Careful What You Wish For

Today’s notice: How the Epstein files era changes after today. The Senate says no to the House ACA discharge petition before the House even has a chance to vote on it. A scoop about the transgender care debate in Congress. And: Another administration scratching its head at economic polls.

THE LATEST

The next phase of the Jeffrey Epstein saga: Legally speaking, today is the day the DOJ is required to release all the Epstein files it can under the parameters of the law passed by Congress last month. Politically speaking, there’s still a lot to fight about when it comes to the files. Donald Trump appointees have the power to decide which files exactly fall into the law’s requirements, and you can be sure every sheet of paper left unreleased will become A Thing.

A MAGA obsession is now a Democratic one. The law releasing the files ended up being broadly bipartisan. In fact, it was maybe the one instance of Trump 2.0 when Congress got together and flexed its coequal powers against the president, though many Republicans didn’t join in until Trump said it was OK. Don’t expect that bipartisanship to hold. NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz and Em Luetkemeyer report that Democrats are preparing for a long list of future fights related to Epstein.

But there’s also a lot of reading to do. Both sides hope to find damning stuff about the other in these files, and now the debate will turn to what the files mean.

The actual substance of what we’ve seen so far remains truly jaw-dropping. Yesterday, House Oversight Democrats released another tranche of the files the committee already has. This release included a photo of what appeared to be a woman’s foot with a quote from “Lolita” written on it. The novel itself sits in the background of the shot. There’s no debate that the very worst part of this saga is that we’re all going to have to hear more about stuff like that.

Open tabs: Kennedy Center Board Votes to Rename Storied Arts Institution After Trump (NOTUS); ‘Don’s Best Friend’: How Epstein and Trump Bonded Over the Pursuit of Women (NYT); ‘No evidence of war crimes’ in boat strike, Senate Armed Services chair concludes (Politico); The DNC Won’t Release Its 2024 Autopsy After All (NOTUS)

From the Hill

Anticlimactic future for House ACA drama: “They get to decide what they want to focus on and we get to decide what we want to focus on,” Sen. Rick Scott said of the three-year Affordable Care Act subsidy extension moderate Republicans helped Democrats force a vote on in the House.

Cute idea! But no is the general take from Republican senators, NOTUS’ Avani Kalra and Ursula Perano report. The best that House discharge petition supporters can hope for came from Sen. Thom Tillis, who said he didn’t know if the House bill, expected to pass in January, would ever get a vote in the upper chamber — “but I hope we can use it as a vehicle for something meaningful.” A bless their hearts if ever there was one.

Scoop: Behind the House’s vote on criminalizing gender-affirming care. Four Republicans — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Mike Kennedy and Gabe Evans — voted this week against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill. Among the Democratic lobbying team: Congress’ only transgender member, Rep. Sarah McBride, NOTUS’ Oriana González reports.

BTW, a bit of a watch this space: Pennsylvania’s Fitzpatrick has become one of Democrats’ favorite lawmakers, Avani found. “He’s the guy on the other side of the aisle I work with most often,” Rep. Jared Golden said.

From HHS

Public health in MAHA’s image is becoming the normal course of business as RFK Jr.’s first year as HHS secretary comes to a close.

The U.S. is giving $1.6 million to a University of Southern Denmark research group with a profile in the anti-vax world for a controversial study on hepatitis B vaccines, NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports. The subjects are set to be infants in Guinea-Bissau. Kennedy’s vaccine advisory panel just rolled back longheld recommendations for infants to receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth.

Yesterday Kennedy also targeted gender-affirming care, formally proposing two rules that would deny Medicare and Medicaid funds to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors and ban Medicaid and CHIP reimbursement for that care.

Gender dysphoria would no longer be qualified as a disability by the Americans With Disabilities Act under another proposed change Kennedy announced. He said he had already signed a declaration that youth transgender care does not meet standards of care as defined by HHS. Margaret and Oriana report that gender-affirming care has the support of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society.

From the White House

Saying yes, while also Just Saying No: “I want to emphasize that the order I am about to sign is not the legalization, or it doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape or form, and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug — has nothing to do with it,” Trump said as he signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug (on par with heroin) to Schedule 3 (ketamine, some steroids and similar).

The move was heralded by the CBD industry and medical marijuana proponents. A study of rescheduling was launched by the Biden administration, Jasmine reports. But the reception of Trump’s move in Republican circles was mixed.

“I am against it,” Sen. Scott told reporters yesterday. “I think it’s a gateway drug.”

THE BIG ONE

Failed by economic impatience: Many, many, many things divide Trump 2.0 from the Biden administration, of course. But NOTUS’ Violet Jira and Jasmine report on the one thing that really links them: an inability to keep Americans focused on the promised future results of their economic policies.

“Everyone would love immediate gratification, but that’s just not how it works,” said a senior White House official. Trump’s White House that is. But it could have been an old Biden administration quote, right?

Electoral time still doesn’t work like economic time, despite Trump’s revolutionary approach to the job. “The long term in political sense is really the midterm elections next fall,” Trump 1.0 Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. “The real question is, will the sentiment turn around by then?”

The current turnaround plan includes rolling back some tariffs to reduce prices, issuing executive orders and endlessly touting the cost of anything that has fallen, Violet and Jasmine report. The White House is also banking on a Q1 where Americans enjoy a huge tax refund thanks to the president’s budget law.

But there’s also some annoyance from the administration with polling. There’s also confusion about why Americans feel poorly about the economy.

Now that does sound familiar! But don’t get too carried away with the comparisons, says one veteran of Joe Biden’s economic messaging effort. “Donald Trump promised to end inflation ‘immediately’ and to lower prices on Day 1, not at some abstract time after his first full year,” former Biden spox Andrew Bates told us. “He either can’t remember his No. 1 campaign promise or he was lying his ass off the whole time. Neither is a good excuse.”

NEW ON NOTUS

Rollins’ America First payday: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins got a $300,000 bonus from the MAGA think tank America First Policy Institute, where she worked right before taking her current government job. NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno reports on public filings that show her 2024 bonus was six times her bonus from AFPI the year before.

She is among a number of top administration officials who walked into their relatively low-paid government jobs with big stacks from MAGA-aligned nonprofits, Taylor reports.

More: Democrats Compare Trump’s New Youth Sports Event to ‘The Hunger Games,’ by Amelia Benavides-Colón

Trump Administration Urges White Men to File Discrimination Claims, by Torrie Herrington

Trump’s Energy Agenda Has Taken Over Congress’ Permitting Reform Ambitions, by Shifra Dayak

Sherrod Brown Aims to Shake Off Democrats’ Struggles in Ohio, by Tyler Spence

NOTUS PERSPECTIVES

What is one Trump action that has received little to no attention yet will have long-term consequences?

A NOTUS forum featuring Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Muzaffar Chishti, Richard Epstein, Jonathan Friedman, Casey Mulligan, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Philippe Reines, Alex Vogel, Philip Wallach and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

NOT US

• DOJ vowed to punish those who disrupt Trump’s immigration crackdown. Dozens of cases have crumbled, by Michael Biesecker, Jaimie Ding, Christine Fernando, Claire Rush and Ryan J. Foley for The Associated Press
  
• ‘Execution was abysmal’: Trump economy speech doesn’t meet GOP hopes, by Eli Stokols for Politico
  
• How a top-tier surrogacy agency became an FBI target, by Kenzi Abou-Sabe, Alexandra Chaidez, Liz Kreutz and Andrew Blankstein for NBC News

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