MTG 2028?

Today’s notice: Don’t read this newsletter before flying. The world’s Strongest President vs. the laws of political physics. It’s not looking good for Trump’s tariffs. Plus: Democrats are… hopeful?

THE LATEST

Can MAGA power through this? Donald Trump responded to Tuesday’s election results by basically doing what he’s done all year: tell Republicans they must do exactly what he says, or they are doomed.

Trump is now saying Republicans are losing the shutdown. “I think if you read the polls, the shutdown was a big factor — a negative for the Republicans,” Trump told reporters after inviting GOP members to the White House for a post-election night breakfast. Trump’s agenda: make senators bend to his Kill The Filibuster plan.

The filibuster fight is “a test of whether [senators] care what the world looks like in just three years after he’s gone. They’ll be around, he won’t,” Republican strategist and Paul Ryan veteran Brendan Buck told us. “And you can’t go back once you walk into that cornfield.”

Trump won’t let this go. “He hates the filibuster. He thinks it’s undemocratic, it’s stopping him from getting what he wants. And it’s always been that way,” a former senior Trump administration official told Jasmine. However, “this is where I think the Republicans push back,” the former official said.

One big change, though. The White House’s “maximum pain” shutdown strategy of waiting for Democrats to break is sounding less likely to succeed after Tuesday night.

“That did not take rocket science to figure out who’s on the right side to lower health care costs,” Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, told NOTUS’ Hill team.

Open tabs: Judge scolds Comey prosecutors for ‘indict first and investigate second’ approach (WaPo); Heritage President Apologizes for Tucker Carlson Defense Video in Heated All-Hands Meeting (National Review); FDNY Commissioner resigns after Mamdani win (NY Daily News); Senators call out Pentagon policy office as ‘Pigpen-like mess’ (NY Post)

From the Hill campaign trail?

Whispering 2028 ambitions: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is telling people she wants to run for president, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman scooped. Four sources, including one whom Greene spoke to directly about her considerations, told him that the MAGA star has been confiding in colleagues about a 2028 run.

These conversations have centered around her beliefs that she is “real MAGA and that the others have strayed” and has “the national donor network to win the primary,” one source told Reese.

After publication, Greene texted NOTUS, saying she “saw you posted a baseless article.” NOTUS sent an inquiry to her communications director ahead of publication, but Greene asked why NOTUS had not reached out to a different person in her office.

From the shutdown

The air traffic controllers are not doing great. “Once it went past 30 days, I think everybody’s just fatigued over it, over all the talk and the waiting and not getting paid,” an air traffic controller assistant told NOTUS’ Torrence Banks.

Related: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced yesterday that the Federal Aviation Administration would throttle flight capacity by as much as 10% at 40 airports across the country due to workforce shortages.

From Miami

Trump seems pretty happy despite it all. Bad night, who cares was his vibe at a speech in Miami. The election on Trump’s mind? The one he won last year, NOTUS’ Mark Alfred reports.

“We’re gathered today on the one-year anniversary of the single most consequential election victory — they say, this is them, this isn’t me, I’m a very modest person — single most consequential election victory in American history,” Trump said at the American Business Forum in Miami.

From K Street

Exclusive: Former Rep. Brad Wenstrup is joining lobbying firm CGCN as a strategic partner, NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno reports. The all-Republican group has hired several high-profile veterans of the Trump White House, including most recently former White House spokesperson Harrison Fields.

CGCN’s federal lobbying revenue nearly doubled since the start of Trump’s second term. A managing partner, Sam Geduldig, told Taylor that the firm’s business model is to “not take on clients that are going to war with the Republican Party.”

THE BIG ONE

What’s next for Democrats? The party is doing something novel this week: being hopeful. But they wouldn’t be Democrats if they didn’t panic a bit about possibly being too hopeful? OMG: or not hopeful enough?? Complicating matters: Nobody can seem to agree on the takeaways from Tuesday’s elections.

Can they all be like Mamdani? The NYC mayor-elect exposed some uncomfortable truths about the Democratic coalition (the generational divide over Israel is a major one) but also popularized an organizing blueprint every kind of Democrat thinks they can use.

“No matter if you are a progressive or a moderate, the issue they all focused on was affordability,” Rep. Gil Cisneros, a member of the moderate New Democrats, told the NOTUS Hill Team.

Can they pretend Mamdani didn’t happen? “So they have a new mayor,” Sen. John Fetterman told the team. “That’s not a surprise. It doesn’t change my life.” Fetterman said the party’s future would remain “real, regular Democrats — that’s going to continue.”

Can’t the moderates just be allowed to enjoy something for once? “Mikie Sherrill won 62% of moderate voters in New Jersey. [Abigail] Spanberger won 69% of moderate voters in Virginia. Mamdani won 35% of moderate voters in New York City, and if you’re a presidential candidate, or a governor, or a senator who gets 35% of the moderate vote, you don’t win,” Jim Kessler of Third Way told NOTUS’ Raymond Fernández.

NEW ON NOTUS

Congress not so Golden: “I don’t fear losing. What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning,” Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat from Maine, said in his announcement that he would not run for reelection. He cited partisan gridlock and increased political violence.

SCOTUS is skeptical of Trump’s use of tariffs, NOTUS’ Violet Jira reports. “Congress, as a practical matter, can’t get this power back once it’s handed it over to the president. It’s a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said at one point in yesterday’s oral arguments.

U.S. Forest Service on the brink: Waves of budget cuts, layoffs and buyouts in the last year have decimated the agency, but the shutdown is testing its staff on a whole new level, NOTUS’ Helen Huiskies reports.

“People were already doing multiple jobs,” one former employee said. “People were already critically underpaid for the job they were doing. People were already being asked more than what people should be asked to do. And then when the Trump administration came in, it made everything look like, I don’t know, a tea party.”

More: Wild Affidavit Captures John Bolton Scrambling After Iranian Hackers Cracked His AOL Account, by Jose Pagliery

NOTUS PERSPECTIVES

What issue poses the biggest long-term threat to the unity of Trump’s MAGA movement?

A NOTUS forum featuring Matthew Continetti, Adrienne Elrod, Stephen Henriques, Brittany Martinez, Jennifer Mercieca, Reed Galen and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.

NOT US

• Inside the bumbling, dysfunctional tin-cup effort to defeat Prop 50, by Will McCarthy for Politico
  
• Burger King Braces for the Demise of the Penny, by Heather Haddon for The Wall Street Journal
  
• Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen Bet Big on Trump. It’s Paying Off for Silicon Valley. By Jake Pearson for ProPublica

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