Today’s notice: What House Republicans are being told not to do. What the DCCC is telling Democrats to do. One person already feeling the shutdown’s impact: Adelita Grijalva. And: Fed veterans weigh in on Scott Bessent’s critique of the central bank.
THE LATEST
The quietest shutdown: There were no 3 a.m. votes, no last-minute show of bipartisanship, no gangs popping up with common-sense solutions. The last word on it came before 8 p.m., when the House GOP’s continuing resolution failed in the Senate.
It was an early night in the White House, too. Aides called a press lid at 6 p.m. and the vibes were nonchalant.
“We’re used to tough days and chaos,” one White House official told Jasmine as voting commenced. “And we’ll take it day by day,” they added when asked how long the White House plans to hold out.
House Republicans are on recess until Oct. 7. They have been told not to come to Washington at all, as part of Mike Johnson’s plan to put pressure on the Senate to pass the CR, the NOTUS Hill team reports.
Their political marching orders back home: “Nothing overtly political or super political activity, including fundraisers,” a House GOP leadership aide said. “You gotta think long and hard about the optics of that for blowback purposes.”
Democrats looked a little wobblier than before. Sen. John Fetterman, the only Democrat to vote for the House CR last week, was joined yesterday by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Angus King (who caucuses with the Dems).
The political challenge for Democrats is to not let those defections become the story of last night — or the story of the next several days. Democrats need this shutdown to show they are finally ready to fight Donald Trump and the Republicans, not expose more rifts in their party.
Open tabs: Reagan-Appointed Judge Gives Trump a Lecture on the First Amendment (NOTUS); Judge Disqualifies Nevada’s Acting U.S. Attorney From Handling Cases (NYT); Trump cancels food research funding popular with Republicans (Politico); Missouri Governor Activates National Guard to Assist ICE (NOTUS)
From the Hill
“At this point, I can’t hire staff. We don’t have an office. I can’t get around without being escorted,” congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva said one week after she was elected to take her father’s House seat in Arizona.
In limbo: Speaker Johnson hasn’t sworn her in, and the shutdown will only complicate things further, NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer and Oriana González report. “The Speaker’s Office intends to schedule a swearing in for the Representative-elect when the House returns to session,” a spokesperson for Johnson said.
From the White House
Nominees withdrawn: The confusing nomination of Brian Quintenz to lead the CFTC came to an end last night. NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno reports on how prominent Trump backers from the crypto world effectively kept Quintenz from reprising the job he had in Trump 1.0.
For E.J. Antoni, Trump’s nominee to lead the embattled Bureau of Labor Statistics until last night, the controversies came from outside the MAGA house for the most part. “Dr. EJ Antoni is a brilliant economist and an American patriot that will continue to do good work on behalf of our great country,” a senior White House official told Jasmine after the nomination was withdrawn.
Meet TrumpRx: “This is something Democrats have wanted for 20 years, Republicans have wanted for 20 years,” Health Secretary RFK Jr. said at the White House press conference announcing a deal with Pfizer to provide discounted prescription drugs through a new government website.
Using the government to lower drug prices has long been a policy aim of the left. Trump did it through a combination of tariff threats and executive action, NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports.
From Quantico
“We’re under invasion from within,” Trump told U.S. military leaders at Pete Hegseth’s hastily assembled meeting of generals Tuesday, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”
“I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard,” Trump said.
Training is coming for more than just the Guard. “Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” Hegseth said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”
Service members will now have to pass physical fitness tests and meet weight requirements twice a year, the defense secretary said.
NOTUS INTERVIEW
Rep. Suzan DelBene, the DCCC’s chair, is trying to turn the shutdown into a political victory for Democrats running in the midterms. She spoke with us Tuesday afternoon.
On Democrats staying in town: “We are making it very clear we were on the floor today, that Republicans aren’t here, that they are happy to be gone and lead us into a shutdown,” DelBene said of short-term messaging.
For the longer term, she’s urging candidates to actively talk about the shutdown in their districts. “It’s staying on the ground, talking to people and reflecting the voices of their communities,” she said. Democrats have long said they have a winning political hand in a fight over health care spending. So as long as that’s where the shutdown conversation remains, DelBene feels good.
“People want to make sure that we are working to continue to increase health care coverage across the country, not slash it like Republicans are doing.”
On the state of things: We asked DelBene if she has had to rewrite the midterm playbook in real time given the redistricting fever. “Republicans are definitely running scared, and if you don’t think you can win because you have better ideas on policy and that your communities are with you, then you try to rig the system,” she said. “And that’s their strategy.”
NEW ON NOTUS
Economists on Bessent’s criticism of the Fed: The treasury secretary recently published an essay on the need for structural and policy changes at the Federal Reserve. NOTUS’ Violet Jira spoke with multiple former Fed economists and experts who said they don’t trust the Trump administration to carry out reforms, even if they agree with many of Bessent’s critiques.
“Were they offered seriously?” former Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond economist Robert Hetzel said. “Or were they offered in the spirit of just one more way of attacking the Fed and weakening it as an institution and its credibility, so that it will be more accessible to the kind of takeover attempts that the administration is currently undertaking?”
Trump ‘very close’ to a deal with Harvard: “They’ll be paying about $500 million, and they’ll be operating trade schools,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office yesterday about what he claimed was an almost-inked deal with the Ivy League university. “They’ll be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things. Engines, lots of things.”
More: HUD Sparks Ethics Concerns With Website Message About ‘Radical Left,’ by Amelia Benavides-Colón
NOT US
- The Trump-Appointed Diplomat Accused of Shielding El Salvador’s President From Law Enforcement, by T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, Kirsten Berg and Brett Murphy for ProPublica
- Trump’s USAID pause stranded lifesaving drugs. Children died waiting. By Meg Kelly, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Rael Ombuor, Sarah Blaskey, Andrew Ba Tran, Artur Galocha, Eric Lau and Katharine Houreld for The Washington Post
- How the Trump admin seized control of Biden’s $7.4 billion chips initiative, by Christine Mui for Politico
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