Today’s notice: What’s holding up reconciliation — and what’s curiously not. How to win on crypto: a debate. And the future for three Senate friends with rising stars.
Why Is Trump’s Campaign Promise Now a Whisper in the Reconciliation Fight?
Taxes on tips were, ever so briefly, a main storyline of the 2024 election. Now, weirdly, there’s not much debate about this issue that became shorthand for I care about hourly workers last year.
Donald Trump went to Las Vegas last June and declared his support for eliminating them. Now, Republicans have included the provision in their tax bill. You’d think this would be a Mission Accomplished-banner kind of messaging moment.
But House Republicans are fighting over how much to increase the state and local tax deduction, cutting Medicaid and much more in the reconciliation bill, while Democrats are hammering them over Medicaid, food benefits and tax rates. Sen. Ron Johnson, who supports no taxes on tips, told NOTUS the provision in the House bill is “not serious.”
In Nevada, the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 pored through the latest draft text of the reconciliation bill this week to see their decades-long dream realized, but they’re not satisfied either. In truth, there’s a lot to argue about on this topic and what it really means to champion the working class.
“It’s surprising,” Ted Pappageorge, the local’s secretary-treasurer, told NOTUS. “There’s an opportunity here, if we can get this done right, to get some relief for tip earners.”
Pappageorge said if what’s in the draft bill is what he can get, he’ll take it. But it’s not what he actually wants. There’s a chance, he said, for someone to stand up and fight over this relatively small thing and score huge points with an electorate everyone claims to care about. Except in Washington it’s not high on the list of talking points.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro and Samuel Larreal | Read more on this wrinkle in the reconciliation fight.
What’s a Deadline, Anyway?
Today is scheduled to be a really big day for the House’s version of the reconciliation bill. The Budget Committee is supposed to vote to move the bill forward, sending it along to Rules and then a floor vote soon after that. There’s just one problem. Well, actually, four, NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz, Reese Gorman and Katherine Swartz report.
As of Thursday, Reps. Chip Roy, Ralph Norman and (according to Norman) Andrew Clyde weren’t going to vote for the bill in committee. And a person close to Rep. Brandon Gill told NOTUS he won’t be there due to the birth of his son. Couple that with an all-but-guaranteed universal “no” from Democrats on the panel and the math to move this thing just is not there for supporters today.
The NOTUS Hill team has a lot of scoopy details on this key moment for the GOP trifecta. This line stood out: “Curiously, one emerging problem is over firearm suppressors.” Rounding up committee members is hard, but getting everyone to put everything in one bill is really hard.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro | Read the latest.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Here’s What Elon Musk Sees When He Opens X, by Stuart A. Thompson for The New York Times
- D.C. may have dodged deepest Medicaid cut. Officials are still worried. By Jenna Portnoy for The Washington Post
- The Biggest Revelations in the New Book on Joe Biden’s Troubling Decline, by Chas Danner for New York
Palpable Tension at SCOTUS
Thursday’s oral arguments on Trump’s executive action ending birthright citizenship were actually focused on the power of lower court judges to issue nationwide injunctions. NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery, reporting from inside the Supreme Court, witnessed a tense atmosphere. Justice Amy Coney Barrett “was the only jurist to openly ponder whether the Trump White House thinks it has the freedom to simply ignore court rulings,” Jose writes. Solicitor General D. John Sauer “left open the possibility.” Barrett responded: “Really?”
The justices’ views on the birthright citizenship order poked through, Jose reports. Justice Brett Kavanaugh “expressed shock that the administration has only given itself a 30-day grace period to create the rules” around the order, Jose writes.
Is Defunding Planned Parenthood a Red Line?
A provision stripping Planned Parenthood’s federal funding made it into the reconciliation bill text, and it’s putting a major question mark over moderate lawmakers’ vote. NOTUS was the first to reveal a closed-door meeting of House Republicans where several moderate members said they did not want the bill to include defunding Planned Parenthood. Now, NOTUS’ Oriana González reports that moderates in the Senate want it out, too. “I’m going to continue to be an advocate for the services that Planned Parenthood provides,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Oriana.
But she and Sen. Susan Collins, both of whom have voted against defunding Planned Parenthood in the past, say they need to see a final bill before taking a stance.
Read more on the Planned Parenthood fight.
Inside the Dems’ Crypto War
Do Democrats earn relevance by being a pro-crypto party or by questioning the legitimacy of crypto? The answer among Democrats at the moment is basically an NFT of the shruggie emoticon. NOTUS’ Claire Heddles reports that industry power players felt they had convinced enough Democrats to go along with them to get the GENIUS Act passed, but then Trump-fueled headlines cast crypto in a terrible light and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in the words of one Coinbase exec, “raised an anti-crypto army.” No one knows how this will shake out, but neither side of the intra-party argument is giving up yet.
FEMAuhh, Maybe We Should Talk About This?
Increasingly, Republicans are going public with their concerns about what the administration actually wants to do to FEMA. Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem reiterated Trump’s desire “to eliminate FEMA as it exists today” at a congressional hearing last week. In light of the administration’s skinny budget, which slashes $646 million from FEMA, Republicans are urging caution, NOTUS’ Calen Razor reports.
“We need to be careful about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Rep. Tom Cole, the top Republican appropriator in the House, told Calen. A key sticking point: A grant program called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities that the administration eliminated last month.
Read more on the fight over FEMA.
Senate ‘Brothers’
Sens. Chris Murphy, Cory Booker and Brian Schatz have developed a tight friendship over their years in the Senate. They’re also seeing their star power in the Democratic Party rise at the same time, NOTUS Ursula Perano points out. The trio’s lanes are distinct now, but the long term is hazier, Ursula writes, particularly with an open 2028 Democratic presidential primary on the horizon and eventual turnover in Senate Democratic Caucus leadership. “We’re three people that make a great trio, but we play different instruments,” Booker told Ursula.
Front Page
- Trump’s Middle East Trip Magnifies Business Conflict Concerns: The Trump Organization pledged not to do business with foreign governments. It’s happening anyway.
- They Led the Hunter Biden Investigation. They ‘Don’t See a Concern’ With Trump’s Qatar Gift: “Everything Trump has done has been transparent,” Oversight Chair James Comer told NOTUS.
- The Red Cross Is in the Crosshairs of Trump’s Foreign Aid Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross-run field hospital in Rafah, Gaza, is fighting to stay operational.
- House Republicans Want to Block States From Regulating AI: Congress hasn’t made progress on its own guardrails
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