Fiscal hawk Victoria Spartz folded — this time
Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz stuck to her principles as a fiscal hawk and opposed the GOP budget resolution that would balloon the deficit by trillions of dollars — right up until Tuesday evening.
'I don't change my mind,' she'd previously said. But minutes after GOP colleagues cornered her and her fellow Republican holdout, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, on the House floor — and sometime after President Donald Trump reportedly excoriated her over the phone — Spartz did exactly that: She changed her mind, throwing her support behind the resolution and setting Trump's aggressive domestic agenda in motion.
The decision marked an uneasy detente between Spartz and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who needed her vote to advance Trump's domestic agenda through his party's thin majority. But despite the last-minute conversion, Johnson shouldn't expect loyalty from Spartz if he doesn't deliver on her goals, writes Adam Wren in this week's Friday Read.
In fact, Spartz has left a trail of burned bridges and spurned colleagues in her wake since entering the political arena. LegiStorm labeled her Washington's worst boss in 2022, and today, her office hemorrhages workers — more than a dozen have left since November.
'In interviews, more than a half-dozen current and former aides — some who spoke with me before leaving their employment in recent weeks — and GOP officials described Spartz to me as a mercurial, combative individual who is determined in pursuing what she wants,' Wren writes. Allegations range from verbal abuse to allegedly flouting congressional rules against compelling staffers into campaign work, which Spartz denies.
Some Republicans back home in Indiana say that Spartz is increasingly a cause of the Congressional dysfunction they sent her to Washington to address. And one in particular — Noblesville Mayor Chris Jensen, who endorsed one of Spartz' primary challengers last May — has a word of warning for Johnson: 'Whatever she tells you she is going to do, assume she will do the exact opposite.'
Read the story.
'I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office, litigating in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.'
Can you guess who said this to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
Jeff Bezos' Unsolicited Opinion … Jeff Bezos broke with decades of journalistic tradition this week, announcing new guardrails for the paper's opinion pages, which will 'be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets' — a move that prompted Opinion Editor David Shipley to resign. 'In personally announcing that he was dramatically re-orienting the editorial line, and in fact wouldn't even run dissenting views, Bezos added another sharp example to a narrative that represents a grave threat to the Post's image,' writes Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer: 'The idea that its owner is messing around with the product in order to curry favor with his new pal Donald Trump, who has the power to withhold contracts from Amazon and other Bezos companies.'
Did you miss the wild argument that broke out between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office Friday? Just drop these lines into your group chat and your friends will think you were tuned in like a diligent political news junkie. (From Associate Editor Dylon Jones)
Can Trump Really Buy Greenland? … Trump's aggressive rhetoric about taking over Greenland has mystified foreign policy experts and raised a number of questions. For example: 'What is the future of America's relationship with Europe?' Or, 'So, uh, can he do that?' With so much confusion in the air, we decided to send Ben Schreckinger to Greenland — and he came back with answers.
About That DOGE 'Backlash' … Republican lawmakers getting booed at town halls over DOGE cuts have some wondering if an anti-Elon Musk backlash could eat into Trump's support. But so far, at least, that doesn't seem to be happening with his newest converts. In 2024, he became the first Republican in a century to win Texas' heavily Latino Starr County. So David Siders headed out to see what those voters think about the president's relationship with the richest man on earth. 'The way they welcomed the disemboweling of the federal bureaucracy was in sharp contrast to what some have suggested is an emerging backlash to Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency,' he writes.
From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker.
Who Dissed? Answer: It was Vice President JD Vance, in a remarkable, combative exchange in front of media in the Oval Office.
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