Today’s notice: More violence. A big scoop in Oklahoma. A good poll for John Cornyn. Two in-depth looks at budgeting after DOGE.
THE LATEST
Who’s to blame? Who can be trusted? These are the defining questions in American politics post-Charlie Kirk assassination and now after a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas that killed at least one detainee.
Who Donald Trump blames: “I will be signing an Executive Order this week to dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks. I AM CALLING ON ALL DEMOCRATS TO STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE AND AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT, RIGHT NOW!”
What Democrats say: Rep. Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas, told NOTUS’ Emily Kennard that members of his party are trying to lead by example, which is why he responded to yesterday’s shooting with “just a very basic, general, very nonpartisan, as vanilla-as-it-gets statement.”
Who can they trust? “I don’t trust anything that’s happening out of that agency at all,” Veasey told Emily, referring to the FBI under Kash Patel. Veasey said he’d need “a full briefing on exactly what happened” and documents that “third parties can look through” before he would believe any narrative.
Patel posted an image of five bullets in a clip he said were found at the scene in Dallas. One had “anti-ICE” written on it in all caps. Patel wrote that the “initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical (sic) motive behind this attack.”
The politics began immediately. Sen. Ted Cruz, speaking at the first law-enforcement press conference after the shooting, said the incident should be a lesson to “every politician demanding that ICE agents be doxed and calling for people to go after their families. Stop. This has very real consequences.” Democrats beyond Veasey pushed back against the Trump administration’s rhetoric.
To recap: You’ve got one side saying don’t believe the FBI and the other saying a version of who needs an investigation? We know everything already. Eventually, we’ll have more information about the shooter’s motive — but will that change anyone’s mind?
Open tabs: Ben Carson Joins the Trump Admin in New Role at USDA (NOTUS); Dems Investigating Law Firms Over Work for Trump’s Commerce Dept. (NYT); Top Trump Adviser Taylor Budowich Departing the White House (NOTUS); S.E.C. Dropped a Complaint Against Its Chairman’s Former Client (NYT)
From Oklahoma
SCOOP: NOTUS’ Reese Gorman and Em Luetkemeyer first reported yesterday that Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma state superintendent, is considering resigning. He’s a national hyperconservative darling who has also regularly clashed with other right-wingers in and outside of Oklahoma (including, once at least, with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon).
He made things official late last night in an interview on Fox News, revealing that he plans to take a job as CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, which bills itself as an organization “designed to offer educators an alternative to union membership.”
From the White House
Prepare the pink slips? Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is instructing federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs if the government shuts down at the end of the month, according to an internal memo obtained by NOTUS. In particular, OMB said it’s looking to target programs that aren’t legally required to continue during a shutdown and ones “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
Does this threat have teeth? The administration has been scrambling in recent weeks to rehire workers laid off by DOGE at HHS, Voice of America, the National Weather Service and several other agencies.
Hakeem Jeffries weighed in last night: “We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost.”
Comey on the mind: Federal prosecutors in Virginia are expected to ask a grand jury to criminally indict former FBI Director James Comey this week, according to two sources who spoke with NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery on the condition of anonymity.
The backstory: A probe out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia has been looking into Comey’s Sept. 30, 2020, congressional testimony about his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Investigators are under time pressure because a five-year statute of limitations expires Oct. 1, Jose’s sources said.
From the campaign trail
Cornyn 32%, Paxton 31%, Hunt 17%: Normally, not great numbers for an incumbent senator facing a primary challenge. But fantastically good numbers if that incumbent is Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. NOTUS’ Alex Roarty got the first look at a poll from One Nation, a nonprofit tied to John Thune. It shows clear momentum for Cornyn, who has the group’s backing and was trailing state AG Ken Paxton by eight percentage points just last month.
NOTUS INVESTIGATION
DOGE’s multi-million-dollar mistakes: Internal records from the EPA revealed as part of a court case show that, with sign-off from “political leadership,” the agency announced $67 million in cuts only to realize they’d messed up their math, NOTUS’ Mark Alfred reports.
Congress also couldn’t figure out what was going on. Rep. Bill Huizenga’s office asked the EPA liaison about a $20 million award in Michigan that had been terminated. The termination letter “was accidently (sic) sent,” a new letter from the EPA to the grant recipient said.
“To date, EPA has canceled at least $29 billion in wasteful spending — which represents a figure that is nearly three times the annual operating budget of the agency,” an EPA spox told NOTUS.
THE BIG ONE
When it becomes impossible to follow the money: Inflated DOGE cuts are only one piece of the story. What is it actually like to track federal spending in Trump 2.0? Extremely difficult at best, even for congressional appropriators, NOTUS’ Anna Kramer and Mark report.
NOTUS attempted to trace appropriated funds for more than 100 programs, but found that the data is outdated or conflicting, agencies have been vague in their explanations and in many cases there’s no publicly available evidence that appropriated money is being spent at all.
“I don’t think that there has been anything close to the transparency that we would hope,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told NOTUS. “We’re kind of finding out about it at the very last minute.”
The problem: Budget requests to Congress have been unusually late, and unusually vague. As for 2025 spending, footnotes can regularly be found putting restrictions on congressionally appropriated funds, subjecting them to undisclosed “spending plans.”
“Unless you have whistleblowers in place, the only way to know something has been cut is if the anticipated recipients step up and say, ‘We didn’t get XYZ,” transparency expert Nan Swift of the R Street Institute told NOTUS.
“I get it by reading something in the newspaper,” Murkowski said of how she learns about changes in federal spending.
NEW ON NOTUS
DHS: 0, Theo Von: 1 DHS took down a social media video that featured the comedian after he publicly criticized the agency for failing to get his approval. “It’s crazy to me that they would think this is OK,” Von said in a reply to a post on X.
More: JD Vance Blames Democrats for Fatal North Carolina Stabbing, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
NOT US
- A frustrated Sen. Van Hollen urges Democrats to take bigger risks, by Liz Goodwin for The Washington Post
- Inside the White House Struggle to Tame the Epstein Crisis, by Josh Dawsey, Rebecca Ballhaus and C. Ryan Barber for The Wall Street Journal
- Larry Ellison Is a ‘Shadow President’ in Donald Trump’s America, by Jake Lahut for Wired
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