Today’s notice: House members put on their comfy home shoes. The White House has no such luck. How Trump cleared the field in Michigan’s Senate race. The next step in the fluoride fight. Checking ICE’s math (and finding it lacking).
THE LATEST
It’s giving out-of-office autoreply: NOTUS’ Hill team clocked Rep. Pat Fallon as he walked into a men’s room in a suit during the final House vote Wednesday — and walked out in a golf polo and jeans, carrying said suit.
Lawmakers jetted out of the House (some literally with suitcases in hand), leaving their friends in the White House to handle a growing list of things not going as planned:
Epstein page not turned: A subject-change press conference from the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was very thorough, but it was also immediately drowned out by multiple outlets reporting that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Donald Trump he was mentioned in Justice Department Epstein documents. She delivered the bad news in May, shortly before the announcement that no more documents would be released.
The White House did not deny that Trump’s name was in the files, or in the binders Bondi distributed to influencers. “The president never did anything wrong,” an official told Jasmine, “and the liberal media and the Democrats are continuing to concoct false stories.”
There’s more. A federal judge in Florida declined to release Epstein case grand-jury transcripts requested by Bondi’s team. Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, issued a subpoena for Ghislaine Maxwell to be deposed in prison on Aug. 11. And NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz detailed how Democrats finally got an Epstein document subpoena approved by a House Oversight subcommittee (the House left a day early in part because GOP leadership was trying to kill several similar motions).
About that: “It is just sort of trying to let the air out of the balloon on the Epstein issue,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s been leading an effort to force a vote for the release of documents. “That’s why they’re sending us home.”
Open Tabs: Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional (AP); Judge Clears Way for Abrego Garcia’s Release (NOTUS); Hegseth Signal messages came from classified email, watchdog told (WaPo); RFK Jr. recommends removing thimerosal from flu vaccines (The Hill); Columbia Inks $200M Settlement With Trump Admin (NOTUS)
From the White House
Trump takes a field trip: The White House announced late last night that the president would be visiting the Federal Reserve today — joining a previously scheduled tour with administration officials who have accused the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, of mismanaging the central bank’s building renovations.
Speaking of Trump’s feuds: Jasmine asked Karoline Leavitt if Trump supports government contracts with Elon Musk’s company xAI.
“I don’t think so, no,” Leavitt said, adding that she’s going to ask Trump whether he wants agencies to cancel any such contracts. For context, the Pentagon last week announced one with xAI.
Trump has a lot of big plans for AI in general, as he detailed in a speech to tech execs in Washington yesterday. “The industry is a beautiful baby that’s born,” he said. “We need to grow that baby and let that baby thrive.”
From the campaign trail
The inside scoop on why Rep. Bill Huizenga won’t be running for Michigan’s open Senate seat in 2026: Trump directly asked Huizenga not to run for it, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports.
That’s good news for national Republicans, who have gotten in line behind Rep. Mike Rogers and want to avoid a messy and expensive showdown.
The bad news for national Republicans: The buzz around former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper jumping into the Senate race for the seat Sen. Thom Tillis is vacating is getting a lot louder. Axios reported that he’s going to announce as soon as Monday. Cooper’s team declined to confirm.
THE BIG ONE
A test of MAHA’s influence: Fluoride is officially under federal scrutiny.
“We’ve got to look at a risk-benefit analysis,” George Tidmarsh, newly installed this week as the FDA’s director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told NOTUS’ Margaret Manto of fluoride supplements. “And if there’s not, then, you know, we should probably act.”
What makes this a test? MAHA’s take on fluoride is still on the scientific fringe.
Three of the four dentists currently serving in Congress — all of them Republicans — told NOTUS that fluoride’s benefits are settled science. A federal rebuke of fluoride supplements would be a major shift in the public health system.
But MAHA has some political momentum. A growing number of cities and towns have removed fluoride from public water supplies in recent months. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have ordered the EPA to reevaluate fluoridation guidelines.
NEW ON NOTUS
ICE’s numbers don’t add up: “The numbers that ICE reported for some of these detention facilities were too low to be possible. An average at that point cannot drop that far, that quickly,” Adam Sawyer, a data researcher and former associate at Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, told NOTUS’ Emily Kennard and Nuha Dolby.
ICE did not comment on the apparent undercounting, but an aide for Sen. Gary Peters said the senator’s office was “looking into this.”
Trump’s FEMA isn’t making friends: “We didn’t receive a disaster declaration until last night. My constituents were frustrated by how long it takes,” Rep. Bob Onder, a Missouri Republican, told acting FEMA head David Richardson on Wednesday about the federal response to storms from Memorial Day weekend.
Richardson testified Wednesday that more funding opportunities were being released “as we speak,” NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports. He did not specify which ones.
Florida’s emergency powers test: Gov. Ron DeSantis set up “Alligator Alcatraz” under an emergency declaration he made in January 2023 on immigration, which he’s extended 16 times since. DeSantis’ unilateral push has upended politics around the Everglades as Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has tried to keep some influence over land the county officially owns, NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery reports.
More: Democrats Say Republicans Are Overreaching in Their Effort to Overturn a California Animal Welfare Law, by Nuha Dolby; One Lawmaker’s Quest to Make Congress a Little More Comfortable, by Tinashe Chingarande; Trump Announces Plan to Accelerate U.S. Artificial Intelligence Development, by Samuel Larreal; Democrats Vow to Redraw California’s Congressional Map in Retaliation for Texas, by Tinashe Chingarande
NOT US
FEMA moved quickly to help Texas. These other states waited months. By Brianna Sacks for The Washington Post
Democratic memo: The party’s redistricting problem goes much deeper, by Natalie Fertig for Politico
How Trump has shifted trade war psychology, by Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin for Axios
Democrats try to defuse shutdown bomb, by Burgess Everett for Semafor
BE SOCIAL
Hats off to whoever picked the sound for Mayor Adams turning on the big router — announcing a plan to provide free WiFi to Section 8 housing in the Bronx. pic.twitter.com/q2gfItJqcc
— Jeff Coltin (@JCColtin) July 23, 2025
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