Well, That Was Easy

Today’s notice: The Epstein files issue comes to Congress and leaves shortly thereafter. What happened when a House Republican tried to rein in OMB. The White House press’s wild Tuesday. And: How Mikie Sherrill’s campaign handled attacks over Mamdani.

THE LATEST

So the Epstein files vote sailed through both chambers. Now what? Unanimous consent happened so quickly last night that Sen. Deb Fischer apparently missed it. “Did we vote?” she asked NOTUS. “I’m supportive of it. I hope it’s done.”

Everyone hopes it’s done. But will it ever be? “I assume this shifts the story to some place other than Congress now,” Sen. Jerry Moran said. Assumption or wishful thinking, it is Donald Trump’s problem once again… for now.

“The fact that the approval was done so rapidly in both the House and the Senate leads me to believe the president will sign it quickly,” Sen. Susan Collins said.

There may be a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” aspect to all this. You know, open the lid and it could be your face that gets a little melted.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has been a key Democrat advocating the party seize the Epstein issue for its own, found himself arguing that live text message advice between Jeffrey Epstein and U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett during a hearing with Michael Cohen was simply “taking a call from a constituent.” Republicans tried — and failed — on Tuesday to censure Plaskett and strip her of committee assignments over what they claimed was her apparent friendship with Epstein.

The point is, there’s a lot of names in those files, and a lot of awkward spinning from all sides to come as more are released.

“We’ll see if there’s anything new, but I don’t know what,” Sen. John Hoeven said after the Senate vote, saying what everyone is thinking.

Open tabs: Trump Said to Authorize C.I.A. Plans for Covert Action in Venezuela (NYT); Mexican president rejects Trump’s offer of military intervention against cartels (Politico); Meta wins US case that threatened split with WhatsApp and Instagram (FT); House Votes to Reprimand Rep. García Over Succession Scheme (NOTUS)

From the Hill

NOTUS scoop: OMB’s rescissions smackdown. In July, Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, one of the 12 appropriations “cardinals” in Congress, tried to steal some power over the purse back for the legislative branch by slipping a provision into a national security funding bill, NOTUS’ Oriana González reports. He wanted to eliminate the White House’s “pocket rescissions” authority — a move where the executive branch uses the calendar to rescind appropriations not paid out at the end of the fiscal year.

Díaz-Balart had a problem: Russ Vought. Vought personally reached out and then rallied the troops to kill the provision, Oriana reports. A source familiar told her that Republican appropriators were pressured by the White House to not support the bill if the provision remained.

BTW, the STOCK Act — and whether it’s working — is getting a hearing in the House today. This is a fun one because, as NOTUS has reported over and over and over and over again, lawmakers keep violating this federal ethics law they are now evaluating.

From the White House

Not a normal day for the press corps: The White House press pool’s emails blew up yesterday with frustration over the morning background note on Trump’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that didn’t mention dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.

The foreign pool reporter Tuesday, Nadia Bilbassy, is a reporter from the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news outlet and president of the long-established White House Foreign Press Group.

It all comes back to a long-brewing but under-the-radar civil war between two foreign press groups under the White House Correspondents’ Association: the WHFPG and the newer White House Foreign Media Group, created this year amid complaints that the WHFPG was denying new foreign reporters access.

“We want common sense. But right now, there’s no common sense at all around the foreign press,” a member of the White House Foreign Media Group told us.

“They always wanted to drag us into the mud, always. And it’s pathetic,” Bilbassy told Jasmine, defending her group’s strict vetting process.

Will there ever be unity between the two groups? “No, absolutely not,” Bilbassy said.

The WHCA has not weighed in. Nor has it weighed in on the other attacks on the media yesterday.

The White House defended Trump calling a Bloomberg reporter “piggy” to MS NOW. Trump also threatened ABC’s broadcasting license after Mary Bruce asked MBS about Khashoggi. Bloomberg responded: “Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favor.” ABC News did not respond to an inquiry from NOTUS.

From the campaign trail

Zo-who? “We just didn’t take the bait,” Alex Ball, campaign manager for New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill said at an election postmortem hosted yesterday by Third Way, when asked how the campaign deflected Republican efforts to make Zohran Mamdani an issue. The GOP has said New York City voters gave them a perfect national boogeyman, but Ball said the mayor-elect was not a needle mover in the state, which is literally connected to NYC by bridges and tunnels.

“People can choose whether to engage with it or not, but we didn’t hear it on the ground,” Ball said, per NOTUS’ Alex Roarty.

NEW ON NOTUS

DOGE cuts as a campaign issue: “If you care about North Carolina as a purple state, and as a state that could swing presidential elections, the House makeup and the Senate makeup, these conversations that we’re having about the people who have lost their jobs are going to be economic stories,” said Brianna Clarke-Schwelm, executive director of the North Carolina Global Health Alliance.

North Carolina’s Research Triangle was among the regions hardest hit by DOGE’s cuts, NOTUS’ Christa Dutton reports.

The White House’s plan for the Education Department: The Labor, Interior, State and Health and Human Services departments will all oversee some programs currently administered by the Department of Education as it winds down operations, NOTUS’ Adora Brown reports. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, said in a statement announcing the changes.

Texas’ new congressional map struck down: In a 2-1 decision, a federal panel of judges found that Texas Republicans likely engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering when they dismantled “coalition districts” across the state and replaced them with single-race-majority districts. State officials are expected to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

More: Dems Condemn Trump’s Warm Welcome for MBS, by Hamed Ahmadi and Mark Alfred

NOT US

• Trump’s Eye-Popping Postelection Windfall, by Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker for The Atlantic
  
• Congress wants to release all Epstein files. Trump worries that won’t be enough. By Dasha Burns for Politico
  
• How the Conflict in Sudan Became a Humanitarian Catastrophe, by Isaac Chotiner for The New Yorker

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