Today’s notice: Todd Blanche’s audition. Gridlock in the House. Exclusive reporting on a populist Democrat declaring victory in Maine and the research suggesting other Democrats might want to follow his lead. Another exclusive on a potential GAO investigation into FEMA. Plus: The next Supreme Court precedent immigration hawks want overturned.

THE LATEST

Indicted (again): Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been active, to say the least, since the ouster of his former boss Pam Bondi. In the first 26 days, the DOJ under its new leader has reinstated firing squads, conducted a massive FBI raid on businesses in Minnesota suspected of fraud and indicted a close aide to Trump boogeyman Anthony Fauci.

And for the DOJ’s most aggressive and Trump-pleasing effort, Blanche via a federal prosecutor secured a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey over his now-deleted “86 47” Instagram post, where the numbers were spelled out of seashells.

For now, the acting attorney general is on a “trial run,” according to two sources familiar with discussions who spoke with NOTUS’ Al Weaver, Jasmine and Jose Pagliery.

And it’s days like yesterday that make it seem like it’s going well. “I’ve heard the job is [Blanche’s] and he’s doing all the right things to get it,” one Republican strategist close to the White House told NOTUS, recounting recent conversations with senior administration officials.

Donald Trump has vowed for years to exact revenge against his sworn political enemies. But the DOJ under Bondi didn’t indict many of those he publicly threatened, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff.

The next big fish? It might just be former CIA Director John Brennan. Multiple DOJ sources told NOTUS that the possible indictment of Brennan is considered Blanche’s true “audition” for the role.

Open tabs: US spy agencies examine how Iran would react to Trump declaring victory (Reuters); Beneath King Charles’s Jokes and Decorum, Some Subtle Rebuttals to Trump (NYT); Judge dismisses DOJ lawsuit against Arizona seeking voter data (NBC); Florida Republican announces he will retire from House after term ends (The Hill)

From the Hill

Well, this is going well. “It’s a shit show,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy said yesterday, summing up the current situation in the House.

House Republican leadership canceled votes once again last night amid extreme pushback from conference members regarding language in a trio of measures: the annual farm bill, an extension for a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a reconciliation bill that would fund ICE and CBP.

What’s next: More of the same. Speaker Mike Johnson faces an uphill battle today as he attempts to clear a procedural hurdle for all of the measures at once.

What’s holding up the farm bill? A small number of House Republicans are pressuring their conference to buck its traditional alliances with the powerful agriculture industry and embrace skepticism toward pesticide producers, NOTUS’ Paige Winfield Cunningham and Tyler Spence report. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace and Roy were among those calling for amendments to the farm bill that would strip legal protections from companies like Bayer.

This is one MAHA fight Democrats are happy to embrace. Sen. Cory Booker appeared at a MAHA rally Monday outside the Capitol hosted by allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Plus: Is Congress ready to flex its war powers? “If there are military hostilities beyond the 60 days, Congress has to authorize them, or Congress can block them, but Congress has to act,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins said yesterday as the deadline set for congressional authorization of ongoing military action under the War Powers Act of 1973 approaches. Sixty days from the start of the war with Iran would be Friday.

NOTUS’ Joe Gould, Avani Kalra and Hamed Ahmadi report on the group of Republicans growing more vocal as the date approaches. But others in the conference read the 1973 law as giving the president the power to ask for a 30-day extension on the deadline, as long as it’s used to wind the conflict down. Regardless, most Republicans agree the law forces Trump to engage with the legislative branch this week.

From the campaign trail

First on NOTUS: Graham Platner says the primary is over — and he’s not alone. The Democratic Senate primary in Maine is on June 9, but aides to the country’s most famous oyster farmer say they’re moving on from it, starting today. “The general election has effectively begun,” reads a memo to donors obtained by NOTUS’ Alex Roarty. Alex has already written about the failure of Gov. Janet Mills’ establishment-backed campaign to make a dent in Platner’s huge lead in public polling, and our Hill team found this week that Democratic lawmakers generally agree with the Platner camp’s theory of the case.

“We should be focused on beating Susan Collins, not on beating up other Democrats. It’s time,” one Democratic senator said.

Mills’ team responds: “Republicans are eager to exploit Platner’s long, long list of vulnerabilities,” a spokesperson said. She’s staying in for the time being.

Exclusive: Democrats urged to be more populist on economics. The bad news for the opposition party from a large-scale message-testing project in the Sunbelt from progressive group Way to Win: “No question that Democrats need to separate from the party brand. It’s as toxic as it’s ever been,” pollster Luke Martin told NOTUS’ Elena Schneider, who obtained results from the research.

The good news is that Way to Win says it knows how candidates can make that brand separation. In the research, “requir[ing] big corporations to pay what they owe in taxes” performed better by double digits with unmotivated Democratic voters, battleground district voters and voters who dislike both parties than messages like cutting “middle-class taxes,” Elena writes. It also outperformed typical Republican populist messaging like “stop[ping] immigrants from taking American jobs.”

THE BIG ONE

The nationwide push to kick undocumented kids out of public schools: It’s a once-fringe idea that has picked up steam thanks to Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration, NOTUS’ Adora Brown reports.

States to watch: Texas is the main player, but Tennessee Republicans have introduced bills and Oklahoma’s viral former state superintendent, Ryan Walters, tried and failed to convince the state Legislature to take it up.

What’s standing in their way: Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruling where justices found having a generation of immigrant children who were uneducated would be a greater burden on the country than the price of having them in school.

What Republicans say about that: “That was the ruling back in ’82 but things have changed a little bit since then, haven’t they?” said Rep. Jim Jordan.

ON NOTUS PODCAST

From your favorite podcast app: Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee known for his one-liners and for building skateboards, talked to On NOTUS host Reese Gorman about why he thinks the public should “100%” be able to see the evidence he’s seen that aliens exist. “A lot of members of Congress make fun of me, but they need to come down in the SCIF, and I was just yesterday in one. There’s some pretty miraculous stuff. It’s not about little green men. It’s not about flying saucers. It’s, what are we spending tens of millions of dollars on, and why are departments telling us they don’t exist yet?”

NEW ON NOTUS

First on NOTUS: Statutory rules dating back to Hurricane Katrina keep FEMA independent inside DHS to ensure the agency is fully focused on disaster response. But Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton, the ranking member of the panel that oversees FEMA, tells NOTUS’ Anna Kramer he’s skeptical that independence has been respected during Trump’s second term. Today, he’s calling on the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the Trump administration is violating the law by diverting people and funds from FEMA toward immigration enforcement.

The GAO can take requests to open investigations from any member of Congress, Anna writes, but the agency prioritizes requests from chairs and ranking members.

More: Trump Administration Orders Stricter Screenings for Immigration Applicants, by Torrie Herrington

NOT US

• Why it’s still JD Vance, by Ben Smith for Semafor
  
• How Bernie Sanders convinced Democrats to oppose arming Israel, by Calen Razor for Politico
  
• How Do You Beat a Central Valley Republican? By Emma Janssen for The American Prospect
  
• ‘Disappointed,’ ‘Surprised,’ ‘Betrayed’: 12 Trump Voters on What Has Gone Wrong, by Katherine Miller, Margie Omero and Adrian J. Rivera for The New York Times

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