I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

Today’s notice: It’s been a quiet week in Congress, which is kinda wild if you think about it. The big-money lobbyists trying to #FreeBoosie. NOTUS investigates a convicted fundraiser with nine lives. Speaking of: The legend of the Capitol Hill ghost cat.

THE LATEST

‘Waiting for Godot’ is how Sen. Tim Kaine describes the government shutdown. NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson reports that no one wants to refer to the state of things as “Groundhog Day” anymore.

That’s because this shutdown feels different from other ones. Kaine says it’s an absurdist play, but the description Riley and the Hill team came up with after talking to multiple lawmakers is more like, It’s quiet, a little too quiet.

No late nights, no weekends, no urgency at all. “I think there is reason to believe that the annoyance of having to be in Washington over weekends has had an effect previously on getting people to reach an agreement,” political strategist Brendan Buck told the Hill team.

There’s not even pizza.

The big question: There is some nascent dealmaking going on, apparently — but can it bring about some urgency to this lazy river of a shutdown?

About that: “My heart says stay in the district and help constituents, my head says if we all were in D.C. our government would reopen sooner,” a Republican House member texted the Hill team yesterday. A growing number of Republicans appear eager for Mike Johnson to bring them back to Washington, the team reports.

“Wouldn’t that be a futile exercise?” is how Johnson responded yesterday to those calls.

Open tabs: Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases (The Atlantic); Justice Department investigating fraud allegations in BLM movement (AP); Maryland state senator charged with extortion in blackmail scheme (The Baltimore Banner); Prince Andrew to be stripped of titles and forced to leave Windsor home (The Guardian)

From the campaign trail

Comeback Jack? Dozens of federal Republican political committees — including the RNC, numerous congressional committees and campaign operations tied to Donald Trump — have together spent nearly $18 million with Better Mousetrap Digital, the new political consulting firm led by Jack Daly, who served time in prison last year after pleading guilty to defrauding thousands of political donors.

Many of those organizations tried to distance themselves from Daly’s firm when approached by NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal. “We were not aware of this, and will not use them moving forward,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s campaign committee said.

From the shutdown

DHS is posting through it — the shutdown, that is. The department has posted to X more than 200 times since the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, NOTUS’ Christa Dutton and Jackie Llanos report. It’s posted calls to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s shared photos of immigrants who the department says are living in the U.S. illegally. It scolds news outlets for their coverage of ICE and lawmakers for their comments.

Government social-media activity during the last shutdown looked very different. DHS posted fewer than 10 times to X, then Twitter, during the monthlong shutdown that began in December 2018.

DHS’s take: Social media use is “tied to DHS’s core mission of defending the homeland” and “enables the department to share real-time public safety alerts, maintain public trust critical for national security, and counter misinformation from media outlets.”

From the White House

Pardon me? The rapper Boosie Badazz, a “scam PAC” operator William Tierney and the former utilities executive Anne Pramaggiore are among the six previously unreported individuals paying lobbyists big money in pursuit of a presidential pardon, NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno and Jasmine found.

The firms in play: Crossroads Strategies, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl of JM Burkman & Associates and Checkmate Government Relations (which is helmed by Donald Trump Jr.’s friend Ches McDowell) are among the lobby groups participating in this pardon economy.

The White House knows there’s a growing pardoning ecosystem, a senior administration official told Jasmine. They say everyone is getting vetted thoroughly. Two sources said that Trump himself is not aware of this economy around his pardons.

A missed “liberation” day? One source told Jasmine that the White House was tentatively planning to unveil a slate of pardons near Fourth of July weekend with a “liberation” theme — but missed the day. Another source said the miss was because of Trump’s schedule.

THE BIG ONE

SNAP’s Doctor Frankenstein: Republicans’ rallying cry over SNAP benefits and the shutdown is actually an argument about reanimating a zombie program they have already chosen to scale back significantly.

Trump’s budget law changed SNAP work requirements, shifted cost burdens to the states and altered eligibility benefits to the tune of an estimated 3.2 million Americans losing access to the program, and millions more seeing their benefits reduced, according to a CBO analysis. Experts say even more people could be affected.

These changes won’t go into effect until after the 2026 midterms. “I think the idea was nobody was going to feel any pain before they had to go vote for someone,” one of those experts, Luke Shaefer, told us. He leads the interdisciplinary Poverty Solutions program at the University of Michigan and knows a lot about SNAP.

But what’s about to happen is objectively really bad. “What we’re talking about now is just mind-bogglingly stupid and catastrophic,” Shaefer said. Cutting off millions of people at a moment’s notice is clearly not an idea any lawmaker supports. So now, Republicans are rallying around the walking-dead version of SNAP.

Democrats are having a field day. After Rep. Lisa McClain said at a SNAP-themed shutdown press conference, “Let’s make sure we remind them who voted to keep food on the table and who voted to take food off the table,” the DCCC responded with a press release that literally said: “Good idea.”

NOTUS Perspectives

What is the biggest fix the U.S. needs when it comes to housing policy?

A NOTUS forum featuring Ingrid Gould Ellen, Rosanne Haggerty, Michael Lens, Rebecca Patterson, Jenny Schuetz, Ganesh Sitaraman, Neera Tanden, Sonja Trauss, Rep. Maxine Waters and Sen. Todd Young.

Explore NOTUS Perspectives.

NEW ON NOTUS

Dairy State redistricting: Some recent courthouse developments indicate that the gerrymandering fight in Wisconsin is far from over, NOTUS’ Jade Lozada reports. Liberal groups have found new ways to challenge congressional maps that the state Supreme Court appears open to considering — including a case requesting that the court appoint a three-judge panel to hear a gerrymandering case, and a new lawsuit that argues a novel anticompetitive gerrymandering claim.

The big question: Will those rulings come in time for 2026?

“Could they be? Yes. Will they be? That’s hard to say,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.

More: Hegseth Extends D.C. National Guard Deployment Through February, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

3-Star General on Pentagon’s Joint Staff Retires After Reported Clashes With Hegseth, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

NOT US

• How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled, by Jason Mast for STAT
  
• When This Reporter Comes Calling, the White House Insults Go Flying, by Erik Wemple for The New York Times
  
• Classified U.S. report finds backlog of hundreds of possible Israeli human rights violations, by John Hudson for The Washington Post

SPOOKY DOME

There are ghosts said to haunt the Capitol. We’re not just talking about the spirits of long-dead regular order or comity, either. NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer uncovered a few old tales, including the “Demon Cat” or “grimalkin.” It’s a catlike apparition that’s been said to appear before national tragedies and terrify observers as it grows to a tremendous size. Then, it pounces and screeches. The Washington Post reported on a sighting in 1898.

“Well, I wouldn’t count it out,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville said. “As old as this place is and as many places that they could hide, there’s probably a chance, if you believe in ghosts.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro said she has “no idea” if there are ghosts in the Capitol. “But what I’ve always thought about the Capitol, and particularly in the tunnels, is what a great place for a murder mystery.”

We say: Ignore the Demon Cat at your peril, lawmakers.

BE SOCIAL

Spooky season, indeed.

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