Today’s notice: Democrats are begging their senators not to let September be a repeat of March. Epstein files!? Trump is alive, folks. And: An exclusive look at a new PhRMA ad buy.
THE LATEST
Under pressure: Democratic groups from all different ideological points of view are telling us the same thing: this upcoming spending fight cannot be anything like the last one, back in March.
The March continuing resolution led to a very bad headache for Chuck Schumer.
What interest groups want: A fight over health care. Indivisible told us this. Mainstream Democratic strategists told us this. “If there is indeed a shutdown, Democrats must make it over something that voters care deeply about, not the activists,” Third Way’s Jim Kessler said. “That’s health care.”
The poll Democrats are reading: Navigator Research data from August shared with NOTUS found that 48% of Americans would blame Trump and the GOP for a shutdown, while only 28% would blame Democrats.
What the base is gonna get: Still unclear. We talked to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who didn’t take a position on a shutdown but did note, “Remember: Who’s in control here? It’s not just Donald Trump. It’s the Republicans.”
Sen. Cory Booker: “I believe this is a time to draw a line and stand and fight.”
Schumer is in the middle, calling for bipartisanship on spending and reversing some of Trump’s actions.
“The majority could very easily undo what he does. They have the power to rein in his worst impulses,” he said on the Senate floor yesterday.
As for Republicans: “Appropriations is always a bipartisan endeavor. It should be,” Mike Johnson said. “But we’ve got to do it in a way that responsibly spends the taxpayers’ treasury, and Democrats have not had a long history of doing that. So if they’re reasonable and they want to come to the table, work together, we welcome them to do so.”
Open tabs: U.S. military strikes “drug vessel” from Venezuela (CBS); Republican Ashley Hinson announces run for U.S. Senate in Iowa (KCCI); Trump to move U.S. Space Command headquarters (WaPo); “The Grand Dame” is free (NBC)
From the Hill
Many Republicans now sound satisfied on Epstein: “I do know that what was released today is everything that the DOJ has, minus the victim information,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told reporters on the Hill last night after a trove of Epstein-related documents were released to House Oversight by the DOJ and posted online.
Reps. Ralph Norman and Tim Burchett, two conservative advocates for more disclosure, said those efforts were now “moot,” NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz report.
Not this one though: “This is stuff we already had, and then that will only incite people to be more upset that there’s no transparency,” Rep. Thomas Massie said while vowing to press forward with his discharge petition despite the stiff headwinds.
From the White House
“How did you find out… that you were dead?” was the question of the day at the White House, following 72 hours of social media hysteria that supposed an absent president meant a deceased president.
“No,” Trump said at first, before changing his tune. “You know, I have heard, it’s sort of crazy,” he said yesterday in the Oval Office. “Biden wouldn’t do (a press conference) for months. You wouldn’t see them. And nobody ever said there was anything wrong with him, and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape.”
In the dark: It seemed that the president wasn’t aware of the extent of how far the speculation went — how millions of social media accounts ran wild with rampant speculation about his age and health status. “I knew they were saying, like, ‘Is he OK? How is he feeling? What’s wrong?’ ... I had heard that, but I didn’t hear it to that extent,” Trump added.
From the courts
LA deployment smacked down: “These actions demonstrate that defendants knew that they were ordering troops to execute domestic law beyond their usual authority,” federal judge Charles Breyer wrote in a scathing (but expected) ruling on Trump’s activation of the National Guard in Los Angeles.
The view from the White House: “Once again, a rogue judge is trying to usurp the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to protect American cities from violence and destruction,” White House spox Anna Kelly told NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery.
This issue is likely Supreme Court bound. “I didn’t say when, but we’re going in,” Trump told reporters yesterday when asked about deploying troops to the streets of Chicago. More deployments will almost assuredly mean more court cases, especially after the LA ruling.
From the campaign trail
New Maine candidate alert: You’ve met the former Tune Inn bartender and oyster farmer. Now meet Dan Kleban, the owner of Maine Beer Company, who just announced his bid for the Democratic nomination for the seat currently held by Sen. Susan Collins.
The woman not currently running still looms large in this rapidly filling field. “If she decides to run, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Kleban told NOTUS’ Alex Roarty of Gov. Janet Mills.
NEW ON NOTUS
Weaponized FCC? “This is exactly why Congress established the FCC as an independent, stable, and expert-driven body whose decisions were meant to be beyond the reach of the current occupant of the White House,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic-appointed commissioner still on the Federal Communications Commission, told NOTUS’ Violet Jira for a story about how the agency is increasingly seen as an arm of Trump’s White House.
Reading the room: PhRMA clocked that Republicans were willing to touch Medicaid. It wants Congress to cut the 340B Drug Pricing Program next, launching a seven-figure ad campaign on it today — its largest on the issue yet.
“There were lots of conversations around Medicare and Medicaid, and there’s this flashing red light of a $66 billion program that we think Congress is starting to pay attention to,” Alex Schriver, a PhRMA senior vice president, told NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno.
Bowser gives the OK: Washington, D.C.’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, on Tuesday ordered the Metropolitan Police Department to continue coordinating with federal law enforcement officials indefinitely. She wrote that her action would “provide the pathway forward beyond the Presidential emergency.”
Unprepared for disaster: “The federal government will likely need to meet its disaster response mission with fewer available resources this year,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office wrote in a new report.
More: Trump Admin to Add Immigration Judges by Using Military Lawyers, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
NOT US
- The MAGA kids are not all White, by Jesús Rodríguez for The Washington Post
- Trump Shrank Staffing of National Parks. See How Many Are Struggling. By Eileen Sullivan for The New York Times
- Only One Republican Is Holding This Many Town Halls, by Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic
Thank you for reading! If you like 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.org. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter at newsletters@notus.org.