Uncancelable Culture

Today’s notice: Another New Tone™ is history. The right’s boogeyman comes to Washington. Congress tires of the Censure Wars. Plus: Another Cory Mills scandal.

THE LATEST

‘Violent political rhetoric’ is redefined once again. It’s now only a serious problem if 1. The person posting it is being literal and 2. That person is not Donald Trump. So say the Republicans in Congress yesterday after Trump reTruthed one post suggesting several Democrats should be hanged and posted his own Truth reiterating that sedition — which he suggested those Democrats were engaged in — is punishable by death.

“You know how President Trump is,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville told the NOTUS Hill team.

The president was responding to a video made by Democrats for service members. “Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders,” Sen. Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran, says in the clip.

“I’m not a lawyer. I’ll leave that to the Department of Justice and the Department of War to decide,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters, after incorrectly saying the Democrats were calling on military members to disobey lawful orders. And she said Trump (despite his Truth Social repost) did not want to execute members of Congress.

The two ways of looking at this. Conservatives were outraged, and the conservative-in-chief channelled that outrage into Trumpese. A day ending in “Y.”

The second way to look at it: Fewer and fewer people actually care about this rhetoric outside of scoring points.

Democrats refused to call for Jay Jones to drop out of the Virginia attorney general race after his violent texts were revealed, and that move absolutely paid off when Jones won. (One operative told us recently it’s a model for future elections.)

A couple others working on campaigns outside of the Jones race said they were not at all surprised by the election result. “Voters just think this is what politics is like now,” one said.

Open tabs: D.N.C. Takes Out $15 Million Loan (NYT); Trump admin moves to approve offshore drilling in California and Florida (Politico); Border Patrol has left Charlotte and plans to mobilize in New Orleans next (NBC); How Bari Weiss Is Trying to Overhaul CBS News (WSJ)

From the Hill

First, is anything more a sign of the times than the literal fire that broke out in the House basement?

To sum up this week in the lower chamber: First, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez moved to formally reprimand fellow Democrat Chuy García. Then Ralph Norman moved to censure Stacey Plaskett. Nancy Mace moved to censure her Republican colleague Cory Mills. And Greg Steube says he will move to expel Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.

No one likes this. “We can let the Ethics Committee handle these matters so we’re not having to vote every day on somebody and something new,” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz of the Censure Wars.

“I would love to see it stop,” Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman told NOTUS. “It’s just one food fight after another.”

One way out? A bipartisan proposal to make it harder to censure. Mike Johnson said he’s open to censure reform, but just isn’t sure how. Yes, that’s right, in these times we are discussing censure reform.

About that next food fight, lawmakers are already setting very low expectations that they’ll be able to pass a full slate of appropriations bills by the Jan. 30 deadline. NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer and Avani Kalra report that they will likely need at least a few short-term continuing resolutions for some agencies.

One particular holdup is funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which members doubt they’ll be able to come to an agreement on and could need a full-year CR.

“I’ll put it this way: The end is not in sight,” Republican Rep. Mark Amodei said.

From the White House

The boogeyman comes to D.C. Or at least that is how Trump and the White House are likely to play it when New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is inside the Oval Office today at 3 p.m. The White House says the meeting is closed to the press — for now.

Trump had a week of bad headlines. A new tranche of Epstein files, poor poll numbers and questions about rising prices — not to mention MAGA-base infighting on antisemitism and immigration. Friday’s meeting could provide him a chance to get back on the offensive.

How the White House is setting this up: “It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House, because that’s who the Democrat party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country,” Leavitt told reporters yesterday.

As for Mamdani? “It’s not about myself, it’s not about a relationship with an individual,” he told reporters yesterday, NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative partner The City reported. “It’s about a relationship between New York City and the White House, the president, the federal administration — it’s for the people that I look to represent.”

NOTUS INVESTIGATION

How Cory Mills was barred from a secret trip to Afghanistan: In 2021, the Florida congressman outraged the party he was traveling with when group members found Mills in a Tbilisi, Georgia, hallway with sex workers, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports. The group was headed to Afghanistan to rescue Americans they said had been left behind by the Biden administration’s hasty withdrawal.

He made a version of the Afghanistan trip, but not with the group he had set out with. The group was furious with him over the hallway incident.

It’s a new scandal for Mills, who is facing many. Reese and former NOTUS reporter John T. Seward revealed serious questions around Mills’ Bronze Star. He is also subject to a restraining order until January from an ex who alleges he threatened to reveal explicit images of her.

The House Ethics Committee has a number of investigations underway into Mills, including one over alleged campaign finance violations.

NEW ON NOTUS

Big money for Trumpworld: Dark money nonprofit group DonorsTrust gave America First Legal Foundation, founded by Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, nearly $21.3 million in 2024, up from $3.2 million in 2023, according to the group’s Form 990, NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno reports.

Privatizing science: NOTUS’ Anna Kramer identified at least 16 researchers — many of whom were the EPA’s scientists that helped in the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, train disaster — who have left the EPA for the private sector.

Losing so many scientists to the private sector may make it harder for the agency to respond quickly to chemical events, one of the researchers told Anna.

The asterisk that didn’t go unnoticed: “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website,” the CDC’s website reads, alongside new anti-vaccine language.

Asked whether the new CDC language upholds RFK Jr.’s promise not to make substantial changes to the agency’s vaccine policy, Sen. Bill Cassidy said: “Put it this way. There’s a reason there’s an asterisk on it.”

More: Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s D.C. National Guard Deployment, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

Trump’s Energy Department Removed Its Clean Energy Offices, by Anna Kramer

NOTUS PERSPECTIVES

Michelle Obama Is Wrong: Women Can Win. And we need to stop saying they can’t, because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, writes Lauren Leader.

What will the situation in Russia and Ukraine look like five years from now? A NOTUS forum featuring Mikhail Alexseev, Wendy R. Anderson, Robert Benson, Max Bergmann, Heather Conley, Tim Mak, Ned Price and Tatiana Stanovaya.

NOT US

• Huckabee Held Meeting at U.S. Embassy With American Who Spied for Israel, by Natan Odenheimer and Adam Rasgon for The New York Times
  
• Dick Cheney’s Long, Strange Goodbye, by Susan B. Glasser for The New Yorker
  
• (Some) MAGA Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, by Elaine Godfrey for The Atlantic

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