Today’s notice: Waking the sleeping giant. Shutdown looking realer again. Empty Chamber? Plus: How Trump united the House GOP. (Spoiler: It was not with earmarks.)
Parents Can Get Mad at Anybody
The DOGEification of Washington is a huge deal, but even those opposed to it acknowledge it can be hard to rally voters around, say, cuts to government research grants.
Now DOGE is sinking its teeth into schools. That bite could end up being squarely on the hand that feeds.
“Look, I don’t think Americans, unfortunately, care about foreign aid,” said a senior Democratic official involved in high-level conversations about pushing back on the White House. But the official also noted: “I don’t think somebody who, say, is in Oklahoma and sends their kids to public school there appreciates that the services they’re getting in that school are tied to the Department of Education.”
These voters may be about to find that out, and such knowledge could scramble the political picture. Possible entitlement cuts have already created a stir, but schools have the potential to drown out even that. Anyone who remembers the intense politics around education during the pandemic years knows that few things tune in tuned-out Americans like what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms.
Republicans “will pay a price” if their education plans reach fruition, Sen. John Fetterman — who has not been shy to shout out MAGA moves he sees as smart politics — told NOTUS. Mucking around with education funding? “That’s a political loser,” Fetterman said
Early staffing cuts at the Department of Education are “predominantly hitting federal workers who oversee student financial aid and handle discrimination cases,” NOTUS’ Violet Jira reports. Other proposed moves and staffing shifts could further upturn the department’s work involving special education programs funded with federal dollars. The senior Democratic official pointed out that some of the types of families Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought into the MAGA tent rely on those kinds of programs.
“If you’re trying to maintain some semblance of a coalition, it just seems like alienating a bipartisan spectrum of parents who are pretty vocal and pretty loud is not exactly strategic,” the Democrat said. Expect some Education Funding 101 in future messaging from Trump’s opposition.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro and Violet Jira | Read Violet’s story.
Dems Shut Down the Shutdown-Stopping Bill
House Republicans forced Senate Democrats into a bind: accept the GOP funding bill or risk a government shutdown. Senate Democrats said they’re choosing the latter, sticking it to the House Republicans who dared them to oppose their bill and dramatically increasing the odds of a government shutdown in the process.
“Republicans do not have the votes,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday. “Our caucus is unified.” Plenty of Democrats echoed Schumer and assured reporters that, yes, their conference was unified on this. All but eight Democrats would need to vote against the bill for it to fail, with the task then being making the case to voters that an ensuing shutdown was not on them.
Instead, Senate Democrats are angling for a short-term continuing resolution to allow for negotiations to continue on the larger spending deal, NOTUS’ Ursula Perano, Riley Rogerson and Ben T.N. Mause report. Some Dems floated a 30-day CR — or in the case of Sen. John Hickenlooper, one that lasts just a week — to leave breathing room for negotiations on a larger package.
Front Page
- Republicans Have a Replacement in Mind for USAID: “This can be a real development tool,” Rep. Young Kim said.
- Gavin Newsom Finds Some Common Ground With Steve Bannon: The California governor talked about taxes with the MAGA figure on his podcast.
Remember the Chamber of Commerce?
“The Chamber isn’t in the conversation,” a source familiar with the House Ways and Means Committee’s effort to craft the GOP trifecta’s signature tax bill told NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno.
“Whoever said that might not be in the same rooms that we’re in,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer, retorted. But Taylor finds that the once-dominant lobbying group’s “influence has eroded in recent years alongside its relationship with traditional GOP allies.” So even as Republicans build a bill chock full of provisions Chamber members probably love, she reports that the organization is “in a tough spot to fight tariffs and push tax priorities.”
Esteemed Capitol Hill Whisperer, Donald J. Trump
NOTUS’ Reese Gorman got some inside scoop on how Speaker Mike Johnson pulled off a CR without Democratic votes. Sources told Reese that Johnson’s team began working with the White House on the funding measure in late January, and that Donald Trump and his team were behind the “anomalies” and $8 billion in spending reductions that made it into the final bill. Those provisions, coupled with Trump’s tactics of persuasion, were enough to convince the usual holdouts to vote for something they would have rejected under any other president.
“I would never support this language, but I do trust Donald Trump,” Rep. Eric Burlison said.
All Federal Budget Politics Is Local if You Live in D.C.
Mayor Muriel Bowser and other D.C. officials say the House spending bill would “effectively be a $1 billion cut to city operations” if it becomes law, NOTUS’ Emily Kennard reports. The city would have to revert to last year’s spending levels basically overnight, Emily found, which would immediately impact city services. Bowser “has said that among the hardest hit sectors could be public safety,” she writes.
“Get a new mayor, a new administration. Or maybe, Congress oughta just revoke home rule,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS.
DOGE Report: Firings at NIH’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety
One of the 20 people laid off told NOTUS’ Margaret Manto that the cuts mean “there are things that could go unnoticed” at the part of the National Institutes of Health that “stops pathogen ‘lab leaks’ from occurring.”
Earmarks Are Gone Again
The House-passed funding bill limits earmarks to 1% of discretionary spending, leading members to mourn their detailed district spending plans. “I’m disappointed, because I will defend every one of our community funding projects,” GOP Rep. Darin LaHood told NOTUS’ Katherine Swartz. He was looking for $72 million in federal money for his constituents.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Trump administration halts $1 billion program that keeps affordable housing livable by Jesse Bedayn for the Associated Press
- The America of the Gulf by Jesús Rodríguez for The Washington Post
- How Trump’s Return-to-Office Order Is Impacting the DC Real-Estate Scene by Kate Corliss for Washingtonian
Have a Tip? Email Us. Reach us at tips@notus.org. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter at newsletters@notus.org.
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!).