Left Alone

Today’s notice: Confusion over how the war with Iran ends. Exclusive reporting on how the war began, leaving U.S. cadets caught unawares in a war zone. A scoop about major K Street drama. A senator from Michigan considers a 2028 bid. Plus: The latest from our Capitol Gains series.

THE LATEST

Hangover in need of a cure: As the adrenaline wears off following Donald Trump’s Tuesday countdown to “a whole civilization will die,” it remains unclear whether the U.S. and Iran will be able to come to a permanent truce — or whether they are even negotiating over the same document.

A lot of the president’s biggest fans aren’t happy. Emily took a scroll through the online MAGAverse and found it fractured and bitter over Trump’s shaky ceasefire agreement.

On one side: the interventionists, who think making any concessions to Iran would be a grave mistake.

• Mark Levin: “If they’ve been defeated then what’s all this bull? Plus, they’re trying to divide us and Israel, and us and the Arab states. We must not capitulate to this.”
  
• Lindsey Graham: “To those who say Iran needs to save face by having a small enrichment program, I’m not remotely interested in providing face-saving cover to a regime that murders its own people.”
  

The other side: A group we’re calling the Twenty-Fifthers (as in Amendment) — a growing list of MAGA voices who freaked out at Trump’s sabre-rattling and called for him to be either removed from office by his Cabinet or be stripped of the nuclear codes by the military. They want the war to end but see the ceasefire as a sham.

• Megyn Kelly: “Whatever happens with the resolution of this thing, Trump’s hemorrhaging support among the key constituencies that put him in office.”
  
• Marjorie Taylor Greene: “We need to burn the Republican Party to the ground.”
  
• Alex Jones: “I love the old Trump, but I’m just going to be honest, I hate this person. This is a disgusting husk of a former person.”
  

Is the split permanent? Even if the ceasefire holds, the Strait of Hormuz reopens and the global economy recovers quickly — and those are some big ifs — it’s not clear that these two coalitions are coming back together again.

The White House is promising negotiations starting Saturday in Pakistan and is urging patience. “This is a fragile truce,” Karoline Leavitt said yesterday. “It takes time sometimes for these ceasefires to be fully effectuated.”

NOTUS reveals new, previously unreported details about how the Trump administration failed to internally communicate its plans to bomb Iran, leaving vessels with U.S. maritime cadets on board stuck in the Persian Gulf, NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports with Jasmine and Joe Gould.

“Nobody told them. They were caught unawares,” one source close to the situation told NOTUS.

Five U.S.-flagged vessels, which work closely with the U.S. armed forces, were caught in the middle of the conflict without any indication from the Pentagon that they would soon be in danger. Neither the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy nor the Department of Transportation, which oversees the academy and partnered vessels, were notified. The Defense Department did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.

The cadets were evacuated about a month after the war started, sources told NOTUS.

“They literally do not think about the second-, third- or fourth-order implications,” a source said of Pentagon leadership. “This is the weirdest I have ever seen when it comes to a major operation like this.”

Open tabs: The White House Is Keeping Kristi Noem’s $70 Million Jet (WSJ); Red States Are Pausing Their Gas Taxes to Blunt the Impact of Trump’s Iran War (NOTUS); Iran demands crypto fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire (FT); GOP Megadonor Leonard Leo Is Bankrolling a Website on the Warpath Against Somalis (The Intercept)

From K Street

Exclusive: allegations of a “toxic” workplace at the Investment Company Institute, or ICI, a trade organization with a membership that includes many of the largest investment firms in America. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say he’s running it into the ground,” a source with direct knowledge of events inside ICI said of the powerful trade association’s CEO, Eric Pan. NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno spoke to many such sources and obtained letters sent to the board alleging a “toxic” work environment at ICI.

A February letter to the board from “stakeholders invested in the industry trade association” alleged that “staff across ICI report that [Pan] is arrogant, condescending, prone to lashing out, and routinely conducts combative interrogations of employees at all levels of the organizations.”

ICI’s response: “Attacks from anonymous sources on ICI management and our company culture are patently false and not supported by facts or any on the record sources. There is no basis for these spurious claims.”

From the campaign trail

Elissa Slotkin 2028? “After the midterms, if I truly felt like there weren’t other people who were ready to put in the work and be able to lead and win, then I might take a look at it,” the first-term Democratic senator from Michigan told NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz in Iowa (!) this week. Slotkin was in the state to host a focus group with swing voters as part of a tour stopping in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania (!!), Idaho and Kansas, sponsored by the moderate-boosting Majority Democrats PAC.

Her pitch: “People aren’t looking for radical things. They want a secure community, a secure border. They want to be able to have a good job and make money. They want health care that they can afford.” Her advice to her party: “Sometimes, Democrats have a million priorities, and therefore people don’t really know what we’ll go to the mats on, and I think that’s a real problem,” she told Daniella.

From the Hill

First on NOTUS: Democrats pressure the new DHS secretary. House Democrats want Markwayne Mullin to address the processing delays for immigrants renewing their deportation protections and work authorizations through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Nearly 90 lawmakers, spearheaded by Reps. Chuy García and Lou Correa, plan to send a letter to Mullin today demanding he spell out what steps the agency is taking to deal with the backlog, which Democrats say is causing people to wait more than six months to renew their DACA status. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of reviewing the applications, claims most cases are completed in three-and-a-half months.

NEW ON NOTUS

The many hotels of Congress: Trump is the most famous American politician with a hand in the hospitality business, but as Taylor and NOTUS’ Torrie Herrington report, he is by no means the only one. Several members of Congress or their families own a hotel, inn or other travel accommodation, such as Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds (he owns several) and Linda Schatz, the spouse of Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz. He represents Hawaii, but she owns a B&B in Vesuvius, Virginia. There’s also Republican Sen. Jim Justice, whose family owns The Greenbrier luxury resort.

Taylor and Torrie detail the properties and what they’re worth in the latest installment of Capitol Gains, NOTUS’ look at wealth in Congress.

More: Wisconsin City Passes America’s First Anti-Data Center Referendum, by Torrie Herrington

Reps. Ed Case and Rich McCormick Violated the STOCK Act, by Dave Levinthal

NOT US

• The Day Trump’s Iran Threat Gripped the World, by The Wall Street Journal
  
• Stung by Voters, Republican Legislators Move to Curb Citizen Initiatives, by Kate Zernike for The New York Times
  
• Colleges are trying to boost student voting. A Trump probe freezes data for that work, by Hansi Lo Wang for NPR
  
• Why the Vatican and the White House Are on the Outs, by Mattia Ferraresi for The Free Press

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