Today’s notice: The Senate’s top Democrat talks to NOTUS. A scoopy follow-up to one of our fundraising scoops from last year. A look at how the mass-deportation agenda has changed federal departments. A bumpy ride for Iran-focused legislation in Congress. The wealth of Utah’s Hill delegation. And: Making Tax Day Great Again.

THE LATEST

Chuck Schumer speaks: “It does not worry me,” the Senate minority leader told NOTUS’ Igor Bobic yesterday as the number of Democratic primary candidates running on opposing his leadership bid next year remains relatively high.

He was upbeat in the interview, telling NOTUS that his caucus has sloughed off the doldrums of 2025. “I feel like we’re going to take back the Senate,” Schumer said. “If you had to ask me last year, I would have said no.”

He is not the only one saying it. This week, the Cook Political Report moved several Senate races in Schumer’s direction. The chamber is, if the stars align, actually in play.

Last year ended with the petering out of a shutdown that led people to question whether Democrats had a clue about how to respond to Donald Trump. This year, the Department of Homeland Security shutdown has united the party in a way that plausibly allows Schumer to say something like this: “We had a strategy, and we stuck to it all along.”

But Schumer still has to answer questions from both sides of his party. Progressives are convinced he’s a problem. Some centrists are worried he’s a problem, too. But those are concerns for early 2027. Today, Schumer has a unifying theory of the case: “A whole bunch of our candidates are young, some are old, some are more liberal, some are more moderate. Our North Star is winning the Senate.”

Open tabs: DOJ Seeks to Erase Proud Boys’ and Oath Keepers’ Seditious Conspiracy Convictions (NOTUS); Vought to Call for ‘Paradigm Shifting Investments’ in Defense (Bloomberg); Europe Is Accelerating a NATO Fallback Plan in Case Trump Pulls Out (WSJ); Trump Administration Issues First ‘Weaponization’ Report, Claiming Bias Under Biden (NYT)

From K Street

NOTUS follow-up: Still caught in Better Mousetrap Digital. The NRSC, the Mississippi Republican Party and the campaigns of Sen. Rick Scott and some GOP House members are among the groups still paying big money to the firm run by Jack Daly, according to public disclosures.

NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal reported last year on Daly’s 2023 guilty plea to charges of defrauding thousands of Republican donors. After his story was published, several prominent Republican clients fled the firm: “Can confirm payments were stopped,” an RNC spox told him. The groups still paying Better Mousetrap did not respond to requests for comment.

From the agencies

The great diversion: The Trump administration has redirected resources from at least a half-dozen programs or accounts to pay for and staff its mass-deportation agenda, NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports. And that’s without congressional input.

Diverted resources include … funds from the State Department intended to counter foreign election interference; senior staff at FEMA; DHS’s budget for an office focused on weapons of mass destruction; and a training program for prison guards.

All of this is on top of the $75 billion surge in funding that Republicans gave ICE last year.

“As somebody who joined DHS in 2005, shortly after it was formed, this feels like the biggest reorienting of federal resources toward a single end since 9/11,” said Theresa Brown, a former DHS official in the Obama and Bush administrations. “We’re not creating a new department, but we are telling the entire federal government: This is now your No. 1 mission.”

DHS, the DOJ and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

From the Hill

Heated Rivalry: The beef between Senate and House Republicans is revving up for another round this week, as the upper chamber prepares to push its own agenda once again.

Senate Republicans are confident, NOTUS’ Al Weaver and Reese Gorman report, that their limited reconciliation bill, which only contains funds for ICE and Customs and Border Protection for three years, will remain “skinny” despite calls from their House colleagues to beef it up with more of the president’s priorities. If the Senate ignores the lower chamber again, some members said they may resort to blocking other legislation.

“They can’t jam us, because we’re about to blow up their shit,” is how Rep. Anna Paulina Luna put it.

Democrats also plan to force war powers votes, and Republicans don’t know if they have enough votes to block them, NOTUS’ Joe Gould and Kadia Goba report.

Votes on supplemental funding for the war are also unclear. A growing number of Republicans have demanded more information from the White House before opening the purse strings, and Joe and Kadia report that it’s unclear how many votes the Trump administration can count on at this point.

THE BIG ONE

The politics of April 15: Republicans are leaning hard into Tax Day this year, hoping to showcase their signature legislation, the so-called “one big, beautiful bill,” and its changes to the federal tax code.

On paper, there is a lot to celebrate — the average refund is higher so far this year, and no taxes on tips or overtime are wins that even some Republicans thought could be dangerously populist.

So why are Democrats excited? “I kinda want to text them this,” one national Democratic strategist said facetiously, before dropping the Admiral Ackbar “it’s a trap!” GIF into the chat.

The OBBB has never really been popular, and it remains unpopular now. A new poll from the Democratic messaging group Navigator Research found that independents have recoiled — a net -18 point view of the OBBB among the group in February has ballooned to -42. A Fox News poll found that more Americans think they are paying too much in taxes after the law passed than before it did.

There’s another message out there this Tax Day. Emily attended the Patriotic Millionaires’ symposium yesterday, a panel featuring tax-code reformers like Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen. “There are some members of our caucus who don’t want to increase taxes on millionaires,” he told the crowd. “You know, I think that they’re wrong, obviously, and misguided, and that this would be, obviously, something that should bring us all together.”

The group plans a big rally at the Capitol tomorrow with progressive groups and the AFL-CIO.

But nobody’s got anything on this Tax Day pitch: “How can Americans really organize a national tax revolt? Won’t we all end up in prison?” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted yesterday, a follow-up to her recent discovery of a sovereign-citizen-esque legal theory that “99% of Americans are not legally required to file and pay income taxes.”

NEW ON NOTUS

Utah’s congressional delegation is split down the middle when it comes to members’ personal wealth: Three of Utah’s six federal lawmakers have a negative median net worth, while the other three have a median net worth of at least $1 million, according to an analysis of the lawmakers’ most recent personal finance disclosures.

NOTUS’ Manuela Silva and Helen Huiskes break down the lawmakers’ finances in the latest installment of Capitol Gains, our look at wealth in Congress.

More: House Scandals Show How Hard It Is to Get Accountability on Capitol Hill, by Daniella Diaz

Maine Lawmakers Pass the First Statewide Ban on Large Data Centers, by Torrie Herrington

NOT US

• ‘Dark money’ is fueling both sides of Virginia’s redistricting campaign, by Elizabeth Beyer for Cardinal News
  
• A Divided America Processes a War That Trump Has Scarcely Explained, by Jack Healy, Pooja Salhotra, Jazmine Ulloa, Anna Griffin, Emily Cataneo and Ruth Igielnik for The New York Times
  
• The Kennedy Center wants to show that the building really needs a renovation, by Steven Sloan for The Associated Press

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.