GOP group launches $6 million plan to defend megabill
AFP's plans, shared first with POLITICO, includes a new 30-second spot that touts 'growing our economy' and 'keeping our country safe,' as well as events with lawmakers across the country over August recess, the group said.
Putting money behind the effort to defend the megabill, already a top target of Democrats ahead of the midterms, will help 'make sure this good policy is also good politically for the lawmakers who supported it,' AFP Managing Director Kent Strang said in a statement.
The August recess will be key for Republican members as they go back to their districts to sell the bill. A recent memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee provided members with talking points on the bill, telling them 'the best defense is a good offense.'
'We're already seeing some opponents spread misinformation for their own political gain,' Strang said. 'That's why it's so important to go keep our foot on the gas to highlight the bill's success.'
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The Hill
28 minutes ago
- The Hill
Is there any reason to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell except to buy her silence?
It's all about the art of the deal — the quid pro quo. Jeffrey Epstein was perhaps the most conspicuous pimp since the Marquis de Sade, and he did so on a grand scale. His associates included bankers, princes, CEOs, governors and past and future presidents. One of Epstein's friends was President Trump. Their relationship lasted 15 years. We don't know how their friendship got started, and we don't know the exact details of why it persisted or ended. We do know that it has become an albatross for Trump in his second term. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump — assuming that the Epstein files contained a list of prominent Democrats who were clients — promised his MAGA base that, if elected, the government files would be released. Now, the Wall Street Journal has suggested Trump's own name could be in the files, which are closely guarded by his captive Justice Department. So, what to do? The first line of defense is deception. Pretend you are making full disclosure when you are not. Vice President JD Vance proclaimed Trump's commitment to full disclosure. 'First of all, the president has been very clear,' Vance said. 'We're not shielding anything. The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and, frankly, to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.' What Vance failed to say is that Trump did not order his attorney general to disclose the files that would be the 'most credible information' to be examined in all their stark significance. Trump prevaricated and ordered her only to unseal the grand jury minutes underlying the prosecutions of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, indicted in the Southern District in 2020, tried and convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 2022. Any prosecutor will tell you that grand jury minutes are largely uninformative. They will not normally include the thousands of pages of video and audio tapes, witness statements and other documentary evidence residing in the Justice Department's files. Also, grand jury minutes are by law secret and may only be unsealed by order of the court, where there are very narrow grounds. Justice Department lawyers went through the motions of a kamikaze mission to have the court unseal the minutes, and two federal courts have now denied the motion, as expected. This ploy would hardly satisfy elements of Trump's MAGA base, which by now was screaming for full disclosure of the files that might tell the full story of his relationship with Epstein. The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee got into the act, subpoenaing Maxwell to testify. She presumably was in the room where it happened and could answer the key questions about the Trump-Epstein relation. As might be expected, Maxwell invoked her Fifth Amendment rights unless she was granted full immunity. A spokesperson for the committee replied that it 'will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony.' What a charade! If there ever was a 'don't throw me in the briar patch' scenario, this was it. That might have ended the matter. But what if Trump needed to be sure of Maxwell's silence? A peek at what Maxwell might say would help. So would a deal about what Maxwell wouldn't say. There was talk of clemency and a full pardon. Trump said, 'Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it. Nobody's asked me about it.' He had to do his due diligence first. Trump considers himself the master of the art of the deal — the quid pro quo. This has been his core philosophy from the old days in Queens, Manhattan, Atlantic City and Roy Cohn. He has made other deals for women's silence, lest we forget Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. Trump's freezing of urgently needed military aid to Ukraine in a bid to extract political dirt on the Bidens during his first term was a classic. This quid pro quo led to his 2020 impeachment — a reference to which, as it just happens, was removed last month from an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution. (A modified reference has now been restored.) His appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court who would vote his way whenever the issue was presented might be another. And his dismissal of the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams was widely decried as a quid pro quo for Adams's kowtowing to Trump's draconian immigration crackdown. So, has the time come for a quid pro quo with Maxwell? Her current lawyer is David Oscar Markus, a Florida-based criminal defense attorney who is a friend of Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense lawyer and now the deputy attorney general. An ethicist might say there is nothing wrong with this, but one might fairly wonder why Attorney General Pam Bondi chose Blanche to coordinate with Markus about an extraordinary meeting with his imprisoned client. The two-day recorded meeting occurred and, according to Markus, Blanche asked Maxwell about '100 different people.' Maxwell reportedly 'answered every single question' truthfully and to the best of her ability. It is interesting that Maxwell was willing to talk to Blanche but unwilling to talk to Congress. One week later, without explanation and to the consternation of the victims' families, Maxwell was transferred from a low security prison in Tallahassee to a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. Sex offenders, the New York Times reports, are rarely sent to minimum-security prisons, which house inmates with the lowest level of security risk. You may ask whether Trump approved the transfer. You can bet on it. This Justice Department doesn't make a move without Trump's thumb on the scale. Is favored treatment the part of a deal to ensure silence about Trump? Is it the prelude to a pardon for Maxwell? After all, with Trump, it's all about the quid pro quo.
USA Today
28 minutes ago
- USA Today
Doug LaMalfa faces hostile crowd at town hall meeting in his own congressional district
Even though he was deep inside his bright red congressional district, U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa faced a mostly hostile crowd Monday during his first North State town hall meeting in several years. Residents at LaMalfa's town hall meeting in Red Bluff peppered him with a wide range of questions and comments on such topics as immigration, redistricting, the Epstein files, support for Israel, tariffs, wildfires, climate change, forest management and changes to Medicaid. Many times he was shouted down by members of the audience, who held up green cards to show approval or red pieces of paper for disapproval. "You just embarrass yourself when you act like that," LaMalfa said after several people yelled out "You're a liar," and "Tell the truth!" It was the second rowdy crowd the Republican lawmaker faced Monday. He held a similar town hall earlier in the day in Chico, where members of the audience shouted obscenities at him. Jill Smith, a lifelong Red Bluff resident, said the crowd of about 350 people was upset because it had been years since LaMalfa had held a public meeting in Tehama County. "All these people are angry. They have concerns. I have concerns. I could vote Democrat or Republican as long as I think they're doing something good for our country. But right now I don't see that happening with this, and that's why everybody's angry," Smith said. LaMalfa was criticized for many of his votes in Congress, including his support in 2021 not to certify the 2020 election that ushered in Joe Biden as president and this year for backing President Trump and his many executive orders, which some on Monday said usurped power from Congress. "You made a choice to violate your oath to the Constitution," Max Walter of Redding said, referring to LaMalfa's vote not to certify the 2020 presidential election. "And every day since then, you have violated your oath. But you have loyalty, you have loyalty to a felon (Trump), to somebody who mocks people in wheelchairs, to someone who mocks women." On questions about tariffs, LaMalfa said he supported them, claiming they would bring jobs back to the U.S. He also said he supported release of the Epstein files, but wanted to make sure the names of victims aren't released. Roy Reddin asked if LaMalfa supported the type of congressional redistricting that is proposed in Texas. "Currently the Texas legislature is very close to to an epic gerrymandering where they are going to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters by realigning their districts. So my question to you, is in two parts: Do you support what the Texas legislature is doing and why should California not do the same thing for five seats, one of which could be yours," Reddin said. Although redistricting congressional districts happen at the state level, LaMalfa said he opposed attempts at redistricting such as what is happening in Texas, where the state legislature has proposed redrawing congressional district maps. The redistricting plan in Texas could lead to the state picking up an additional five Republican seats in Congress, helping the GOP retain a majority in the House next year. But other states, including California, have vowed to re-draw congressional district boundaries, if Texas goes through with its plan. Not everyone was critical of LaMalfa. One woman said she was an immigrant and she supports LaMalfa because he backs the Trump administration's actions against undocumented immigrants. "He's an honest Christian man and he's fighting for us," one woman said. One woman who spoke out said many of the issues that came up Monday were moral issues that transcended a political climate that has become too divisive. "I'm afraid to stand up for my rights because I might get shot," she told LaMalfa, citing the shootings of state legislators in Minnesota this summer.
The Hill
28 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump's DC police takeover could pique GOP interest in cities
President Trump 's effort to lessen crime in Washington, D.C., and launch a 'beautification' effort is clashing with a long tradition of Republicans criticizing and outright writing off the nation's cities. Republicans and conservatives for years — decades, even — had amplified the failures in cities as being the result of Democratic policies and flaunted migration from blue urban centers to red states. And as those on the right have slammed the nation's metropolises, only a tiny fraction of the biggest cities have Republican mayors, and there's scant discussion in right-wing circles and institutions about urban policy. Trump's new fixation on D.C. and takeover of police could give conservatives an opportunity to increase their foothold in urban policy and in cities. A big challenge, though, is getting the conservative base to care about the hubs of Democratic and progressive power at all. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk last month made a lengthy post on the social platform X arguing why conservatives should care about the New York City mayoral race: 'All of America looks toward New York. … Plenty of people wanted us to abandon college campuses as lost cause communist no-go zones, but we learned last year that if we bothered to fight back, we could turn the tide. New York can be the same way,' Kirk said. And in a monologue on his radio show on Monday, Kirk argued that Republicans face a question of political will when it comes to addressing policies and outcomes that they don't like in cities. 'You need to dive deep and dig deep, to have the fortitude, the wherewithal, the spine, the cojones, the chutzpah to achieve what you want to achieve,' Kirk said. 'We just put up with crime for the last 40 years because we're afraid of being called racist.' Some on the right, though, are content to let the progressive left take their policies in cities as far as they want in order to maintain a foil. Columnist George Will put it succinctly when he told HBO host Bill Maher this month that he wants Zohran Mamdani to win the New York City electoral race: 'Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.' Aaron Renn, a writer who has explored city policy, noted it has not always been that way, pointing to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani once being hailed as a great Republican mayor. And Renn said a result of Republicans ceding those fights in cities means there are far fewer Republicans with city-level experience: 'There are simply fewer people in sort of Republican political world who have an urban perspective, because there's just fewer of them.' Despite the challenges, there has been a ripple of movement on the right in favor of more active urban involvement Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly talked on his podcast about the cleanliness of cities being a reflection of a successful or unsuccessful society. And after Dallas Mayor Eric L. Johnson switched parties to become a Republican in 2023, he founded the Republican Mayors Association — the first GOP group focused solely on GOP mayors. 'For a long time, you had, I think everybody took some of the cities for granted. The Democrats took them for granted, just assuming that cities would continue to vote Democrat, regardless of how the cities were being run,' Bridgewater, N.J., Mayor Matthew Moench, chair of the Republican Mayors Association advisory board, told me. But the group, he said, is aiming to 'go into those areas in the cities that may have been ignored for too long, and say we think that we can win anywhere.' 'The voters in the most distressed areas of any city in the country, they want the same things that everyone does. They want to walk down the street without fear of their safety. They want their kids to get a good education. They want opportunities for job growth,' Moench said. The gains Republicans made in 2024 showed them that there could be value in getting more involved in the urban areas rather than only using the cities as a foil. In New York City, for instance, Trump had the best performance of any Republican presidential candidate since 1988, according to The New York Times. 'The reason that Republicans have a majority in the House right now is because of the urban swing and Trump's urban coattails,' argued Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and senior editor at the group's publication, City Journal. Trump's takeover of the D.C. police force could also be instructive for red-state legislatures across the country as they increasingly battle with Democratic-run cities — reversing city policies or blocking them from taking effect, in a mechanism known as preemption. Kansas City, Mo., for instance, was blocked by the state Legislature from hiking its minimum wage. Lehman said there are opportunities in Texas where the state can preempt local policies on public camping and crime. 'There are places where the red state legislature could conceivably step in, and in some cases, has stepped in and say, 'We don't like what you're doing here, and actually, the city is a creature of the state, and so we have final say in authority and what's going to happen here,'' Lehman said. And if Trump is successful in bringing crime in D.C. down — and that's a big if — that could be a high-profile demonstration of Republican policies that others could imitate in other urban centers. But there are also risks for Republicans if Trump's gambit is not successful. Renn pointed to former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who was accused of mishandling the Flint, Mich., water supply amid the city's crisis of lead-contaminated water. Snyder was criminally charged in connection to the Flint water crisis, but the charges were later dismissed. 'If you are a highly incompetent urban leadership class, which all too many of them today are, they would love to be able to … in some way pin the blame on a Republican,' Renn said. Further reading: , from The Hill's Elizabeth Crisp. Welcome to The Movement, a weekly newsletter looking at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. I'm Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill. Tell me what's on your radar: ebrooks@ Not already on the list? Subscribe here PRASAD BACK AT FDA IN ABRUPT REVERSAL Readers of The Movement's July 29 edition saw the conservative scrutiny and divide over Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) chief medical and scientific officer and the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages and right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer had taken aim at Prasad for being a former supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for his recent rejection of a disease therapy, and skepticism of the 'Right to Try' law that Trump signed in his first term and is intended to allow terminally ill patients wider access to drugs not yet approved by the FDA. Later that day, Prasad was out — in a move met by outrage from MAHA types who have supported Prasad's skepticism on COVID vaccine recommendations, with accusations running rampant that pharmaceutical companies had been working a behind-the-scenes campaign to remove him. Less than two weeks later, Prasad is back at the FDA. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was among those who seemed to oppose Prasad's ouster. 'The idea that he was pushed out by anybody is simply untrue,' Makary said at a news conference last week. 'He saw some media headlines and didn't want to be a distraction. We have encouraged him to reconsider, and we're still doing that.' The Washington Post's Lauren Weber and Rachel Roubein had this reporting on the behind-the-scenes action on Prasad's return: 'The White House reevaluated the criticisms of Prasad and supported his return to the administration after finding them disingenuous, according to two people familiar with the decision-making who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. This followed FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who championed and elevated Prasad, reaching out to the White House, one of the people said.' Loomer, for her part, called Prasad's reinstatement 'another egregious personnel decision under the Trump administration,' promising to ramp up her 'exposes' of officials in the FDA and Health and Human Services Department. EPSTEIN FUROR FIZZLING OR SIMMERING? CNN's data guru Harry Enten says that based on his look at the data, the saga surrounding the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is turning into a 'political dud & nothingburger.' His points: Google search engine queries for Epstein are down 89 percent versus three weeks ago; Trump's approval rating is holding; and almost no one in the most recent CNN poll says it's the nation's top political issue. And in another blow to those who would like to see the issue in the news, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer on Monday denied the Justice Department's request to unseal grand jury materials used to charge Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime accomplice of Epstein. But hold on to your hats. There is plenty of action on the congressional side coming up that will keep the Epstein saga chugging along. For starters, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued many subpoenas for documents and testimony with deadlines coming up in the next few weeks. These dates could change, but the Justice Department is due to send over Epstein-related documents to the committee by Aug. 19. Subpoena dates are set for former Attorneys General Bill Barr, Alberto Gonzales and Jeff Sessions this month — with several other subpoenas scheduled for September and October. And the Epstein legislative action that had roiled the House floor before the chamber departed for August recess is set to return with a bang as soon as Congress returns in September: Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who are co-sponsoring legislation to compel release of Epstein-related material and aim to force a vote on the matter, announced they will hold a press conference the day that Congress returns alongside 'survivors of Epstein and Maxwell's abuse — several of whom will be speaking out for the first time.' ON MY CALENDAR Thursday, Aug. 14: The Manhattan Institute hosts a conversation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams on 'Governing in NYC.' Starts at 9:30 a.m. at the New York Hilton Midtown. Monday, Aug. 25, to Thursday, Aug. 28: State Policy Network annual meeting in New Orleans. Email me to get your events featured here: ebrooks@ THREE MORE THINGS The first episode of the new podcast by Katie Miller — former aide in the Trump administration and to Elon Musk, and wife to Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — came out on Monday. She aims to be the conservative answer to 'Call Her Daddy' that working moms can turn to, without being totally politics-focused. Her first podcast episode was with Vice President Vance, who said Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler would be the Cabinet official he'd trust most to babysit his kids. The America First Policy Institute announced two staff additions as it aims to be the 'preeminent force shaping the future of American education through bold, student-centered reforms.' Max Eden will be director of federal education policy; James Paul will be director of state education policy. The Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, released a tribute video to its architect and Heritage Foundation co-founder Ed Feulner featuring current Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) and former chairs Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.). 'You could argue Ed did more for the advancement of conservative thought than any person in this arena,' Johnson said. WHAT I'M READING
