Today’s notice: What to expect (or not) in Alaska. California makes its move, and it’s very complicated. Trump’s D.C. takeover strikes a nerve. And: Trumponomics.
THE LATEST
Alaska summit: Donald Trump’s scheduled meeting today with Vladimir Putin comes with extremely high stakes and notably lower expectations.
“He’s a realist,” a White House official told Jasmine. “And I don’t think there are any pretenses here.”
“All I want to do is set the table for the next meeting,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. On Fox News Radio he said there’s a 25% chance the Alaska trip ends in failure — a far cry from his promise to end the war with Ukraine on Day 1 of his presidency.
The prep: The president has held regular national security meetings over the past month with a rotating cast of advisers including Marco Rubio and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg. The meetings have been described as free flowing, ranging from half an hour to two hours in length. Trump has met Putin in person six times total.
Some worry this strategy will backfire: “It’s a shoot-from-the-hip approach, which, in the case of Russia, but certainly even more broadly, is not one that will help us achieve U.S. interests,” Bridget Brink, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who left that job in the spring and is running for Congress as a Democrat, told NOTUS.
Open Tabs: ICE Adds Random Person to Manhunt Group Chat (404 Media); Bresnahan targeted with wedding harassment campaign (Washington Examiner); DOJ employee accused of throwing sandwich at federal agent fired (AP); Muriel Bowser Leaves D.C. (NOTUS)
From D.C.
So who’s in charge of the D.C. police? Residents got an answer of sorts last night when AG Pam Bondi placed the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department, using “emergency” powers to sideline the department’s current chief, Pamela Smith.
In a directive obtained by NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery, Bondi also cleared the way for city cops to participate in ICE raids, suspending several measures put in place under Smith prohibiting them from doing so.
“The proliferation of illegal aliens into our country during the prior administration, including into our nation’s capital, presents extreme public safety and national security risks to our country,” Bondi claimed in the memo.
Buckle up: The situation appears to be headed for a standoff in court.
“It is my opinion that the Bondi order is unlawful, and you are not obligated to follow it,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote in a letter to Smith late Thursday night.
“There is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official,” Mayor Muriel Bowser echoed in a post on X.
From the Hill
About that police checkpoint on 14th Street: “Donald Trump has turned Washington, D.C., into North Korea,” Rep. Eric Swalwell told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson after videos of law enforcement stopping cars in D.C. went viral Wednesday night.
Republicans do not see it that way. “I don’t know what’s really going on with the extent and the rationale behind it,” Rep. Andy Biggs told Riley, “but … already, people are telling me that they feel more safe and secure there than they’ve felt in years.”
In other Hill news, the drama over nominations looks far from over. The Republicans who were in town for the Senate’s pro forma sessions are talking rules changes, NOTUS’ Ursula Perano reports.
Sen. Bernie Moreno: “I think there’s a huge appetite for us to change the rules.”
Sen. Mike Rounds: “There have been some discussions about rule changes in terms of the time and the time delay between cloture and an actual vote. I think the possibility of eliminating a cloture is one item on it.”
From the states
Redistricting is a political fight now. The rhetorical fight is over. Democratic legislators who fled Texas are expected to return over the weekend, all but guaranteeing that the state’s partisan gerrymander goes through.
But will California’s? The legislators said a condition of their return was Democrats getting their revenge gerrymander plan in California going in earnest. Gavin Newsom kicked that off surrounded by members of his state’s sizable congressional delegation at a rally in Los Angeles yesterday.
The big bet: In theory, Newsom’s plan would make Texas’ new lines effectively moot. But while Texas is just a legislative vote away from redistricting, California has a whole rigmarole ahead of it. Newsom is asking voters to turn out for a special election in November to pass his Election Rigging Response Act, which has to be passed in the state Assembly by Aug. 22 first.
THE BIG ONE
Trumponomics has arrived: “American consumers should be prepared for sticker shock,” Cato Institute economist Scott Lincicome tells NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt about the Trump administration unilaterally ending the “de minimis” exception for small shipments from China that everyone knows about because of Shein but was designed by Congress for economic purposes.
Economists’ warnings: The producer price index rose last month at the fastest rate since 2022. Trump’s tariff program is partly to blame, economists say. They also say consumer price hikes usually follow a PPI hike.
The White House says no: “The doom-and-gloom predictions of President Trump’s tariffs ratcheting up inflation continue to be proven flat-out wrong,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told us in a statement.
Biden alums are watching closely. “There’s no coherent story of the economy that the White House can pull out of the data, so they’re kind of spinning it in every direction depending on the [report],” former Biden economic development adviser Alex Jacquez told us. Either the White House is “consistently misinterpreting economic data or willfully lying about it,” he said.
A constant from Trump 2.0: Since before “Liberation Day” in April we have been asking, what is Trump’s plan when prices go up? The answer from White House officials has been: Prices are not going to go up. They said it then, they said it last week, they said it yesterday.
So, what happens when prices go up? It might be helpful to remember what happened to Bidenomics when they did.
NEW ON NOTUS
Anti-vax groups get a win: HHS is bringing back the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, set to be chaired by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, to “produce regular recommendations focused on the development, promotion, and refinement of childhood vaccines that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions,” the department said Thursday. The move fulfills the demands of an anti-vaccine organization Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once chaired.
DOT mass dismissal: Sean Duffy has cleared out his agency’s more than two dozen advisory committees, vowing to reconstitute them with new people. The committees were either ineffective or “overrun with individuals whose sole focus is their radical DEI and climate agenda,” a DOT spox told NOTUS.
NOT US
- Meet the Lobbyist Fighting Against “Perfectly Legal” Corruption in DC, by Dave Levinthal for Washingtonian
- Billy Long’s Quick Fall at the I.R.S., by Andrew Duehren and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times
- Trump’s answer to numbers he doesn’t like: Change them or throw them away, by Cat Zakrzewski, David Ovalle, Scott Dance and Laura Meckler for The Washington Post
- Blue States Hunt for Ways to Wring More Taxes From the Wealthy, by Juliet Chung for The Wall Street Journal
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