Deadline Day

Today’s notice: What to think about as Trump’s latest Iran deadline approaches. First look at new Maine primary numbers. The changing world of the congressional appropriator. An update from the Bureau of Prisons. DHS’s new plan to squeeze Democratic cities. And: An update on our investigation into corporate donations and presidential libraries.

THE LATEST

Danger zone: By this time tomorrow, the world will know if Donald Trump’s latest deadline gambit with the Iranian regime worked — or led him to order American forces to openly attack civilian infrastructure.

There are a lot of unknowns here, but analysts broadly agree that Iran is unlikely to back down under pressure. They think Tehran will instead try to inflict economic and political pain in response to the threat of bombing, NOTUS’ Joe Gould, Anna Kramer and Hamed Ahmadi report.

In other words, today is probably not the beginning of the end of this war. At his press conference yesterday, Trump said “I can’t tell” when asked whether the war was heating up or winding down. But if the president orders strikes of the magnitude he’s been discussing, there’s little doubt among experts that things will heat up.

“The military answer is they can’t hurt us very much,” Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. But there is more to this fight than military force. “Politically, individual losses get portrayed as a military stalemate, and so they have much more effect than they do from a military perspective,” he said.

Trump’s proposed strikes would disrupt global energy markets, potentially for years, by destroying Iranian oil infrastructure and inspiring retaliatory strikes on similar sites across the region. Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said that if struck, Iran would likely empower its proxies, including Yemen’s Houthis, to create economic chaos.

“That increases the danger and the contagion to the global economy pretty substantially, because you start having to price in much longer-term disruptions,” she said.

Public polling continues to find that many Americans have not been convinced this war is a good idea, despite weeks of effort by the White House. A new, escalated phase of the conflict carries political risk in an environment like that.

But it’s all speculation. This war started seemingly on a whim, and Trump has repeatedly and publicly reserved the right to end it that way, too.

Open tabs: Republicans Unveil a $342 Million Battle Plan to Keep the Senate (NYT); Second staffer says Rep. Tony Gonzales sent her sexually explicit text messages (NBC); Democratic Party faces its internal demons on US-Israel policy — again (Semafor); AP says it will offer buyouts as part of pivot away from newspaper-focused history (AP)

From the campaign trail

First on NOTUS: A look at the Senate primary in Maine after its negative turn. A new poll from an arm of the Graham Platner-backing Maine People’s Alliance suggests that the early results of Gov. Janet Mills’ scorched-earth messaging shift may not be what the Democratic establishment was hoping for.

Platner leads Mills 61% to 28% among likely voters in the survey, which was conducted in the days after the Mills campaign launched an ad campaign highlighting Platner’s past social media posts. He also does much better in a hypothetical matchup against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins — beating her 48% to 39%, while Collins leads Mills 45% to 42%.

From the Hill

The end of appropriations as we know it? There’s growing concern among Hill institutionalists that using reconciliation to force an end to the DHS funding fight will open up a real can of worms. The fear, NOTUS’ Al Weaver reports: Whenever one party holds full control of government, the all-powerful Appropriations committees will be sidelined.

“We don’t have a choice,” Senate Republican appropriator John Hoeven said yesterday of the reconciliation plan, blaming Democrats for the ongoing DHS partial shutdown. But is he worried about the precedent? “Me, as an appropriator? Yeah,” he said.

From the DOJ

Backward steps at the Bureau of Prisons: Since the landmark First Step Act was signed in Trump’s first term, more federal inmates are supposed to be moved out and into reentry programs like halfway houses near the end of their sentences. The idea was supported by fiscal hawks, who liked the potential savings, and criminal-justice reformers, who say it reduces recidivism. But years later, neither group is actually getting what it wanted, NOTUS’ Tyler Spence reports.

An investigation by the GAO found that federal prison officials are unable to properly track time earned by inmates toward serving portions of their sentences in home confinement or halfway houses, and they don’t know how many individuals currently in prison could legally have already been moved. The lack of urgency has cost taxpayers millions of dollars in penalty payments to reentry program providers, and some inmates are delayed so long that they miss the opportunity to take advantage of these programs at all.

What comes next: The bureaucratic failings at the BOP have drawn the ire of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, a First Step co-sponsor. He said there could be “thousands of people still in prison who shouldn’t be there” and he wants answers.

The BOP says staffing issues have been the problem and are being addressed. The bureau “has made significant progress in improving the accuracy and timeliness of time credit calculations,” a spox told Tyler.

From K Street

NOTUS follow-up: Fidelity and Liberty Mutual have quietly disclosed thousands in donations to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum between 2022 and 2025 after NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal asked about them.

NEW ON NOTUS

Squeezing sanctuary cities: Trump’s newly minted DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said yesterday on Fox News that he was taking “a hard look” at pulling customs officers from airports in so-called sanctuary cities, a move that would effectively cancel international flights to most of the country’s largest hubs.

“We need to focus on cities that want to work with us,” he told host Bret Baier. “We’re going to have to start prioritizing things at some point.”

More: Some Republicans Want to Reverse the GOP Cuts to Rural and Tribal Radio Stations, by Em Luetkemeyer

NOT US

• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? By Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker
  
• The Revenge Plot: Inside the battle at the Justice Department to get Trump what he wants, by Andrew Rice for New York
  
• The Unwritten Rules of Celebrity Podcasts, by Amy Kaufman for LA Material
  
• The man who watches Trump all day, every day, by George Grylls for The Times
  

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