Today’s notice: What Wilbur Ross heard at dinner about “Liberation Day.” Congress has a normal one. What a lawyers listserv sounds like now. Everyone wants to be Cory now. But first: elections!
What Do Special Elections Mean Now?
Coming in the next few days: sweeping takes on last night’s special elections that purport to show how they have changed the political map. Reading a lot into a weird election has long been a favorite political pastime, and it reached a fever pitch in 2024, when a great deal of smart money was placed on ignoring the polls in favor of special election results.
Last night brought some of the first closely watched specials of Donald Trump’s second term. Democrats spent a lot in two red Florida districts, overperformed in two red Florida districts but still handily lost to Republicans in those two red Florida districts.
“Democrats always have a structural advantage of fundraising,” Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the NRCC, told NOTUS. “So I think one lesson coming away from this is you’ve got to pay attention to every special election, because they’re all special.”
Indeed. But the big show was in Wisconsin, where despite stunt (and real) $1 million checks from Elon Musk, the candidate Democrats supported won a technically nonpartisan state Supreme Court election.
Veteran populist organizer Kristen Crowell lives in Wisconsin, where she runs her Fair Share America campaign focused on tax policy, and works with both Trump and Kamala Harris voters regularly. “My hunch is this is backfiring on them,” she told NOTUS of Musk’s efforts to help the judicial candidate Republicans wanted. She said even her nonpolitical Facebook groups were full of locals angry that Musk had shown up. Indeed.
But does any of this mean anything for the future of politics? Crowell said it’s “way too early to say.” The number crunchers at Split Ticket put up a deep dive Monday on the difference between a Wisconsin special electorate and a general one. Basically, it found the high-propensity voters Democrats have come to rely on turn out and the low-propensity ones they don’t yet know how to win do not. The reverse is true for the GOP. Not a lot of lessons there.
“I think people are going to do a lot of prognosticating. I’m not sure they should,” Split Ticket’s Lakshya Jain told NOTUS. But he pointed out that once all the numbers come in showing which voters showed up last night, there may in fact be a little something to write home about.
“They do have more value than they did in 2024,” Jain said of this year’s specials. “The types of people who show up in midterms are more like specials than in the presidential elections versus specials.”
—Evan McMorris-Santoro and Violet Jira | Read NOTUS’ wrap on the results.
There’s No Proxy for House Drama
It was a very Friday-looking-Tuesday in the House of Representatives.
Nine Republicans joined Democrats to tank a proposal that would have killed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s discharge petition to allow new parents to vote by proxy. Speaker Mike Johnson then decided that was enough work for the week and effectively turned off the House, as his team figures out how to reject the proposal.
“It was very unfortunate,” a visibly frustrated Johnson said as he left the House chamber. “We’ll regroup and come back and we’ll have to do this again.”
Of course, Johnson could have let the House keep working, but that would have meant Luna’s petition was due for a vote.
The reality is that Luna has shown there’s “a clear majority that wants to give new parents the temporary ability to vote remotely,” NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz, Katherine Swartz and Reese Gorman report. So shutting her down, while expected, brings some less-than-stellar optics for leadership. Luna has simply played this very well, and Democrats are having a great time helping her do it.
Everyone Is Excited for ‘Liberation Day’
The president “is very much of the view that this is the greatest thing in a long time,” Wilbur Ross, Trump’s former commerce secretary, tells NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright of the expected tariff program getting announced today. Ross would know: He dined at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent and others Friday night.
The White House is confident, Jasmine reports, and officials expect major corporations to respond positively with quick announcements on new domestic manufacturing. Expect pro-tariff voices to “blanket the airwaves” this week, a source familiar tells her. They want to own this.
Coincidentally, this is exactly what makes Democrats excited about today.
“I think this is the beginning of the unraveling,” Sen. Mark Warner told NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt.
Read Jasmine’s story. | Read Haley’s story.
Front Page
- First-Term Congressman Sam Liccardo Raises Eye-Popping $1.5 Million: Liccardo is also raising his profile by transferring $110,000 to other Democrats.
- ‘A Period of Frustration’: The CBC Is Looking for New Ways to Disrupt Trump: New ads from the CBC’s political arm go after President Donald Trump over DOGE cuts and economic policies.
- In Trump’s Deportation Push, Lawyers Often Don’t Know Where Their Clients Have Gone: The administration is pulling immigrants off the street and into a network of detention centers.
- Republicans Want to Reshape the Courts to Propel Trump’s Agenda — Even If It Could Cost Them: Republicans are fast-tracking efforts to curb lower federal courts’ powers.
- Top CDC Officials Get a Choice: Move Far Away or Quit: “One critical area of need is in American Indian and Alaskan native communities,” a high-level CDC official was told via email Tuesday.
NOTUS Scoop: Inside the Great Lawyer Listserv Meltdown
Tensions flared in an email chain of top lawyers, NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno scooped, exposing the partisan frustrations that Trump has sowed within the nation’s legal community. An attorney who asked for the support of conservative lawyers and organizations was met with incredulity: One conservative attorney questioned where the outrage was when she and others were the subject of purported “lawfare” for representing Trump.
That’s a Lot of Likes Per Minute (Don’t Make Us Do Math)
At one point yesterday, Sen. Cory Booker’s livestream of his record-breaking talkathon from the Senate floor had more than 325 million likes on TikTok, the kind of viral love Democrats have been craving since, oh, early November last year. NOTUS’ Ursula Perano found that some of Booker’s colleagues think he’s onto something.
“Everyone’s worried about looking cringe,” Sen. Brian Schatz told Ursula. “And Cory just showed the appetite out there is for us to match the energy of the grassroots.”
Booker spoke for 25 hours and four minutes, breaking a record previously held by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” by McKenzie Funk at ProPublica
- An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison by Nick Miroff at The Atlantic
- Waltz and staff used Gmail for government communications, officials say by John Hudson at The Washington Post
Be Social
It was *not* an April Fools’ Day joke.
The House is the best chamber of Congress for many reasons — one reason being how well it, as an institution, represents the Americans who have a breakdown at work and feel the urge to quit their jobs by Tuesday each week
— Haley Byrd Wilt (@byrdinator) April 1, 2025
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