Promises Kept? The protest movement of 2020 and the riots that sometimes accompanied it were a key part of the MAGA campaign message last year. Donald Trump’s argument was that the unrest was due to Democratic leadership refusing to confront a threat for fear of political ramifications.
This weekend, top Republican leaders unified behind Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, characterizing it as making good on the promise to do things differently. “One of our core principles is maintaining peace through strength,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday. “We do that on foreign affairs and domestic affairs as well.”
Gavin Newsom called the deployment “purposely inflammatory.” Democratic governors backed him up in a statement calling it “an alarming abuse of power.”
Trump, for his part, promised more of the same in the coming days. “We’re going to have troops everywhere,” he said before departing for Camp David Sunday afternoon. “We’re not going to let this happen to our country.”
The Italian Job. Sometimes, one sentence really gets the job done: “The nonprofit Aspen Institute is sending lawmakers — and their spouses — to a Lake Como villa owned by the Rockefeller Foundation, where the members learn about food insecurity, climate change and artificial intelligence,” NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wild and Anna Kramer report.
Let’s start with the National Lampoon’s European Vacation stuff. “They put us on a small house boat and took us over across the lake to a little villa, if you will, and the restaurant there. You talk about Italian, it was Italian,” Rep. Randy Weber, who was a villa guest in April, said.
His wife went, too: “She got to go into the little town there and try not only their cooking class but also got to try their gelato, if you know what that is.”
A sampling of lawmakers who have been in the gelato’s vicinity, according to disclosure forms: Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Bill Cassidy, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Dick Durbin, Chris Coons, Peter Welch and John Cornyn. Reps. include Adam Smith, Glenn Ivey, Kat Cammack, August Pfluger, Neal Dunn and Jim Himes. Former Rep. Charlie Dent, working for Aspen, is the trip’s liaison.
The money part: Since 2023, around 50 lawmakers plus their companions have taken this trip with costs ranging between $10k-$20k per couple. Why pay this much for American lawmakers to speak to primarily American energy policy advocates, about the same things they do every day at their D.C. jobs?
Because you can only really talk about the issues at an Italian lake house, apparently: “It’s one of the few opportunities we have to actually work with our colleagues across the aisle on topics of great interest and importance,” House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris said of the Lake Como trips.
What to know about rescissions in the House. Moderates, not conservatives, are going to be Speaker Mike Johnson’s obstacle toward fulfilling the president’s rescissions request, NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz report. But will moderates actually act on their concerns?
Rep. Tom Cole calls himself “a big supporter” of PEPFAR, for example. But on the rescissions package that cuts it? “Right now, I’m going to have an up or down choice. In that case, I’m gonna vote for it. And we’ll see what we can do later on in the process to correct anything we think went too far.”
Then again, there’s Elon Musk’s shifting power. The billionaire’s feud with Trump has injected a degree of uncertainty into the whip operation.
Not Leaving Abortion to The States, Actually. The House-passed reconciliation bill could force state officials to choose between maintaining abortion accessibility and ensuring that residents maintain their health care coverage. For people getting insurance through the ACA, the provision could effectively nullify state laws requiring abortion coverage in insurance plans.
The language says that health plans that cover abortion services cannot receive federally funded cost-sharing reductions at all, a significant step farther than current rules banning those federal cost-sharing funds from being used for abortion coverage.
This is a feature, not a bug. “I read the [Dobbs] decision by the Supreme Court very carefully. Us and the states — us being federal — are equally empowered to protect life,” Rep. Chris Smith told NOTUS’ Oriana González.
Exclusive: New Medicaid-Focused Ads Target Senators. Protect Our Care, the group behind a $10 million campaign to prevent the Medicaid cuts in the reconciliation bill, is up with new streaming ads targeting Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, Collins, Thom Tillis, Capito and Jim Justice. This is the ad targeted at Collins.
Double Exclusive: New Caucus Alert. House Democrats have organized a new caucus of military veterans to respond to Trump. It’s aptly called the Democratic Veterans Caucus. It comes as the VoteVets PAC makes a push to get more veterans to run for office as Democrats.
What about the existing bipartisan veterans caucuses? “Have you seen them do anything?” Democratic Veterans Caucus co-chair Rep. Ted Lieu told NOTUS’ John T. Seward, who has the exclusive on the new group.
ICYMI: Anthony Armstrong, who was one of Musk’s most senior allies in the federal government, left the Office of Personnel Management in April, NOTUS’ Anna Kramer and Violet Jira learned. He’s yet another of Musk’s highly positioned recruits to exit the government.
Week Ahead
The president’s new restrictions on travelers from 19 countries goes into effect today.
The New Jersey gubernatorial primary is Tuesday.
Trump is scheduled to visit Ft. Bragg in North Carolina Tuesday.
Trump’s cabinet hits the Hill. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, NIH Dir. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be before either the House or Senate appropriations committees.
The Congressional Baseball Game is Wednesday evening.
New On NOTUS
- ‘It’s Everybody vs. David Hogg’: A Leaked Recording Leaves Democrats Fuming: Party leaders are accusing DNC Vice Chair David Hogg of leaking a private call that exposed a deep rift between himself and the organization’s leadership.
- A Devastating Livestock Parasite Is Heading to the U.S.: Congress has done little to stop it.
Hakeem Jeffries Would Rather Not Talk About Musk vs. Trump: He was asked multiple times about his take on Trump and Musk’s feud
Not Us
- The Plastic Surgery Procedure Booming Among Washington Men, by Joanna Weiss for Politico
- Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people, by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel and Scott Dance for The Washington Post
Army preparing for largest military parade on the capital’s streets in decades, featuring 7 million pounds of hardware, by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky and Zachary Cohen for CNN
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