Two-Week Ceasefire

Today’s notice: Well, that was unexpected — or was it? MTG’s replacement is elected. Wisconsin judicial results. Mark Rutte’s D.C. challenge. Plus: Local green-energy laws are on a winning streak in federal court.

THE LATEST

The early take on the Iran ceasefire deal: “The gap is too wide to reach a last-and-final agreement. So the ceasefire is unlikely to survive,” a former Trump administration official told Jasmine last night. “The war is likely to resume.”

But what will that look like? Donald Trump set the bar at “a whole civilization will die.” Is the kind of war we were all just bracing for still on the table?

What comes next could also be more diplomacy, including potential talks between representatives for the U.S. and Iran in Pakistan. “There are discussions about in-person talks but nothing is final until announced by the president or the White House,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

What would they talk about? Brett McGurk, a former top U.S. Middle East diplomat, posted on X last night that what Iran is saying about the Strait of Hormuz is “not status quo ante bellum,” Latin for “the situation as it existed before the war.” Trump has said he wants the strait fully reopened, but Iran says it wants to charge tolls on boats coming through as a form of restitution. Iran’s regime is still in place and the 10-point plan Trump called “not good enough” on Monday he called “a workable basis on which to negotiate” last night.

Some of Iran’s demands — the lifting of sanctions, U.S. military withdrawal from the Middle East and further enrichment of uranium — appear to be light-years away from Trump’s stated goals.

“As I’ve been looking at the announcement by the Iranian government, I’m very skeptical that this will be sustainable,” Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American scholar who was detained in Iran and freed as part of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, told CNN last night. “In fact, the demands on it are so maximalist, and it’s so far apart from what the United States has put forward in its 15-point plan, that it‘s very, very hard to see how they would even begin to close that gap.”

Still, the White House is spinning this initial step as a victory before the paint on the ceasefire is dry. (Israel and Iran continued to trade strikes, even hours after the announcement was made.)

The domestic situation got very dicey for Trump this week, with multiple Republicans distancing themselves from his civilization-ending rhetoric. Tucker Carlson and other members of his wing of the conservative movement even openly called for Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. It’s not clear the ceasefire will close the divide this war has exposed in parts of Trump’s base.

Americans have also been skeptical of this conflict all along, according to polling. It seems unlikely that starting it up again would be more popular in two weeks.

Open tabs: After clashes with Hegseth, Army secretary says he isn’t going anywhere (WaPo); DOJ Civil Rights Division Is Investigating Star Witness Against Trump (NYT); Trump Will Fund New Archway With $15 Million From the National Endowment for the Humanities (NOTUS); How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics (New Yorker)

From the campaign trail

Ninety Minutes. That’s how long it took The Associated Press to call the race for Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller, who will take Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vacated seat in Congress.

Fuller’s win was largely expected, NOTUS’ Torrie Herrington reports. But for those looking for the midterm tea leaves, this race didn’t disappoint. With 95% of the vote in, Fuller ran 12 percentage points ahead of his Democratic competitor, Shawn Harris. In 2024, Trump won the district by 37 points. And MTG, running against Harris in 2024, won by 29 points.

Up in Wisconsin, Democrats overperformed in a relatively quiet state Supreme Court election, increasing the court’s liberal majority to 5-2. Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge, posted a landslide victory over her conservative challenger — just one year after Elon Musk, Turning Point Action and other national donors attempted unsuccessfully to flip the court in a race that became the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.

First on NOTUS: Trouble for the Democratic establishment in California? New internal numbers from Sacramento Councilmember Mai Vang’s campaign obtained exclusively by NOTUS’ Manuela Silva suggest that Rep. Doris Matsui, the longtime incumbent in the 7th Congressional District, could be vulnerable to a serious challenge.

Matsui has been endorsed by Nancy Pelosi and much of the state’s party establishment. Vang has the endorsement of the Working Families Party and is generally seen as the strongest of the many challengers in the jungle primary.

The survey found that Matsui — an 81-year-old fixture in area Democratic politics who first won her seat in a 2005 special election following the death of her husband, who had held it for 13 terms — has a double-digit advantage. But that crumbles “once voters learn equal information about both candidates,” the polling memo reads. In short: Vang has a real path to overtake Matsui, her campaign argues.

FWIW: Matsui’s camp isn’t worried. She has a record of winning and leads in fundraising, her campaign told Manuela.

From the White House

Calling on ‘daddy’: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is set to meet with Trump and top U.S. officials today in a test of whether his mollifying approach to this NATO-skeptical White House still works, NOTUS’ Joe Gould reports. Trump has been grumpy about Europe’s dismissal of his war with Iran, which Rutte can’t change, and the Europeans have started to become skeptical of Rutte’s approach.

“There is increasing discomfort with the sense that, instead of taking a stand in defense of NATO and in defense of European countries, that Rutte is … apologizing for them when there’s nothing to apologize for,” said Celeste Wallander, a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

NEW ON NOTUS

Green-energy laws are on a winning streak in federal court. The DOJ vowed to take on “overly restrictive” green-energy laws at the local level shortly after Trump was sworn in last year. In practice, that has meant suing cities in blue states.

NOTUS’ Shifra Dayak reports that the push has largely fallen flat in the courtroom, and tells the story of a fight brewing in Morris Township, New Jersey.

More: Federal Judge Pressures FDA to Finish Abortion Pill Review, by Oriana González

Mullin Promises DHS Won’t Neglect Western North Carolina, by Christa Dutton

NOT US

• What spending probes at DHS reveal about Kristi Noem’s time in office, by Brianna Sacks, Maria Sacchetti and Marianne LeVine for The Washington Post
  
• DC’s highly qualified workers can’t find jobs: ‘What is happening?’ By Alba Asenjo Domínguez for The Guardian
  
• ‘Nobody answers’: The unraveling of a patient care research agency, by Jessie Hellmann for Roll Call

Thank you for reading! If you liked this edition of the NOTUS newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was shared with you, please subscribe — it’s free! Have a tip? Email us at tips@notus.com. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts at newsletters@notus.com.