Congress’ War Moment?

Today’s notice: What will Congress do if the White House requests funds for the war with Iran? Massive turnout for Democrats continues. Blue states sue over climate policy. Is the truth out there a month after Trump said he’d release data on UFOs? And: The MAGA census makeover.

THE LATEST

Congress may finally be asked. It appears the White House wants Congress to weigh in on the war with Iran for the first time, to the tune of a $200 billion supplemental package to pay for ongoing combat operations.

What will Republicans do about this? The war is relatively popular with MAGA, according to recent public polling from Puck, even as the general public remains skeptical. But a majority party that had basically sat back and let Donald Trump do his war seemed caught off guard by the possibility of being a part of it, NOTUS’ Hamed Ahmadi reports.

“It was twice what I thought it was going to be,” Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said of the White House’s request. Hawkish Republicans seem ready to go, but plenty of GOP lawmakers have said they’d have questions before cutting a check.

Will Democrats fracture? The party has been remarkably unified since outrage over immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota pushed intraparty fights largely out of view. The lack of congressional involvement in the war so far has left that unity untested, though there were indications a couple weeks back that some Democrats might support a formal funding request.

The war story has changed since then. What was advertised as a “little excursion” now has rumors of additional deployments, including ground troops.

Will Democrats unite in opposition to more funding? “I think we will. We have to. This is a catastrophe,” Sen. Peter Welch told Emily. “If the president asks us for $200 billion, he’s got to make a decision, and that is: end the war or escalate. And it’s time to end the war.”

FWIW: Trump said yesterday, “I’m not putting troops anywhere.”

Open tabs: ICE officers are taking DNA samples from protesters they’ve arrested (NPR); Father of service member killed in Iran war said he never told Hegseth to ‘finish’ the job (NBC); White House eyes Friday rollout for AI framework (Axios); FBI Braces for Blowback in Joe Kent Investigation (NOTUS)

From the campaign trail

Democrats really, really want to vote: In Tuesday’s Illinois primaries, the Democratic Senate race saw a nearly 50% increase in participation compared to the last midterm election in 2022. The 8th Congressional District saw a 63% increase and the 9th District saw a 71% increase. While NOTUS’ Alex Roarty notes that comparisons between cycles aren’t perfect, after seeing huge turnout increases in races across the country, Democrats say something is clearly happening.

“I think there’s a strong likelihood of a rage turnout this year,” Democratic strategist Aviva Bowen, who worked on some House primaries in Illinois this cycle, said.

Democrats have their knives out for Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry. They say 2026 could provide the perfect opportunity to finally oust the Republican congressman and former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, who this cycle is running in a more competitive district thanks to redistricting. Democrats plan to nominate Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor who ran against Perry in 2024, NOTUS’ Avani Kalra reports.

“Perry has never been a top fundraiser,” Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Pennsylvania who is not working on Perry’s race, told Avani. “Stelson is kind of the hot candidate du jour again, having come so close last time. But she has to battle the sophomore slump that you find with candidates who run again.”

From the courts

Legal remedy: A group of blue states sued the Trump administration yesterday after it rolled back the Obama-era finding that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to public health. It’s just the latest in a slew of cases brought against the Environmental Protection Agency over the decision.

“Climate change is real, and it’s already affecting our residents and our economy,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who led the lawsuit, said in a statement. “When the federal government abandons the law and the science, everyday people suffer the consequences.”

From … out there

Remember Trump’s post promising to release the government’s files on alien life? That was a month ago now. Though the administration on Wednesday registered the domain “aliens.gov,” it’s unclear how much movement has been made.

“I’ve not heard any progress at all,” Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told Emily. He was one of several lawmakers who said they hadn’t heard anything since Trump’s social media post.

Rep. Eric Burlison, one of a few alien aficionados on the House Oversight Committee, said that he planned to “get a little bit more loud about it” if there’s no movement over the next few months.

“Stay tuned!” White House spox Anna Kelly wrote in response to questions about the administration’s progress, adding an alien emoji for effect.

THE BIG ONE

How will a MAGAfied U.S. census change how we understand America? There are legal fights to be had, but changes already in motion mean the 2030 census is poised to be very different from those that came before it, NOTUS’ Shifra Dayak reports.

Changes to field testing, reducing the number of locations that run test surveys and only offering those surveys in English likely mean worse undercounting of populations that struggle in census taking, experts say. Those include Native Americans, immigrants and “complex” households, which include college students and multigenerational families.

Being counted in the census means resources and political power. There are more than 300 federal government programs that rely at least partly on census data in deciding how to distribute money across the country and where and how to structure certain programs, Shifra writes.

The biggest change is the most controversial. The Trump administration does not want to count undocumented residents in the census, which would lead to huge reductions in federal resources sent to states with high populations of undocumented people. This debate will likely end in the courts.

NEW ON NOTUS

Education Department drawdown: The agency is working to offload its more than $1.7 million student-loan-debt portfolio to the Treasury, it announced yesterday. It’s the boldest step yet in Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s plan to dismantle the department, NOTUS’ Adora Brown reports.

NOT US

• How Will Lewis Lost the Washington Post, by Paul Farhi for Washingtonian
  
• ‘Go Big and Go Loud’: Inside the Justice Dept.’s Push to Prosecute Protesters, by Alan Feuer, Alexandra Berzon and Ernesto Londoño for The New York Times
  
• ICE has been deporting pregnant and postpartum immigrants. Now we know how many. By Shefali Luthra for The 19th
  
• Blinding headlights have become a scourge of the roads. What can be done? By Nate Rogers for New York

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.