Today’s notice: Why Bondi called Swalwell. What Charlie Kirk’s assassination means for future elections. And: Why public health experts are worried about the Trump admin’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Congo.
THE LATEST
Does everyone’s death threat get investigated? Rep. Eric Swalwell says he got a call from AG Pam Bondi recently asking him to clarify his recent social media posts expressing outrage that her DOJ had not investigated death threats against him and his family.
“I’ll take her at her word that she’s going to look at them,” Swalwell told NOTUS’ Oriana González. “Hopefully there’s some action.” The DOJ did not respond for comment.
Trending
The DOJ is promising bipartisanship. Bondi’s notorious “hate speech” interview on former DOGE aide Katie Miller’s podcast this week included a promise that her department would go after threats against politicians “across the aisle.”
Democrats don’t trust it. They point to the indictment of Rep. LaMonica McIver and the February letter to Rep. Robert Garcia accusing him of making actionable threats against Elon Musk in a CNN interview.
Democrats really don’t know who to trust. “They called the local sheriff; they showed up and were going to arrest me,” Rep. Steven Horsford told Oriana of being denied access to an ICE facility in July. “These are the same people that I’m supposed to call to coordinate security or to do support when I have a town hall.”
Open tabs: DHS arrests 11 NY elected officials inside 26 Federal Plaza (The City); Robert White to challenge Eleanor Holmes Norton (Politico); Mike Pence joins faculty at George Mason (WaPo); Texas Man Charged With Threatening Mamdani (NYT)
From the Hill
Democrats are sounding like they’re going to vote for the contentious language in Republicans’ resolution celebrating Kirk as a “model” for “civil discussion” and someone “always seeking to elevate truth.” The resolution also condemns political violence.
Rep. Tom Suozzi: “I don’t think it’s perfect the way it’s written, but you know what? A young man has been killed … he was assassinated, and that’s a bad thing, and we should say that it’s a bad thing,” he told NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz of his considerations before today’s vote.
Suozzi did clarify that he wasn’t “judging” anyone for voting against it.
Rep. Al Green: “I really think that we should send a message that what happened is not going to be tolerated. We’re all going to stand together against that kind of behavior and against violence,” he told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson.
Rep. Jamie Raskin: “There’s some surplus verbiage in there that we would have left out, but that’s neither here nor there. The basic point is that we all must denounce political violence in every case, wherever it comes from and whoever the victim is.”
From the campaign trail
The Charlie Kirk vote: “What Charlie started was a massive movement — clearly helped President Trump in a big way, probably more than anybody else with the youth vote in 2024,” Joe Mitchell, founder of Run GenZ, which encourages young conservatives to run for elected office, told NOTUS’ Alex Roarty. “And after him being assassinated, that’s going to grow tenfold from a voter-participation standpoint.”
Republicans say they’re seeing an uptick in donations and volunteer sign-ups, and they’re encouraging candidates to focus on young voters. Their hope: Kirk’s assassination will improve the youth vote for the right even more than Donald Trump has.
From the White House
“He’s really let me down,” Trump said of Vladimir Putin regarding his unfulfilled 2024 campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine at a press event with Keir Starmer in the U.K. yesterday.
The other unended war: Trump rejected a reporter’s question about exerting pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel’s campaign in Gaza. He said the release of the remaining Israeli hostages would “certainly help” in influencing Netanyahu to end the war, “but I have to have the hostages back.”
THE BIG ONE
What’s falling through the cracks? Former and current leaders in the U.S. infectious-disease response apparatus say Trump’s White House is behind on acting on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports.
On the ground: “The conversations are happening,” said John Lowe, who co-leads the system of medical facilities equipped to respond to Ebola. “It’s just the level of structure and organization to them don’t appear to be there.”
This is not the United States’ first rodeo with Ebola outbreaks. Remember in 2014 when the U.S. had four cases and one death. The White House then developed a playbook for how to operate. People who worked under that system say it’s breaking down.
Why? Funding uncertainty; personnel shortages (in part stemming from CDC Director Susan Monarez’s departure, but also because Trump never appointed another pandemic-response director after the last one resigned); and uncertainty around U.S. involvement in foreign aid.
A senior administration official told NOTUS: “The U.S. government is working with the Government of the DRC to rapidly contain the virus.”
The stakes: “We need to be very clear-eyed that the ability to control this and contain it regionally is diminished,” said Paul Friedrichs, the director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness under Joe Biden.
NEW ON NOTUS
Byron Donalds claims no leniency: The Florida congressman’s bill pushing harsher sentences for D.C. youth passed the House. As for being granted a “pre-trial diversion” himself as a teenager arrested with marijuana?
“Pre-trial diversion? Let’s be very clear — the issues in Washington, D.C., is not a 20-year-old with a dime bag of marijuana,” Donalds told NOTUS’ Emily Kennard.
Trump escalates network threats: “I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me. I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the 2024 election. “I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they’re 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity … I mean, they’re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
NOT US
- Aaron Parnas, the top “news” Substacker, is making his own journalism rules—and taking dark money, by Liz Skalka for Columbia Journalism Review
- Tiffany Trump Cruised on an Oil Mogul’s Yacht as Her Father-in-Law Talked Oil Deals, by Jo Becker, Tariq Panja, Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck for The New York Times
- Eleanor Holmes Norton faces mounting pressure to retire, by Meagan Flynn, Olivia George and Mariana Alfaro for The Washington Post
- Banks Are Racing to Prove They’re Not Biased Against Conservatives, by Alexander Saeedy and Dylan Tokar for The Wall Street Journal
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