Shocker in NYC: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani stunned former governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday by jumping out to a lead so large that Cuomo conceded the city’s Democratic mayoral primary before the night was done. The next big question for New York is whether Cuomo chooses to mount a campaign in the general election anyway after such a clean defeat. The City, NOTUS’ partner in New York, unpacks how Mamdani came out on top. The other big question? What this means for who runs in — and who wins — Democratic campaigns, with a 33-year-old democratic socialist showing out against one of the party’s last remaining dynasties.
“This is the first big generational fight in the party but it won’t be the last.” Run for Something’s Amanda Litman told NOTUS’ Alex Roarty.
Less of a shocker: Anthony Weiner face-planted in his city council race. Now we wait for Trump’s Truth Social post.
As for Donald Trump, the confusion of war, the questionable hyperbole, the dismissing of intelligence reports — it’s all back.
First, the leaked report of a classified damage assessment found Iran’s nuclear program is still viable, CNN and The New York Times reported. Reports on the report did not prompt the White House to change its tune.
“This alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X.
Counter (our own) intelligence: If you’re counting, that’s the second time the White House has dismissed its own intelligence officials in recent weeks — the first time being when Trump said he didn’t “care” what his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March.
Assessors in waiting: Congress was supposed to be briefed yesterday on the attack, but late in the day that was postponed to Thursday in the Senate. Most Republicans told NOTUS’ John T. Seward that they didn’t see any “daylight” between the president and his top intelligence official, though not everyone is convinced by Gabbard.
“I still have the same concerns about her as I had back when she began,” Sen. Jerry Moran told John. “I was hoping she would demonstrate her worth or her value, and I’m still waiting to see if that’s the case.”
With much to lose, China sat on Israel-Iran war’s sidelines as U.S. flexed (WaPo); Trump Administration Restaffs National Security Council (Bloomberg); Trump Set for Win on Higher NATO Spending at Summit (WSJ)
From the Hill
Long, Hot Summer: “We do plan on staying in session until we get the job done, so let’s hope the job is shorter and not longer,” Speaker Mike Johnson told NOTUS in a brief interview Tuesday. Johnson said his members won’t be jammed up against it by Senate bill writers — if this thing goes long, it goes long.
“If the product is dramatically different, then we won’t be able to meet the deadline, so I’m not going to force my members to do something that we haven’t fully processed,” he said.
But the House is looking to do some jamming, too. Sixteen vulnerable House Republican moderates sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Johnson warning they’d vote against any reconciliation bill if it included a cut to the Medicaid provider tax, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports.
That tax is where the Senate’s O.G. “don’t cut Medicaid” guy has landed, too. “They’ve got to fix this hospital piece of it,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS’ Helen Huiskes, referring to the provider tax cut. “And if they do that, then I think that’d be fine.”
THE BIG ONE
A Marginalized DOJ? “DHS is taking over DOJ. We’re allowing people with access to run rampant and treat what were quasi-independent institutions as arms of the policy staff of the White House,” a former high-ranking FBI official tells NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery.
The upshot: Trump’s mass deportation plan is remaking federal law enforcement behind the scenes.
“The issue is that Stephen Miller is basically bullying Pam Bondi. The DOJ has been weakened,” a former high-ranking DEA official told Jose.
At the FBI, former officials are worried about experienced agents getting taken off the field to help out ICE. “State and local police aren’t equipped to look at SVR [Russian intelligence] officers or a pattern of fraudulent activity by a health care company that’s overbilling across the nation,” a former official said.
At ATF: “We would get calls needing 20 people tomorrow, which sounds like nothing for ICE, but that’s like an entire field office,” a recently departed employee said. “You would need to assign every special agent in a region to cover the ICE stuff. So then, no one is doing gun investigations.”
NEW ON NOTUS
The MAHA ‘mistake’: At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled by Democrats over the shoddy citations NOTUS discovered in the Make America Healthy Again Commission report. “All of the foundational assertions in that report are accurate,” Kennedy said, adding that “some of the citations were messed up for one day” before being corrected. (They were part of the published report for at least a week before we found them.)
A new face of Oversight: Democrats had two longtime (and older) House members and two second-termers with internet savvy to choose from in the race for ranking member on Oversight, one of the most prominent gigs for a party in the minority. They chose the 47-year-old former mayor of Long Beach, California, Rep. Robert Garcia.
War Powers, remember them? Johnson told reporters yesterday he thinks the War Powers Act of 1973 is unconstitutional. He’s not the only one to say it. A look at the debate over whether there should even be a debate over Congress’s involvement in the latest American military action: “If it went to the Supreme Court?” Rep. Michael McCaul told NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt of the war powers resolution, “I don’t know.”
More: A Bipartisan Pair of Lawmakers May Punt Their Iran War Powers Resolution; Democrats Latch Onto Mitch McConnell’s ‘Heartless’ Medicaid Comments; Court Orders Trump Administration to Return Another Man Deported to El Salvador
NOT US
- ‘Big Balls’ No Longer Works for the US Government, by Jake Lahut, Makena Kelly, Vittoria Elliott and Zoë Schiffer for Wired
- Lawmakers bet millions on pharma stocks as Trump targets industry, by Amanda Chu for Politico
- We texted 1,000 Americans about Trump’s Iran strikes. This is how they responded. By Washington Post staff
NOTUS LIVE EVENT
You’re invited to a NOTUS Live Event! As the U.S. faces big questions about how to protect democracy at home and its leadership abroad, NOTUS will convene an urgent conversation about the role of our military and Congress.
Mapping the New Global Order
Thursday, July 10, 2025, 8 to 9:30 a.m. ET
Washington, D.C.
Thank you for reading! If you like 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.org. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter at newsletters@notus.org.