Today’s notice: The House has a very full calendar ahead, and a new member to swear in. Trump keeps quiet (relatively). Chuck Schumer is back in the doghouse. And: What did anyone learn from all this?
THE LATEST
All over but the shouting: There will surely be a lot of shouting. But it seems like the House will pass the Senate shutdown deal with relatively little drama (for Republicans) later this week. The Senate passed the bill and sent it to the House last night, following a tight 60-40 vote.
“A complete and total win for the House Freedom Caucus” is how that group described the deal in talking points distributed to members and obtained by NOTUS’ Reese Gorman. This is great news for Mike Johnson, who wasn’t planning on relying on Democratic votes to pass the deal. The plan is for the House to return tomorrow and wrap this thing up.
Trending
On a call with his conference Monday, Johnson reminded members he didn’t cut a deal with Democrats like John Thune did to guarantee a Senate vote on an Affordable Care Act subsidy extensions bill. So no reason for that to get in the way of unified Republican support, either.
Democrats are trying to change the narrative. Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership team is actively whipping “no” votes, a senior leadership aide told NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz.
Open tabs: SCOTUS to hear Mississippi mail-in ballot case (Mississippi Today); FDA removes warning on menopause drug (AP); SCOTUS turns down same-sex marriage case (NOTUS); Against Mamdani’s Wishes, Gen Z Councilman Plans to Challenge Jeffries (NYT)
From the Hill
The to-do list is long. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise says he’s warning rank-and-file lawmakers to “be ready to work late hours — late-night votes, late-night committee meetings to make up” lost time from the shutdown as the House prepares to return, NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz and Avani Kalra report.
Not everyone loved the break. “By keeping Congress in recess for over a month, the speaker is wasting our precious time in the majority that we could otherwise use for hearings to uncover malfeasance that happened during the Biden administration and for obvious things that Americans want, like releasing the Epstein files and passing laws like Country of Origin Labeling for Beef,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a big Johnson critic, told NOTUS.
Johnson told reporters yesterday that he would swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva ahead of a vote on the deal to open the government.
From the White House
“The deal is very good,” Donald Trump said yesterday afternoon of the Senate’s shutdown off-ramp. “Based on everything I’m hearing, they haven’t changed anything, and we have support from enough Democrats, and we’re going to be opening up our country.”
Trump said he would abide by the deal’s instructions to reverse federal workforce layoffs. The White House had not previously weighed in on RIFs being part of negotiations, though one official told Jasmine they were “not surprised” that it made the final language.
Overall, the White House has been uncharacteristically quiet. “We’ve signaled to the people that matter in this legislative process that the White House approves of this text, and it should continue to move forward until it gets here,” one senior White House official told Jasmine.
Also uncharacteristic? Ahead of the Senate vote, Trump wasn’t gloating that Democrats caved.
THE BIG ONE
Was this always going to end in tears? Chuck Schumer is back in the doghouse. He voted against the shutdown deal, and that has apparently earned him zero cred.
Democratic leadership is trying to help him out. The NOTUS Hill team reports that Jeffries said “yes and yes” when asked by reporters whether Schumer should stay on as Democratic leader and was effective. But everyone seems mad.
As in, even Third Way came out against the deal. “To paraphrase Bill Clinton, one of America’s most pugnacious Democratic centrists, we should have been ready to fight ‘until the last dog dies,’” the group’s president, Jonathan Cowan, said in a statement.
Was this all predictable? On Day 1 of the government shutdown, we told you about a rally outside the Capitol where Democratic base groups came to praise Schumer and elected Democrats for choosing to fight.
There was just one problem: At the beginning, middle and now apparent end of this shutdown, no one has been able to articulate what Democrats should do about those in their ranks that didn’t want the fight and the role they might play in the eventual end. (“I’m hoping that that’s not something that we need to deal with, because we’re going to win,” David Kass of Americans for Tax Fairness told us two weeks ago.)
Now they have to deal with it. Kass called the deal “unconscionable” in a statement yesterday.
Oh, how quickly things change. Indivisible launched a primary program Monday. One of the criteria for endorsement: Candidates must publicly promise not to support Schumer for leader.
NEW ON NOTUS
Trump’s 2020 pardons spark 2028 fears: “It really is about 2026 and 2028. It is an acknowledgement that laws were broken on his behalf. You wouldn’t issue pardons otherwise. But he’s also signaling, ‘I’ve got your back. Democrats are not allowed to win, and we’re doubling down on that,’” Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat on the five-person Georgia State Election Board, told NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery.
‘Grotesque’: “Rep. Luna’s decision to roll out the red carpet for members of a far-right, Holocaust revisionist, Putin-loving party is grotesque,” Rep. Dan Goldman, a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, said of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announcing plans to host Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in Washington.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s big ask: The convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate is preparing to ask Trump for a commutation, according to an email obtained by the House Judiciary Committee and shared with NOTUS’ Amelia Benavides-Colón. The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, sent an angry letter to Trump over the weekend, decrying what he claimed was the administration’s preferential treatment toward Maxwell in prison.
“The deference and servility to Ms. Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch,’” Raskin wrote.
More: Trump Says Longtime Ally Marjorie Taylor Greene Has ‘Lost Her Way,’ by Tyler Spence
Christine Pelosi Decides Against Running for Mother’s Congressional Seat, by Tyler Spence
NOT US
- America’s cybersecurity defenses are cracking, by Lauren Feiner for The Verge
- D.C. plastic surgeons see surge in “Mar‑a‑Lago face” requests from Trump insiders, by Mimi Montgomery for Axios
- A MAGA Senator Promised Hope for a Dying Ohio Mill. Then Reality Set In. By Billy Witz for The New York Times
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