Taking Trump Figuratively

Today’s notice: What does “take over” elections mean? Can you trust the White House’s social media posts? A biblical fight over immigration. An exclusive on a big North Carolina endorsement. And: Henry Cuellar is exactly where he wants to be. If you don’t subscribe yet, you can sign up here — it’s free!

THE LATEST

Trump repeats his call to ‘nationalize’ elections: “If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over,” he said at an Oval Office gaggle yesterday. This has become another Rorschach test moment.

What the White House says Trump said: “What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act,” said Karoline Leavitt, referencing the Republican bill to nationalize voter ID laws.

What Republicans are OK with Trump saying: “I believe that it’s appropriate for somebody to have an ID in order to prove their own identity when they’re voting,” Rep. Jimmy Patronis told Emily. “So I don’t have any problems with that, if that’s where he’s going with it.”

What they are not that OK with Trump saying: “I don’t really understand. I don’t know the back-channel dialogue that was around that,” Rep. Scott Franklin said. “I fully support states’ rights on elections, and I think that’s where it belongs.”

What Brad Raffensperger is not saying: Asked what the infamous Georgia secretary of state made of Trump’s comment, his spokesperson told NOTUS that Raffensperger is “focused on the future rather than rehashing old issues.”

What Democrats are saying: “In Oregon, we follow the law and the Constitution. It’s why we’ll continue to stand up to the President every time he tries to abuse his power and meddle in America’s elections,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read told us. (Oregon was one of the states the White House singled out.)

Read our story.

Open tabs: Judge Appears Likely to Curtail Hegseth’s Power to Penalize Kelly for Video (NYT); Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon (WaPo); DOT wants to prohibit free buses. That could be a problem for Mamdani. (Politico); Mitch McConnell hospitalized after experiencing ‘flu-like symptoms’ (NBC)

From the White House

Social media reigns supreme at the White House: The president uses it to announce official policy. Aides use it to attack those who disagree. And the comms team uses the official White House account to showcase agenda wins to its 3.6 million followers. That includes posting photos of undocumented immigrants whom they say have been convicted of violent crimes. But what happens when the photos are wrong?

The White House falsely labeled a man as having committed child sex crimes in one of several erroneous graphics posted Jan. 26 on its X account, NOTUS’ Violet Jira reports. The post, before it was deleted, was viewed 257,000 times.

“In the process of highlighting the dangerous criminal illegal aliens arrested by law enforcement, two images of criminal illegal aliens were mistakenly swapped,” a White House official told NOTUS. “The error has been corrected, and the Administration will continue publicizing the dangerous criminal illegal aliens being removed from our streets.”

The plan is to keep posting through it. “The memes will continue,” one aide said last week, after Democrats and advocates expressed outrage when the White House posted a doctored photo of Minneapolis activist Nekima Levy Armstrong to show her crying during her arrest by federal agents.

From the Hill

“I hope it’s helpful”: In a long social-media post yesterday, Mike Johnson challenged Pope Leo XIV’s understanding of Christian Scripture, detailing how his study of the Bible leads him to the “Biblical case for border security and immigration enforcement.”

Just exactly what is justified remains a political question, even as the spiritual one is being debated. After Republicans called for a new approach to enforcement in Minneapolis — following public polling that rapidly turned on Trump after multiple clips of federal agents in the city went viral — there is continuing evidence that tactics on the ground have changed, but not that much.

The AP reported on masked federal agents drawing their guns on activists who were trailing their vehicle yesterday morning in Minneapolis. The officers also threatened reporters documenting an arrest with pepper spray.

From the campaign trail

First on NOTUS: The CBC endorses in NC-03. Former state House member Raymond E. Smith Jr. is the choice of the Congressional Black Caucus in the Democratic primary to decide who gets to take on Republican Rep. Greg Murphy. NOTUS’ Christa Dutton reports that Democrats feel cautiously optimistic about flipping the district after North Carolina redistricting made it slightly bluer and significantly boosted its share of Black voters.

Virginia redistricting hits a snag: “Other proposals do not have the votes to pass,” the state Senate president pro tempore, L. Louise Lucas, posted on X yesterday after the mess that is the state’s Democratic redistricting effort spilled out in Punchbowl. Democrats control the government, and Democrats want to change district lines to push back against Republican efforts in other states. But they can’t decide which of the redrawn maps to get behind. Lucas says her 10-1 (as in, one Republican seat) map is the winning hand. But there’s a lot more Democrat-on-Democrat action to go before we see if she’s right.

Over in Maryland, Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, told The Baltimore Sun that his chamber is “not prioritizing” a redistricting measure, signaling that the push championed by Gov. Wes Moore is likely doomed.

NOTUS INTERVIEW

“It clears the sky, and the skies on the road ahead,” the recently pardoned Rep. Henry Cuellar told NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz in Zapata, Texas, of the electoral gift the president gave him.

Trump is upset that Cuellar didn’t switch parties. But why would he? The DCCC is on board with his reelection. “Anyone attempting to go head-to-head with Congressman Cuellar should probably touch grass and come back to reality because he’s not going anywhere,” a spox said.

Republicans think they have his number. “Out of touch Henry Cuellar is a self-serving career politician who’s spent years delivering nothing for his district while consistently voting to make life more expensive and communities less safe,” an NRCC spox told Daniella.

On the other hand: “I have no doubt Henry is going to win,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a fellow Democrat who has watched Cuellar at work for years, said.

NEW ON NOTUS

Malinowski opens up a new portfolio: Former Rep. Tom Malinowski is abandoning the blind trust he established in the wake of a 2021 stock trading scandal, opening up an account for himself and his wife that includes between $218,000 and $821,000 worth of individual stocks, according to a new disclosure reported by NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal.

Trump’s push to save the coal industry is facing a surprising opponent: Coal companies. Two owners of a Colorado coal plant filed a petition with the Department of Energy last week asking the Trump administration to reconsider a mandate that would keep the facility running past its expiration date, NOTUS’ Shifra Dayak reports.

“Even the coal plant industry views [such] agreements negatively due to their market distortion effects,” Casey Baker, a senior program manager at GridLab, wrote in an analysis last year.

More: Renee Good’s Family Demands Congress Take Action to Rein in ICE, by Jackie Llanos

Why Democrats Think They’ve Got the Winning Hand on Child Care, by Raymond Fernández and Adora Brown

Developer Sues Trump Administration for Withholding Gateway Tunnel Funding, by Shifra Dayak

NOT US

• How Stephen Miller Stokes Trump’s Boundary-Pushing Impulses, by Josh Dawsey and Tarini Parti for The Wall Street Journal
  
• Election officials grapple with a brain drain as threats rise, by Andrew Howard for Politico
  
• How the Murdoch Family Built an Empire—and Remade the News, by Andrew O’Hagan for The New Yorker
  

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