Today’s notice: How to get a grilled cheese in Congress. When the culture war doesn’t save money. Betting on the Super Bowl… presidential interview.
How Proxy Voting Happens in a Congress That Banned It
On at least two recent occasions, pregnant members of Congress have asked the House to allow them to vote by proxy when they were unable to travel. Republican Anna Paulina Luna brought it up in 2023, and Democrat Brittany Pettersen did this year. Both were told House rules do not allow it. Speaker Mike Johnson has said his hands are tied by the Constitution.
Turns out proxy voting is a fairly common “open secret” in the House, NOTUS’ Emily Kennard and Haley Byrd Wilt report. The difference between the common kind and what the pregnant members have asked for is basically semantics: They want to be at home following medical advice and still do their jobs, and the current practice is members physically handing each other voting cards when they are peckish or when nature calls. (Our reporters “noticed a member carrying multiple voting cards outside the men’s bathroom in the Speaker’s Lobby.”)
“They’ll give their card to one [another] to vote, but after confirming if they’re a yes or a no,” one Republican member told us. The member “believed it sometimes happens because lawmakers are ‘just comfortable’ in the cloakroom off the House floor.”
And who wouldn’t be? Emily and Haley report that the cloakroom “is a quiet place to take calls and is stocked with amenities for lawmakers, from phone chargers to ice cream sandwiches and hot dogs for sale.”
Opponents of proxy voting for pregnant women (and others forced to stay home for whatever reason) say vote-for-me-while-I-charge-my-phone is “completely different from the proxy voting instituted in the House under Democratic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Emily and Haley write.
Buried Lede: Wait, I Believe Hot Dogs Were Mentioned?
Newsletter exclusive reporting on those cloakroom snacks, courtesy of Emily and Haley.
A source familiar with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s near-daily hot dog habit told NOTUS her hot dogs are, indeed, cloakroom hot dogs. The hot dogs are “on the 7-11 rotating deal,” Rep. Thomas Massie told them. An even further buried lede, courtesy of Massie: Cloakroom chefs “will grill you a grill cheese or ham sandwich” too.
Front Page
- Senate Republicans Consider Leapfrogging the House on Reconciliation: “We don’t want to keep losing valuable time,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito.
- Republicans Are Careening Toward a Government Shutdown: “We’re doing the best we can with the cards we have and the players we have around the table,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said.
- Republicans’ Proposed Budget Gimmicks Aren’t Convincing Their Own: “It is an intellectual fraud,” one House Republican says of the proposal to adjust the budget baseline to erase the deficit impacts of extending tax cuts.
- Russell Vought Is Confirmed to Lead Trump’s Office of Management and Budget: The Senate confirmed the Project 2025 co-author for an administration intent on drastically scaling back spending.
- The Trump Administration Is Picking a Fight with Illinois Over Immigration: State and local officials say they’re prepared to defend their policies that limit cooperation.
Quiet Part Out Loud Report: Planned Parenthood Edition
As Republicans scramble to cut costs as part of budget reconciliation negotiations, NOTUS’ Oriana González learned of one area that conservatives might ignore: Planned Parenthood.
Not because of any support for the organization… but because they’re admitting the government wouldn’t save money by slashing its federal funding.
“It actually doesn’t save money,” said Rep. Andy Harris, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus and a longtime supporter of defunding Planned Parenthood.
White House Leaves Congress on Read
Just a week ago, Republicans gushed about Trump’s communicative leadership style. “He’s a very hands-on leader,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told NOTUS then. “He has a lot of cell numbers and uses them.”
But as lawmakers get a flavor for Trump 2.0 — the attempted federal aid freeze, overhaul of the U.S. Agency for International Development and comments about owning Gaza — several told NOTUS’ Reese Gorman they feel like they’re being left out to dry.
“It seems like they don’t even know the breadth of what they are trying to do,” a GOP member said this week. “Burning up political goodwill at an alarming rate.”
Speaking of Lawmakers in the Dark…
For over half a century, the Federal Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health has aimed to keep workers safe. This week, the White House told the council it can no longer meet, NOTUS’ Katherine Swartz reports.
It’s the latest power grab from the Trump administration as it aggressively, and perhaps illegally, seeks to cull the federal bureaucracy. In what’s becoming a new normal, the White House also appears to have circumvented Congress.
“We’ve got to be notified,” Rep. Rick Allen said, “and we’ve got to follow the law.”
Where’s the Data?
NOTUS’ Margaret Manto talked to health researchers and scientists who are blaring the alarm about missing federal health data, after the Trump administration took government sites down over the last week.
“It’s that sort of disruption that is equally endangering our ability to do research and evaluation to understand what’s going on in our community,” one researcher said.
Democratic senators say they’re frustrated too. They just aren’t quite sure what they can do about it.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- The explosive success of The Bulwark by Charlotte Klein for New York magazine
- How One High School Bathroom Became Ground Zero in the Fight Over Trans Rights by Sara Randazzo and Matt Barnum for The Wall Street Journal
- U.S. immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations by Dara Kerr for The Guardian
Be Social
In case you wanted in on the action, here are the current prop bet odds for Trump’s pre-Super Bowl interview with Bret Baier, per Sportsbook Review.
Which will Trump say first?
- Super Bowl (-500) | Make America Great (+300)
- Elon (-500) | DOGE (+300)
- DEI (-700) | Pardon (+400)
- Jobs (-140) | Economy (+100)
- Tom Brady (-175) | Kevin Burkhardt (+135)
- Patrick Mahomes (-300) | Jalen Hurts (+200)
Tell Us Your Thoughts
Will Trump say “Super Bowl” or “Make America Great” first in his Fox interview?
Send your thoughts to newsletters@notus.org.
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