Today’s notice: The questions voters in Indiana and Ohio can answer tonight. One billion dollars for Trump’s ballroom — with a catch. RFK Jr. vs. antidepressants. Democrats try again to craft a unifying populist message. An interview with the president of the Human Rights Campaign. And: Exclusive reporting on a union spending scandal.

THE LATEST

Today will be a turning point in the election cycle. By tomorrow, we’ll know a lot about what comes next.

First up: Voters in Indiana will show how capable MAGA is at exacting revenge against its Republican enemies.

The question for Hoosier State Republicans is a simple one: Should you throw out veteran state lawmakers because they refused to go along with Donald Trump’s redistricting request last year? NOTUS’ Christa Dutton recently spent time in Indiana talking to Republicans about that.

One of the Trump-backed challengers, Bluffton City Council member Blake Fiechter, told her he’s basically been a face for someone else’s campaign. “They are doing their messaging based on probably things that they are seeing, or they know that I probably have no clue about,” he said of the advertising campaign on his behalf from Trump-aligned groups.

Second: There’s not a lot of drama expected in Ohio tonight, but the end of the primary means the official start of a huge test for Democrats. Can former Sen. Sherrod Brown reclaim a seat in the upper chamber? Perhaps no race in 2026 will better measure how the political environment has shifted from 2024, NOTUS’ Alex Roarty notes.

Some Buckeye State races to watch: The fight to face off against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in the 9th Congressional District has gotten attention thanks to a Republican primary bid from the former No. 2 at ICE, Madison Sheahan. The primary will be a telling vibe check for the popularity of a Trump-associated Republican in a swing district, NOTUS’ Tyler Spence writes. Sheahan is one of three Republicans in her primary who raised over $450K in the first quarter.

Republicans will also pick their nominee to challenge Ohio Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner in the fall. She’s currently the only Democrat elected to a statewide office in Ohio and the lone Democrat on a 6-1 court.

Open tabs: Inside Palm Beach County’s newly signed Trump trademark deal for airport renaming (Miami Herald); White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released (NYT); Alberta separatist group says it has enough signatures to trigger referendum vote on leaving Canada (Politico); AP, Washington Post, Reuters and Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work (AP)

From the Hill

Republicans want $1 billion for Trump’s White House ballroom — but only for “security adjustments and upgrades.” NOTUS’ Igor Bobic points out that the latest version of Republicans’ reconciliation bill includes the allocation, and there’s a subtle nod to the awkward politics of the project (public polling continues to find that Americans are generally against the ballroom, and certainly against paying for it). The draft text specifically states that none of the allocated funds can be used “for non-security elements of the East Wing Modernization Project.”

Where’s the PEPFAR data? The top Democrats on both chambers’ foreign relations committees are accusing the State Department of withholding most of its fiscal year 2025 data for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The decades-old program was scrambled last year when the Trump administration implemented a broad freeze on foreign-aid programs.

“This failure to maintain accurate data was entirely avoidable,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and her House counterpart, Rep. Gregory Meeks, wrote in a letter obtained yesterday by NOTUS’ Joe Gould.

From HHS

Put away the prescription pad: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new campaign to encourage clinicians to “de-prescribe” Medicare patients from antidepressants. It will include an initiative training doctors on how to “taper” patients off the drugs slowly and prescribe “non-pharmacological” services such as therapy, NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports.

THE BIG ONE

Is populism actually really simple? MAGA has been able to change a lot about the GOP, but the movement has struggled to convince traditional Republicans to embrace different ideas on economics. Democrats have also had their own struggles incorporating the populist energy unleashed by Sen. Bernie Sanders — but Rep. Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, suggested to NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz that everyone is overthinking it.

“We need to fight to lower the cost of living for everyday Americans if we want to become the party of working-class Americans again,” he said. He’s touting a “new affordability agenda” he says puts this ideal into action.

What’s on the list: proposals targeting utility companies, pharmaceutical giants and surveillance pricing, as well as others addressing the cost of child care and oil-industry profiteering. There are also efforts to reign in corporate political power with new regulations on super PACs.

What’s not on the list: culture wars. Casar’s approach is don’t let the other side distract you. “[Trump] was targeting the wrong villains,” he told Daniella. “Democrats, I think, need to not be the party of the status quo and target the right villains, the people that are actually jacking up your utility costs.”

NOTUS INTERVIEW

The case for Democrats talking about the hard stuff: Human Rights Campaign, the pro-LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, is spending big money this cycle to convince Democrats that pursuing the organization’s goals fits right into a populist agenda.

HRC President Kelley Robinson spoke with us about the group’s theory of the case — namely, that Democrats walk away from this constituency at their peril. Robinson is touting polling from her group finding that 92% of self-identified LGBTQ+ voters said they will “definitely vote” in the midterms.

Democrats “understand two things. One, that they don’t get ahead by throwing any community under the bus, especially LGBTQ+ community and our trans community. And two, that we are a huge, powerful part of the electorate,” Robinson said. “More than half of our community donates to candidates. That’s huge compared to other communities.”

HRC points to election results last year, where Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum from Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani won despite opposition efforts to use trans issues to fracture their coalitions. Robinson said Democrats who were proactive and explained themselves disarmed Republican attacks.

NEW ON NOTUS

NOTUS uncovers a union scandal: A PAC affiliated with the Seafarers International Union has accused Chelsea Diab, the daughter of the union’s president, of engaging in “a multi-year effort of misappropriation of Committee funds to her personal bank account and uses and filing false reports with the Commission,” according to a letter it sent to the FEC on March 20 obtained by NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno. It remains unclear whether law enforcement is investigating the matter.

Diab, her father and the union’s secretary-treasurer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

More: Inspector General Says DHS Staff Risked Cyberattacks With Government Smartphones, by Jackie Llanos

NOTUS PERSPECTIVES

Soman Chainani is a YA author who has seen how alienated young Americans have become. He has a solution, which is also the subject of his new novel: End the requirement that presidents be at least 35.

NOT US

• Barack Obama Considers His Role in the Age of Trump, by Peter Slevin for The New Yorker
  
• Inside the Quiet Republican Effort to Flip Fetterman, by Jonathan Martin for Politico
  
• The Venture-Capital Populist: How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington, by George Packer for The Atlantic
  
• Why Almost Everyone Loses—Except a Few Sharks—on Prediction Markets, by Neil Mehta, Katherine Long and Caitlin Ostroff for The Wall Street Journal

Thank you for reading! If you liked this edition of the NOTUS newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was shared with you, please subscribe — it’s free! Have a tip? Email us at tips@notus.com. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts at newsletters@notus.com.