Today’s notice: Capitol Hill misses Trump. The most redistricted man in America. Red states face a reckoning. Plus: A tension point for the DNC.
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Friendly fire. “The AFGE would not want us to cut a deal and then have Trump fire a bunch of people next week. If we cut a deal and then he did that, they would come to us and say, ‘What the hell were you guys thinking?’” Sen. Tim Kaine told NOTUS’ Oriana González yesterday after the American Federation of Government Employees sent out a statement saying it’s time for Democrats to end the shutdown.
Kaine admitted he had not talked to AFGE, the largest union representing federal workers, about exactly what that meant. His read was that the union would absolutely not want Democrats to stop demanding checks on Donald Trump in exchange for their votes on a spending bill. As in, the union would not want Democrats like him to cave, but rather to see Republicans cave because Democrats like him are fighting.
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Turns out that was not the right read. Oriana talked to AFGE’s legislative director, Daniel Horowitz, and he said the House-passed CR — the very thing all the fuss has been about this whole time — was “an acceptable option.” To be sure, this is a significant political shift for the union, which up to now has blamed both sides for the shutdown. The new position is, effectively, asking Senate Democrats to do exactly what John Thune, Mike Johnson and Trump want them to do. (For the record, Kaine chalked AFGE’s new push up to “internal politics” at the union.)