The MAGA Marijuana Split

Today’s notice: What the House is going to vote on this week. Confusion in Indiana after redistricting failed. How SNAP is becoming a campaign topic. And: MAGA responds to the White House’s weed trial balloon.

THE LATEST

Health care latest. “The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act will actually deliver affordable health care — and we look forward to advancing it through the House,” Mike Johnson said in a statement Friday after he debuted the GOP’s health care policy plan. Many existing, and long unpassed, Republican health care ideas are included in the package, but there is no mention of extending the ACA subsidies set to expire on Dec. 31. The HSA idea mentioned by Donald Trump was also not mentioned during a background call with reporters about the plan last week.

What’s next: Democrats ripped the plan, and there are still Republicans angling for an extension of those ACA subsidies. A leadership aide told The New York Times those Republicans will get a vote to add a subsidy extension to the plan through an amendment, but there is effectively no time for any of this to become law before the subsidies expire as both chambers of Congress leave town at the end of the week.

Brown University shooting: Details on the fatal shooting in a campus building during finals are still emerging, but the politics around this already sound familiar. “That is just just not a reality that we should accept in this nation. For our kids,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a longtime gun safety legislation advocate, told CNN yesterday. “Unfortunately, right now we don‘t have the leadership in Washington to do anything to respond to the shooting this weekend.”

“There is also the shooting that just occurred in Australia, in which there are gun control laws, and yet this still occurred,” Sen. Bill Cassidy also told CNN yesterday, referring to what authorities called a terrorist attack by two gunmen on a Sydney-area Hanukkah celebration. He was one of a number of Republicans who said the attack was evidence that new gun control laws would not work to stop mass shootings in the U.S.

Open tabs: Trump Vows ‘Retaliation’ After ISIS Kills Three Americans in Syria (NOTUS); Joe Biden steps out to see the Eagles take on the Raiders (Philadelphia Inquirer); Interview: Trump Isn’t Certain His Economic Policies Will Translate to Midterm Wins (WSJ); House Oversight Committee accuses DC police chief of manipulating crime data in new report (Fox 5 DC)

From the campaign trail

First on NOTUS: DNC downballot infrastructure. National Democrats are announcing two new programs today aimed at helping state and local operations connect with well-trained political staff, NOTUS’ Alex Roarty reports. The Battleground Leadership Project will recruit and train coordinated campaign directors and organizers. BlueMatch, which formally launches in January, will help Democratic candidates find campaign staff. It’s an attempt to solve one of the party’s thorniest issues: down ballot candidates lacking the resources to take advantage of shifting voter sentiments.

From Indiana

The legend of last Thursday grows: Some Republicans, like the Heritage Foundation’s political arm and (briefly) Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, said the White House promised it would strip funding from Indiana if the state legislature voted down new congressional maps.

But there are differing accounts. Others, like the White House and the two most senior Indiana legislative leaders — state House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate president Rodric Bray – said that never happened, NOTUS’ Christa Dutton reports. Beckwith deleted a post claiming that Trump had threatened to cut federal funding and didn’t respond to a request for comment from Christa, but told Politico: “these conversations happened.”

What’s next: Everyone expects some kind of retaliation, even if federal funding remains untouched.

From the Hill

The vibes in Congress are worse than they’ve been in a long time. When asked what’s changed during his two decades in the House, retiring Rep. Michael McCaul told NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz and Em Luetkemeyer: “The level of partisanship, rancor, vitriolic debate, demonizing the other side of the aisle, not willing to work across the aisle to get things done for the American people, and just the overall toxic environment.”

Saying sayonara: Members will depart Washington this week without addressing a number of high-stakes issues. Morale is low, and it’s showing in the number of retirements coming down the pipe on both sides of the aisle. The Republican Party is losing 18 House members compared to 13 House Democrats — a massive exodus by recent standards.

ICYMI, ugh. Some extremely uncomfortable, previously unseen photos were the highlight (lowlight) of the latest release of Epstein documents from House Oversight Democrats on Friday.

The candid snaps were more of what we’ve come to expect: photos of famous men (Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, Larry Summers) with Epstein. One in particular stands out: a photo of Trump standing next to several women with their faces redacted, NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz and Riley Rogerson report.

THE BIG ONE

Is MAGAjuana a buzzkill for Trump’s base? Trump is reportedly weighing reclassifying marijuana to loosen up federal restrictions on the drug — what some see as an approval ratings Hail Mary at a time when those numbers aren’t looking ideal.

But many MAGA figures online warn it’s a bad trip, arguing reclassification could be a harmful stance that might alienate pro-family parts of Trump’s base.

“This is an example of where the maybe populist strain in the Trump coalition is at odds with the more traditional conservative, social conservative, religious conservative, whatever you call it, part of the party,” Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told us. He’s not a fan of weed’s effects on “young men’s labor force participation and marriageability, to put it bluntly.”

Support for marijuana legalization among Republicans dropped 13 percentage points from 2024 to this year, now sitting at 40%, Brown pointed out.

Close watchers of this policy space said this social conservative reaction to the broadly popular idea of legalization has remained the loudest part of the MAGA coalition in Trump 2.0. Marijuana Moment has been tracking the coalition all year, and we asked EIC Tom Angell who the loudest MAGA voices in favor of deregulation are. “I think the most prominent folks are Roger Stone and Matt Gaetz,” he told us.

“All polling shows broad approval of the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, even among Republicans and conservatives,” Stone texted us. “If the president decides to reschedule cannabis, it will most certainly be a step in the right direction.”

ON NOTUS PODCAST

From your favorite podcast app: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer joins Reese Gorman for today’s episode of the On NOTUS podcast. Emmer tells Reese how he tries to keep theGOP conference in line with such a small majority, that time Democratic Rep. Al Green surprised everyone by showing up to a vote from the hospital and who the hardest member to whip is. (Spoiler, it’s all of them).

Every week, Reese sits down with a lawmaker and dives deep on their background, their journey to Washington, D.C., and what motivates them. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

NEW ON NOTUS

Graham abandons the Dream Act. For more than a decade, Sen. Lindsey Graham has been a cosponsor of a bill with Dick Durbin designed to provide a pathway to citizenship for people who grew up in the U.S. after being brought in as undocumented minors. But this time Durbin reintroduced the bill, Graham’s name was no longer on it, NOTUS’ Manuela Silva reports.

“Yeah, there will be no Dream Act. Not until you deal with the millions of people here illegally,” Graham said.

SNAP on the campaign trail: It’s about a year before the midterms, and the DCCC is already up with an ad campaign focused on SNAP benefit changes in Trump’s so-called “One, Big Beautiful Bill.” NOTUS’ Raymond Ferndandez reports the ads are just the beginning — SNAP has emerged as an early campaign issue in races across the country.

More: Ilhan Omar Says Immigration Agents Pulled Over Her Son, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

Everyone Wants to Change Infrastructure Permitting. Nobody Knows How to Pass It, by Shifra Dayak

Hassett Vows Trump Would Have ‘No Weight’ In Fed Decisions If He’s Picked as Chair, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

NOT US

• Trump’s library plan: An ‘iconic building’ in Miami and a ‘fake news wing’, by Michael Kranish and Lori Rozsa for The Washington Post
  
• The S.E.C. Was Tough on Crypto. It Pulled Back After Trump Returned to Office, by Ben Protess, Andrea Fuller, Sharon LaFraniere and Seamus Hughes for The New York Times
  
• Caught in the “Ceasefire”, by Jon Allsop for The New Yorker

WEEK AHEAD

Monday: RFK Jr. is set to lead a roundtable discussion of Lyme disease, which he previously said “is highly likely to have been a military weapon.”Tuesday: JD Vance is scheduled to appear in Allentown, PA, to make a speech about the economy.

Thursday: The House’s last scheduled work day of 2025.

Friday: The Senate’s last scheduled work day of 2025.

Epstein files are required to be released under the law passed by Congress.

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