Now for the Actual Hard Part

Today’s notice: Being Mike Johnson. The trade war with China. Not traveling to Europe.

One Man’s Congress…

The holdouts folded fairly quickly on Thursday and the House passed a Senate budget framework, setting the stage for Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill. There’s a long way to go before the First Sharpie signs anything into law, but yesterday marked a significant step toward the kind of unified, generational Republican policy win many thought was simply not possible when the year started, given the tiny House majority and disparate demands of the conference factions.

This raises an obvious question: why is it possible?

NOTUS’ Reese Gorman, Daniella Diaz, Riley Rogerson and Katherine Swartz report that it’s due to one man: Trump.

Speaker Mike Johnson has had to call on Trump to smooth over House divisions four times this Congress, and now there’s lots of frustration among House lawmakers that Johnson can’t control his members “without significant investment and capital from the White House,” the NOTUS Hill team wrote.

Johnson took a real beating from Republicans as they ran for the exits Thursday after casting their votes for the Senate bill.

“I want the president to be as successful as he possibly can be, and I want to see his agenda get through,” Rep. Max Miller said. “I think the biggest detriment to his agenda is Speaker Mike Johnson.”

The investment from the White House to settle this week’s GOP legislative squabble was substantial, the team reports. Trump made calls when Johnson asked. Russell Vought and James Braid, the president’s well-respected Congress whisperer, also got on the horn to calm nerves.

Some of the rift was based in actual policy: Conservatives are nervous a reconciliation bill will not cut enough and moderates are nervous it cuts too much.

But some of it, apparently, is personal with Johnson. To wit, Rep. Elise Stefanik was afraid Johnson was about to renege on some promises he made to her, the Hill team reports, so she signaled she would simply not vote for the budget rule when it was time. And so, it was the White House that convinced Stefanik to vote — and to vote yes — allowing the process to move forward.

“House Republicans absolutely love and respect the president, but they fucking hate and have no respect for the speaker,” a GOP member told NOTUS.

And this is in a story about a day the GOP won.

Read the story.

…Can Also Be Another Man’s Congress

For its part, Team Johnson is feeling pretty great. Like “post a picture of your boss with glowing eyes over a playlist full of ‘All I Do Is Win’” great. And why shouldn’t they? They passed a budget and it’s the opposition that’s falling apart. (Democrats are still beating up on each other over that recent shutdown fight.)

But in two weeks, after Congress returns from recess, we will see some real splits in the congressional GOP, and this one is the big one: Republicans want to get reconciliation done by July, which is not a lot of time to solve the intraparty squabbles but quite a lot of time for them to loudly play out in front of reporters.

“This is going to be hard,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, with potentially the understatement of the year, told NOTUS’ Ursula Perano. Enter the dun-dun-duuun music: There’s also the matter of the Senate parliamentarian.

Which brings us back to the speaker. The way things have worked under Trump is parliamentary in a way, with the party leader setting the agenda and the rank and file (for the most part) going along.

The current speakership should maybe be viewed through that lens. The job is to bring a majority of those independent operators together, using the powers of legislative persuasion that, if wielded correctly, seal a speaker’s legacy as legendary. This speaker’s superpower, so far, is to channel someone else’s.

“Mike Johnson is the speaker of the House as long as Trump wants Mike Johnson to be speaker of the House,” Rep. Thomas Massie, no fan of the guy, told NOTUS. “Within 12 hours of Trump waking up and deciding Mike Johnson is not speaking the house, Mike Johnson will be out of that office.”

—Evan McMorris-Santoro and Shifra Dayak | Read Ursula’s story.

Front Page

• Democrats Accuse Trump and His Allies of Profiting Off of Tariff Flip: The White House dismissed Democrats’ call for an investigation as “partisan games.”
• Mahmoud Khalil’s Lawyers Want to Depose Marco Rubio in Immigration Court: The secretary of state argued via memo that he can “personally determine” whether legal permanent residents can be deported for their speech.
• Supreme Court Tells Trump Administration it Must ‘Facilitate’ Return of Man Mistakenly Deported: Kilmar Armando Abrego García, a Maryland resident, was deported to El Salvador last month.

No Woes Over China

An escalation of the United States’ trade war with China is looming after Trump’s announcement that tariffs on Chinese imports would now sit at 125% — but that isn’t fazing the Republicans who’ve spent this week applauding Trump’s every move on tariffs, NOTUS’ Torrence Banks and Shifra Dayak report.

A walk around the halls of Congress on Thursday revealed plenty of lawmakers who admitted — in the words of Rep. Burgess Owens — that yes, prices for American consumers could “temporarily go up,” but “we’re gonna win.”

Read the story.

Coalition of the Unwilling to Travel

The “Coalition of the Willing” met yesterday in Europe to discuss further support for the embattled Ukraine. The group, hosted by the U.K. and France, consists of more than 30 countries. But no senior American officials, including Pete Hegseth, travelled to appear in person, NOTUS’ John T. Seward reports, though a Pentagon official told John that Hegseth “may participate virtually.”

The U.S. no-shows did not sit well with some Republicans who still want to support Ukraine in Congress. “I think it’s ill-advised,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told John.

Read the story.

Saying Goodbye to Feedback (and Low Water Pressure)

The Trump administration wants to prevent the public from giving input on government rules, and he’s kicking off this change with… drumroll, please: showerheads.

The president issued an order this week loosening water flow restrictions, and notably, decided the change didn’t need to go through the typical notice-and-comment process that allows Americans to provide feedback on regulations. (Trump also took a shot at showerheads during his first administration, but he did allow for notice and comment that time). This is part of a larger effort by the administration to speed up deregulation, NOTUS’ Claire Heddles and Anna Kramer report.

There are a few loopholes that could allow the administration to largely scrap notice-and-comment procedures, and Trump is testing to see how the courts respond. Legal scholars told Claire and Anna that courts have only allowed federal agencies and administrations to skip notice and comment in a slim number of cases.

Read the story.

Not Us

We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.

• What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine by Tom Bartlett for The Atlantic
• Knoxville’s ICE office no longer taking check-in appointments. ICE won’t say why by Tyler Whetstone for Knoxville News Sentinel
• Exclusive: Greenland ‘Freedom City’? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up north by Rachael Levy and Alexandra Ulmer for Reuters

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