Today’s notice: Trump unplugged. A progressive group remakes itself around the AI issue. “I’m glad I’m not on the ballot, I know that,” a Republican senator tells us. Missouri’s lines are still not drawn. And: The Secret Service hires polygraph vendors.
THE LATEST
If the president speaks and there’s no camera around, does it make a sound? At the White House yesterday, Donald Trump debuted the home’s new helipad, the construction of which he’d closely supervised. A ribbon-cutting before Marine One took off for Andrews and the president’s trip to New York was a classic Trump 2.0 moment — the president showing off one of his legacy projects on the White House lawn and talking about it. Except basically no one saw and no one could hear what he said because there was a loud helicopter running behind him and no TV mics.
Capturing the sights and sounds of moments like that is the job of the TV pool. But the outlets who make up that unit are boycotting Trump after he kicked CNN, MS NOW and Politico out of the White House. Now comes the truly weirdest part of the Trump presidency, when the president who knows the most about how to be on TV has no TV cameras around.
Trending
Our Ben T.N. Mause was at the White House yesterday to see who showed up and who was allowed in. Wid Lyman, a senior correspondent for Border Hawk News, told Ben it didn’t feel like a normal day walking into the complex, even for reporters who don’t often experience Trump’s ire.
“You know, who’s next?” Lyman said, speaking for himself and not his outlet. “There’s a little bit of that in the back of your head.” The president’s frustration with the coverage from some outlets was understandable from Lyman’s perspective. But he’s still nervous about what Trump’s ban could mean for the future.
“If you don’t have that camera front and center from a nonpartisan organization, then you’re totally beholden to whatever the White House films and puts out,” Lyman said. “Which is the ultimate fear, right?”
Speaking of: The White House launched “Trump TV” last night, a 24/7 streaming channel of clips from the president’s second term. The administration insists this is not state TV but rather “a livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered,” per a spokesperson. The stream of the supposedly undercovered moments began with a replay of the inauguration.
More: Venezuelan DoorDash Driver Recounts Being Shot by an ICE Officer • Some Midwest Republicans Are Calling to End the Iran War to Ease Fuel Prices • Trump and Mamdani Focus on Housing at Their New York Meetup
Open tabs:
- GOP’s war for eyeballs (Axios)
- He spent 11 months inside DOGE. Now he wants to set the record straight. (WaPo)
- In Trump, Xi Sees ‘Rare Window’ to Convince Taiwan That Resistance Is Futile (WSJ)
- Wall Street Is Growing Skeptical of the Data Center Boom (NYT)
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
First on The Sun: Working Families Party pivots to AI resistance. The progressive party is reorienting itself around the rapidly growing skepticism of artificial intelligence, our Alex Roarty reports first today. “We believe that if we’re in a moment for a political realignment, the issue of AI tech might be able to open up that realignment for us,” said Maurice Mitchell, WFP’s national director. What the WFP wants: a “pause” on AI development and a federal program to help with AI-related job losses. The group said it will use AI policy stances to determine which candidates it supports moving forward.
Republicans come to grips with economic reality: “I’m glad I’m not on the ballot, I know that,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) told The Washington Sun’s Al Weaver amid the steady stream of rising gas prices, interest rates and stubborn inflation. “It’s hard to convince people the economy’s doing great when theirs isn’t.” Al finds Republican lawmakers, including those on the ballot, have been getting an earful back home from constituents frustrated by rising household costs.
Trump policies are not helping, said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota (who is, to be fair, not at risk of losing). He said ranchers reeling from White House moves to slash import tariffs sound “like a relative punched them in the gut.”
FROM THE HILL
Republican senator seeks Don Jr. subpoena: Last week, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding party benefactor, “It just stinks. It’s corruption, I don’t like it.” This week, he’s asking the Judiciary Committee to subpoena the president’s son to ask “legitimate questions about foreign access to members of a sitting president’s family,” according to a letter he sent to the committee’s chair and ranking member, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). Curtis also wants Hunter Biden called in as part of an overall “investigation into the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit.”
FROM THE REDISTRICTING WARS
Missouri keeps going: A federal appeals court ruling in favor of the state’s Republican-drawn U.S. House map possibly means yet another Supreme Court moment for Missouri, The Sun’s Manuela Silva and Kadia Goba report. News is moving so fast here that Kadia was the one to tell Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the Democrat whose Kansas City-area district is due to be eliminated if the map goes through, about the court ruling. “This sounds so crazy because the ballots have already been printed. Some people have voted,” he said.
NEW ON THE WASHINGTON SUN
Secret Service turns to vendors for hiring screening: Secret Service leaders are under pressure to speed up hiring, but have publicly recoiled from moves to lower recruitment standards like at the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies, The Sun’s Derek Hakwins reports. That’s led the agency to try to find other ways to bring in new agents more quickly, like contracts to outsource recruit polygraph testing for the first time ever.
The contractors have polygraphed hundreds of candidates across several hiring events in recent months, charging more than $2,000 per exam. The USSS deputy director, Matthew Quinn, says the contractors are up to agency standards and called the arrangement “a needed force multiplier.” Derek reports that the move has caused some alarm in the tight-knit community of USSS polygraph examiners, seen by many as among the elites of the business.
More: She Received a New D.C. Medical ID. It Sent Her to an Adult Website. • Flights Resume After Massive Disruption From a Severed Telecom Cable • Federal Reserve Official Says Fighting Inflation Likely to Be ‘Painful’
NOT US
- A populist revival in Iowa, by Peter Slevin for The New Yorker
- ICE is targeting Haitians with new intensity. Now some are fleeing the United States for Canada. By Nick Miroff for The Atlantic
- Bill Pulte Scrutinized Mortgages of Trump’s Political Rivals—and Todd Blanche, by Sadie Gurman and Josh Dawsey for The Wall Street Journal
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The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr and Andrew Burton.
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