polls. The candidates who remain include former Rep. Katie Porter, billionaire Tom Steyer, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

***

A real work week. Members of Congress hoping to ease back into things after two weeks off better let go of that notion right now and refill the office Celsius fridge. This week’s gonna be a doozy.

To start with, the war in Iran is not over. The conflict could be entering a new phase where high energy prices are the weapon Donald Trump wields, rather than tries to defend against. In a likely red flag moment for Republicans, the president said he hoped that oil and gas prices will be lower by the midterms — but added, in true Trump fashion, that they would probably end up “a little bit higher” than they were when the conflict began. He said this just minutes after posting that the U.S. military had begun blockading the Strait of Hormuz.

• Trump also said a return to combat operations is on the table if talks with the Iranian regime remain in a stalemate.

Watch for frayed nerves on the Hill. Before Sunday’s developments, a Senate Republican grumbled to NOTUS’ Al Weaver that they need to hear more of a plan from the White House before supporting congressional authorization and funding for the war. Existing law requires Congress to weigh in within 60 days of combat operations beginning (which would be April 29).

• “We’re getting into the short game, and we need details if they have any prayer of getting funding,” the Senate Republican told Al.

Democrats’ moves: House Democrats are aiming for Wednesday to introduce their next effort to force a war powers vote, a leadership source told NOTUS’ Kadia Goba. Expect Thursday at the latest.

Lawmakers also have several scandals to deal with. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna posted over the weekend that she plans to try to force a vote on the expulsion of Swalwell from the House. Luna later said she would seek to expel Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales as well, after Democrats called for his ouster over sexual misconduct accusations.

A bipartisan and quite ideologically broad group signed on to this idea. Republican Reps. Byron Donalds, Mike Lawler and Nancy Mace were among those who made public statements of support, as were Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Jared Huffman.

Who might be sweating this trend: Republican Rep. Cory Mills, who is facing a litany of allegations from stolen valor to domestic violence, and Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, recently found guilty of violating dozens of House rules after a rare public hearing of the Ethics Committee.

Oh, and one more thing: If that wasn’t enough of a full week for you, remember that the Department of Homeland Security is still unfunded and Congress needs to figure that out, too.

Open tabs: Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán ousted after 16 years in European electoral earthquake (AP); 21 Hours in Pakistan: How Vance Tried and Failed to End a War He Opposed (NYT); Trump wants to cover a White House office building with ‘magic paint.’ Experts advise against it (CNN); DHS probing Swalwell over allegations he illegally employed nanny (Politico)

From the White House

Trump vs. the first American Pope: “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t!” Trump posted last night in a more than 330-word rant at Pope Leo XIV.

The screed comes after a week of awkwardness between the Vatican and the Pentagon over reports of a divisive meeting that included talk of Trump’s interventionist turn. Both sides have said that meeting was more boring that originally reported, but Trump has now made clear how he feels about current Catholic leadership.

From the campaign trail

Is Janet Mills cooked? “What other levers are there to pull?” an ally of the Maine governor told NOTUS’ Alex Roarty as polling continues to show her struggling in the Democratic Senate primary against Graham Platner. A turn to negative ads has not changed her position significantly, Platner is outspending Mills — which is something theoretically her campaign could change — and the 78-year-old governor is still dogged by questions about her age, which is one thing her campaign cannot change.

There’s still a while until the June 9 vote, Mills’ campaign would like to remind you. “Campaigns are a roller coaster of ups and downs, and I think the governor has an opportunity in the next 60 days to get on the upside,” Emily Cain, a former Maine state lawmaker and Mills booster, told Alex.

From K Street

A makeover for Leonard Leo’s “dark money” operation: The legal activist and GOP megadonor is shuttering the Concord Fund, a conservative group formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network, NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno reports. The organization’s mission lives on, however, with other dark money groups tied to Leo taking up the Concord Fund’s work during a crucial midterm year.

“Because the names change, I think most Americans have no idea what’s going on or how many of these differently named groups are the same through line with Leonard Leo at the sort of center of the spider web,” Lisa Graves, founder and executive director of the left-leaning watchdog group True North Research, told Taylor.

ON NOTUS PODCAST

From your favorite podcast app: Congress is back after a two-week recess and has a lot on its agenda. The Department of Homeland Security is still shut down and the war in Iran is ongoing, with the Strait of Hormuz — a critical passageway for 20% of the world’s oil — almost entirely closed off. For this week’s On NOTUS podcast, our reporter Oriana González is joined by her colleagues Kadia Goba, Al Weaver, Anna Kramer and Joe Gould for a roundtable discussion on the news of the week.

NEW ON NOTUS

How to remove a president: Rep. Jamie Raskin held a private information session last week with House Democrats to detail several long-shot options to boot Trump from office, Kadia reports. Talk of removal came into fashion in a bipartisan way after Trump threatened to attack civilian infrastructure in Iran last week, with some MAGA figures calling on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Democratic leadership has not committed to any formal effort at impeachment, but Kadia writes that Raskin plans to reintroduce his own idea to create a bipartisan commission to judge the president’s fitness for office. For what it’s worth, the host of the info session was caucus vice chair Ted Lieu.

More: Karoline Leavitt’s Old Campaign Still Owes Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars, by Dave Levinthal

NOT US

• ‘Housewives’ and Lawmakers See a Congress Devolving Into Reality TV Drama, by Michael Gold for The New York Times
  
• ‘Judge Jeanine’ Is Learning It’s Hard to Be Trump’s Favorite Prosecutor, by C. Ryan Barber and Josh Dawsey for The Wall Street Journal
  
• The Conciliator: Why did Gretchen Whitmer go soft on Trump? By Elaine Godfrey for The Atlantic

Thank you for reading! If you liked 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 at newsletters@notus.org.