Today’s notice: August is close on the calendar but far away on the Senate floor. Trump brings the Epstein story back with him from Scotland. An exclusive look at the DSCC’s plan to poke Joni Ernst. And: Climate change policy goes out with a whimper.
THE LATEST
‘No sign of how or when it will end’: That’s NOTUS’ Hill team describing the state of the fight over nominations in the Senate right now. But it could also describe the Senate session itself, currently grinding along despite the calendar getting dangerously close to that planned August recess.
Will there be a deal? In normal times, the minority and majority party would make a deal to clear some outstanding nominees quickly so everyone can skedaddle. Those talks are underway, our team reports, but keep in mind this is a Senate with a lot of raw feelings. Democrats are still looking to get something in return for helping their Republican colleagues out, Sen. Dick Durbin told NOTUS.
Will Republicans even want a deal? There are more than a hundred nominees outstanding. Is there a number less than that Donald Trump will accept? “I don’t know that we’ve settled on just exactly what that is,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.
There’s a little disarray on the Republican side. Some senators are pitching various numbers of nominees they find acceptable to meet the spirit of Trump’s request and get their recess, but those numbers are different. For Sen. Mike Lee, it is zero. He has said repeatedly the session should go on until all the nominees are cleared.
Open Tabs: Dems Clash on Senate Floor Over How to Take On Trump (NYT); Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove (AP); Starmer: UK will recognize Palestinian state unless Israel agrees to ceasefire (AP); US, China tariff truce holds for now (Reuters); Maxwell offers to testify before Congress if she is pardoned (ABC)
From the White House
Big dog’s off the leash: White House officials are really trying to stop making news about Jeffrey Epstein, with Jasmine observing that aides have become more selective of who inside the building is allowed to talk to reporters about the ongoing saga (or, as NBC News reported, limiting Epstein privileges only to those with “high-level vetting”).
But the newsmaker-in-chief is gonna do what he’s gonna do. Tuesday during an Air Force One gaggle Trump roiled up the internet once again when he explained that his relationship with Epstein ended because Epstein kept hiring employees away from Mar-a-Lago. Specifically, young women who worked at the spa.
A reporter asked if Virginia Giuffre was one of those women. “I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her,” Trump responded, “and by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
From the campaign trail
Exclusive: Medicaid messaging. While Democratic senators can’t leave the Capitol, their campaign arm is fanning out to ding Republicans for their votes to cut Medicaid in the recently passed budget law. NOTUS’ Helen Huiskes reports that a series of August DSCC events tied to Medicaid’s 60th anniversary are planned in Georgia, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire and… Iowa. You’ll recall Sen. Joni Ernst gave Democrats the meme they were looking for with her “Well, we are all going to die” line at a town hall.
Democrats’ other Texas test: The state Legislature is fixing to redistrict many Democrats right off the map, but there’s one who is causing the party problems by staying right where he is. NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz and Riley Rogerson report on Rep. Henry Cuellar’s quest for a 12th term, and the existential crisis it’s causing Texas Dems.
Cuellar is about to go on trial in September for corruption charges, but he’s also on the DCCC’s frontline list. It’s not often that the committee doesn’t want to talk about candidates on that list, but it didn’t respond to a request for comment about Cuellar.
THE BIG ONE
Where’s the climate fight? Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s big step away Tuesday from climate change regulation has not been the resistance rallying cry one might expect.
Some Democrats were at a loss for words: “We’re working on it. I just heard it this morning,” Sen. Mark Kelly told NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer about the EPA’s push to repeal the climate change endangerment finding. “We’ve gotta figure out how to talk about it.”
Others, less so: “Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin are committing the single largest crime against nature in the history of the world,” Green New Deal sponsor Sen. Ed Markey said.
The political landscape has shifted. A poll from the well-respected AP-NORC last month found a significant drop in support for federal spending on green energy tax credits compared to 2022 — “driven mostly by Democrats and independents,” the poll noted.
Why? Energy costs have gone up. “It’s reliable, affordable, clean — in that order,” David Hill of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and an energy politics veteran, told NOTUS’ Anna Kramer.
As for MAGA’s fight… it has The Heritage Foundation written all over it. A Department of Energy report undermining the scientific consensus on climate change was published alongside the EPA’s announcement Tuesday. Among the authors was Roy Spencer, who wrote two chapters in a recently released Heritage-backed book titled “Cooling the Climate Hysteria.” Another was Ross McKitrick, who spoke at the Heritage event launching that book, Anna noticed.
NEW ON NOTUS
7-OH, no: The FDA is calling for restrictions on a derivative of the popular supplement kratom, warning that 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, often sold in high-dose variants over the counter, should be added to the DEA’s list of scheduled drugs. But NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports that pro-kratom advocates in the MAHA movement are treating this as a win because kratom as an herbal supplement will remain unregulated. Kratom tea company owner Soren Shade: “It’s an exceptionally powerful lobbying arm.”
The coming SNAP crisis: Currently, the federal government splits the costs of administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program with the states 50-50. Trump’s recently passed spending bill raises the state’s admin-cost responsibility to 75% starting in Oct. 2026. That could result in tens of millions of dollars in increases for state budgets, NOTUS’ Nuha Dolby reports. “States aren’t going to be able to deal with this, and some states may choose to walk away from SNAP,” Rep. Jim McGovern told Nuha.
Official language: Rep. Carlos Gimenez previously told NOTUS that Trump’s order making English the official language of the U.S. was “the right call.”
Now that the DOJ has shuttered its non-English language resource site, he’s sounding different: “I don’t understand why you’d make an issue out of it,” Gimenez said when NOTUS’ Shifra Dayak told him of the website going dark. “I understand what the president’s trying to do with one language. But, if somebody feels more comfortable, or may speak English but reads Spanish, I don’t have a problem either way.”
More: Youngkin Appointed PAC Donors to Hundreds of State Board Positions, by Amelia Benavides-Colón; Tom Cole’s Anti-Retirement Motivation, by Em Luetkemeyer
NOT US
- Not THAT Geoffrey Epstein, by Kelly Garrity for Politico Playbook Massachusetts
- Trump Is Winning His Trade War. What Will That Mean for the Economy? By Ana Swanson for The New York Times
- Key tribe shuns Deb Haaland in New Mexico governor race, by Russell Contreras for Axios
- Whistleblower: Emil Bove misled lawmakers about case of Mayor Eric Adams, by Perry Stein, Theodoric Meyer and Carol D. Leonnig for The Washington Post
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