Today’s notice: Republicans change their tune on the Epstein files while Democrats work through their own issues. RFK Jr. takes questions — just not about that. And: Who owns “affordability”?
THE LATEST
Getting everyone on the same page: It seems like only five days ago that the upcoming House vote to force the release of the Epstein files was a fraught, intraparty mess for the GOP. Oh, because it was.
Republicans would prefer not to remember that. “People are making a false assumption that because members didn’t sign the discharge, they were going to vote ‘no,’” Rep. Byron Donalds said. “We just did not agree with the procedure.”
Lawmakers have had plenty of opportunities to formally declare support for the legislation, the NOTUS Hill team reports. For weeks, the petition to force the vote needed just one more signatory to advance. It took the swearing in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva, famously not a Republican, to get it done.
Leading the shift, of course, is Donald Trump. Jasmine and NOTUS’ Reese Gorman report that the president had multiple conversations in recent days about the Epstein saga, including with people close to him who conveyed concern regarding the optics of his public posture. Mike Johnson — who was watching the vote count shift away from what Trump wanted it to be, just like everyone else — gave Trump a call over the weekend, too.
The calls preceded Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday changing his position on the House vote, which an aide claimed to Jasmine and Reese “was not actually a change in his overall position on the files.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have their own divisions to worry about. Not on the Epstein files, but over Rep. Chuy García, who timed his retirement strategically to ensure his chosen successor ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. NOTUS’ Amelia Benavides-Colón reports that Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez squared off with Hakeem Jeffries over an effort to denounce García for the move. House Republicans largely left the floor last night to let Democrats have a nasty rhetorical spat over this, no doubt grateful to cede the spotlight for a night.
Open tabs: Larry Summers To Step Back from Public Commitments Amid Epstein Scandal (Harvard Crimson); Trump revives policy penalizing immigrants for using safety net programs (Politico); Market Rout Intensifies, Sweeping Up Everything From Tech to Crypto to Gold (WSJ); U.N. Security Council Greenlights Trump’s Peace Plan for Gaza (NOTUS)
From the Hill
“It is incorrect to assume that a temporary extension can be quickly implemented,” Sen. Bill Cassidy told reporters in a pen-and-pad on Monday. “Fifty percent of states did not come up with a set of rates reflecting as if the tax credits would be extended. So it’s not just like, ‘Oh, we’re going to extend them and everything’s hunky-dory.’”
That’s the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chair pushing back against Democrats’ pleas to extend the COVID-era Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits.
Democrats have called Cassidy’s plan — a new employer-sponsored accounts program — unrealistic in the short term. Premiums are about to shoot up dramatically for people who receive the tax credits.
Cassidy’s counterargument: With open enrollment already underway, extending ACA tax credits would be difficult to carry out. Plus… Trump is “not going to sign a straightforward extension of premium tax credits,” the Louisiana Republican said.
From D.C.
RFK Jr. took questions, but not about the thing everyone is talking about. NOTUS’ Margaret Manto was there when he spoke at a town hall event sponsored by Turning Point USA and the GW College Republicans on school campus last night.
“Something changed in our human behavior, and it happened here, where we got 20% of the population now taking these drugs,” Kennedy said of SSRIs and the (unproven) connection he sees between their widespread use and the rise in mass shootings since the 1970s. “And because in their clinical trials, they saw suicidal and homicidal affects, there’s black-box warnings saying they can cause suicidal and homicidal ideation.”
NOTUS INTERVIEW
The Democratic bench’s big year: The major Senate primaries will be the A plot in the Democratic establishment’s attempt to engage an electorate increasingly frustrated with them. But an important second story may run through the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association.
Leading the efforts in all 31 races on the DLGA’s radar next year is the group’s newly elected chair, Kyle Evans Gay, the 39-year-old lieutenant governor of Delaware.
On getting new blood into Democratic politics: “As a mom in my 30s with a 7-month-old on my hip, I announced my candidacy to flip a state Senate seat from red to blue after 40 years. I was advised to wait my turn. I believe that our young leaders are not waiting their turn because they understand that we do not have time to waste.”
On how to not wait your turn: “We have Democratic LGs who are solving the housing crisis in their states by securing investments that were unheard of five years ago. Start by doing the work and knowing your district and making sure you can be the leader your constituents need.”
THE BIG ONE
Can everyone own ‘affordability’? Everyone wants to, NOTUS’ Jade Lozada writes, because they’re keeping things pretty vague.
On the Democratic side, both moderates and supporters of Zohran Mamdani are throwing the word around. There are things each side agrees with — like making it easier to build housing and harder to stop it with environmental or community reviews — but plenty they disagree on, like exactly what kind of building to do, and by whom. But that has not been a huge part of the conversation yet.
“Democrats do not naturally unite,” Jared Bernstein of the Center for American Progress told Jade. “When it comes to affordability, we’re seeing them doing just that.”
Republicans do not want to let this word go. They’re the ones who won last year by hammering Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on prices, after all. “Affordable, it should be our word, not theirs,” Trump said last night at the McDonald’s Impact Summit in Washington.
NEW ON NOTUS
200 days: That’s how long the de facto “shutdown” at the Federal Election Commission has officially dragged on for. “Reconstituting a quorum of commissioners at the FEC hasn’t ranked as a top priority for Congress or the White House amid the other challenges and crises facing the government right now,” Michael Beckel of Issue One told NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno.
One source told Taylor that the White House has floated getting the agency back to full operations in early 2026.
Diplomatic disruption: “It makes for a potentially dangerous situation for DEA agents operating in Colombia,” Harry Lidsky, a former CIA officer who also spent years as a DEA agent, told NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery of Colombia’s recent decision to cut off all intelligence sharing with the U.S. “Every DEA agent is declared in the embassy in Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellín. There’s a risk they could be sold out.”
More: Acting FEMA Boss Submits His Resignation, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
Trump Admin Pushes to Drastically Scale Back Clean Water Act Protections, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
Judge Says DOJ ‘May Have Tainted’ Comey Grand Jury Proceedings, by Jose Pagliery
MEET US
Welcome to “Meet Us,” where we introduce you to a member of the NOTUS team. Avani Kalra is a NOTUS reporter and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow covering the House of Representatives and Pennsylvania politics.
- Hometown: Chicago
- Past work: Editor of The Daily Northwestern. I also got to report in a lot of fun places while interning for MarketWatch, Bloomberg Law, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Wisconsin State Journal.
- Why journalism: I’ve wanted to be a journalist ever since I realized I was bad at math.
- NOTUS + AJI highlight so far: I loved covering the end of the government’s longest shutdown in history.
- Thing you can’t live without: Coffee!
- Best advice you’ve ever been given: You can’t learn anything if you’re comfortable.
NOT US
- Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump Are at War. What’s Her Endgame? By Aidan McLaughlin for Vanity Fair
- A Taco Shop Raid Splits an Ohio Town in Red America, by Cameron McWhirter and Ruth Simon for The Wall Street Journal
- Kash Patel’s Acts of Service, by Marc Fisher for The New Yorker
- How Thomas Massie outmaneuvered Trump on Epstein, by Meredith Lee Hill for Politico
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