| | |  | BY ARI HAWKINS | With additional reporting from Calder McHugh
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Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) (left), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and other members of the House Freedom Caucus share a laugh during the vote for the new Speaker of the House. Much of the Freedom Caucus is now aligned with Democrats on ending the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force in Iraq. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | END OF AN ERA — After more than 20 years, there is bipartisan momentum behind ending war authorizations in Iraq. There’s one last hurdle — the House — where Speaker Kevin McCarthy still doesn’t have a Republican consensus on the repeal of the 2002 and 1991 Authorizations of Military Force in Iraq. It might not matter. In a case of Washington producing strange bedfellows, even though they’re still yelling at each other on the streets of New York , members of the far left Progressive Caucus and the far right Freedom Caucus are also directly aligned on the repeal of the war authorizations . Members of both groups don’t want to stop there, either. They’re interested in taking a more holistic look at the government’s broad surveillance powers (notably absent in this repeal is the 2001 AUMF, which gives the U.S. legal authority to conduct much of its counterterrorism work ) and its defense spending. The tension adds up to a growing headache for McCarthy, who can only afford to lose four Republican members on any full-floor, party-line vote. And after the Freedom Caucus almost denied McCarthy the speakership, they’re making clear both their ideological differences with the rest of the Republican Party — and that they’re unafraid to challenge leadership directly. The Senate voted in March 66-30 to repeal the 2002 and 1991 AUMFs that formed the basis of the legal authorization for the Iraq War. President Joe Biden has signaled that he would sign a repeal if it reaches his desk. To understand the end of the AUMF and divides within the razor-thin House majority, Nightly spoke with Nicholas Wu , a Congress reporter covering the attempts to end the war authorizations. This interview has been edited. Why is repealing the 20-year-old Iraq War authorization a contentious issue right now? The debate over repealing the Iraq War authorization and the 1991 Gulf War authorization is dividing House Republicans even as it unites almost all House Democrats. It pits conservatives who favor a more non-interventionist approach and institutionalists who want to restore congressional authorities against other Republicans who don’t want to restrict potential military operations. What are the practical implications of the repeal? The Biden administration has said there won’t be any practical implications of repealing the two authorizations. The U.S. combat mission in Iraq formally ended in December 2021, and the administration has stressed that no current military operations primarily rely on either military authorization. How is the Freedom Caucus ideologically different from the rest of the Republican Party on this issue? Has that ideology shifted as they’ve gotten more power in Congress? Conservatives who support the repeal are generally more skeptical of broad presidential powers and argued that the authorizations were outdated and needed to be repealed. If the administration wanted to take military action, it needed to come and ask Congress for it, they argued. And it’s not just the Freedom Caucus. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Rules Committee and isn’t affiliated with the Freedom Caucus, took a more institutionalist perspective and told me he believed Congresses over the past several decades had ceded too much power to the administration on war. The passage of time since the onset of the Iraq War and war-weariness among the American public has helped convince Republicans on the issue too. What’s Speaker McCarthy’s next move? Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping everyone waiting on his next move. He’s been noncommittal on a quick House vote on the measure, meaning they might instead be attached to an annual defense policy bill or other must-pass legislation. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has instead pitched a repeal-and-replace plan for both the 1991 and 2002 measures as well as a broad one passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. After almost denying him the speakership, how much of a problem could the Freedom Caucus be on other issues that could come before Congress? The miniscule margin in the House means the Freedom Caucus, or really any bloc, can emerge as a major force to disrupt the best-laid plans. And the Freedom Caucus has signaled they want to take a hard line against other government spending and have laid down their own markers too amid debt negotiations. Civil libertarians in the bloc also found common ground with the left with raising concerns about government surveillance ahead of a reauthorization deadline at the end of the year. Are there any other sources of tension between the Freedom Caucus and the rest of the Republican party you can see coming that we haven’t mentioned? Trump could be a point of tension among Republicans generally as the presidential campaign season ramps up. Many conservatives are publicly noncommittal on backing him for another bid, as my colleagues have reported. Rep. Chip Roy, who’s a Freedom Caucus member, and Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s not, have both backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president before he’s even in the race. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at ahawkins@politico.com or on Twitter at @_AriHawkins .
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| | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today . | | | | | | | LAVISH LIVING — Trips on yachts and private jets. Fishing vacations. Stays in a luxury lodge. The funding of a statue of his eighth grade teacher. All of these are gifts that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, with few of them reported on Thomas’ yearly financial disclosures, according to new reporting from ProPublica . The blockbuster investigation, published today, includes an image of a painting that hangs at Crow’s luxury Camp Topridge that depicts Thomas, cigar in hand, along with Crow and lawyers Peter Rutledge, Leonard Leo and Mark Paoletta. Paoletta represents Ginni Thomas in her dealings with the January 6th Select Committee, helped to vet Neil Gorsuch for a Supreme Court seat and is a frequent contributor to conservative publications — he wrote a piece on Tuesday in the National Review titled “Yet Another Baseless Attack on Ginni Thomas .” The hospitality that Supreme Court Justices can and cannot legally accept is a gray area, and Thomas has never hid his ideological ties with the broader conservative legal movement. The broader, open question is whether these lavish trips could ever affect Thomas’ decision-making: Crow told ProPublica in a statement he’s “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.” Nightly’s Calder McHugh spoke with one of the authors of the ProPublica piece, Justin Elliot , to try to answer some of those open questions. “We looked and we talked to historians of the Supreme Court and we couldn’t find a single example of a relationship that was exactly like Thomas’ and Crow’s,” Elliot said. “There are some examples of related activities… Justice Antonin Scalia famously died on a private hunting trip, and there’s been a fair amount of ink spilled over the years about the hunting trips he accepted. But there are several differences between that situation and the one that we wrote about: one is that Scalia disclosed at least some of those trips, another is that it wasn’t just one person he was accepting hunting trips from.” So, why didn’t Thomas disclose these trips? Elliot said it’s a “total mystery.” “What’s even more mysterious about it is that we found at least two examples from the 1990s in which Thomas did disclose private jet trips on his financial disclosure form, and one of those was from Harlan Crow,” he said. In February, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) re-introduced a bill called the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act. The bill aims to tighten legal restrictions around what members of the Supreme Court can accept as gifts — and when they should recuse themselves from cases. Among other things, it’s an attempt to curb potential direct influence of large donors on Supreme Court Justices. “Talking generally, everyone knows that Thomas is a conservative,” Elliot said. “But there’s all kinds of particular legal questions that, if you [try to influence] him a little bit and [for example] he writes a concurring opinion, that can be hugely consequential for the law.”
| | — House GOP fires off first subpoena in probe of Trump indictment: The House GOP today fired off its first subpoena in its investigation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office , escalating a standoff over the indictment of former President Donald Trump. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is summoning Mark Pomerantz, a former county special assistant district attorney, to appear behind closed doors for a deposition on April 20, according to a copy of the subpoena viewed by POLITICO. — Tennessee House expels one Dem over gun protest, targets two more: Tennessee Republicans voted this afternoon to expel a Democratic member from the state House for speaking out of turn during a gun violence protest — an extraordinary move for its political brazenness and an unprecedented use of power in an American statehouse. The Tennessee House moved forward with proceedings to remove the other two members, Reps. Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson. The trio represents the three largest cities in Tennessee. — Education Department unveils Title IX transgender sports eligibility rule: The Education Department today unveiled its proposed rule on athletics eligibility for transgender students. The proposal would bar schools from adopting or enforcing a policy that categorically bans transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. But the Education Department also added the caveat that “in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation.”
| | PLAYING THE LONG GAME — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying to expand the presidential map. According to NBC News, DeSantis is eschewing the strategy of placing significant resources in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire in favor of picking up large delegate states further down in the calendar. “One thing that we have looked at is that Trump can be beat on the delegate portion of all this. He has never been good at that,” a DeSantis adviser said. DeSantis, who is expected to officially announce his candidacy in May or June, still plans to devote healthy resources to the early states. But his travel plans around the country indicate that he’s not singularly focused on the early contests. The strategy is a risky one — give your opponent too much momentum, and the contest could basically be over by the time states with the biggest delegate counts vote.
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French President Emmanuel Macron walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping after inspecting an honor guard during a welcome ceremony in Beijing, China. | Pool photo by Ng Han Guan | NO END IN SIGHT — Chinese President Xi Jinping showed no sign of changing his position over Russia’s war on Ukraine after talks today with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, write Clea Caulcutt , Jamil Anderlini and Stuart Lau . On the second day of Macron’s state visit to China, Xi continued his long-standing line on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — saying that “all sides” have “reasonable security concerns” — and gave no hint he would use his influence to help end the conflict. “China is willing to jointly appeal with France to the international community to remain rational and calm,” was as far as the Chinese leader would go during a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The French president arrived in China on Wednesday in the hope of pushing China to use its leverage with Russia to end the conflict, and to get Beijing to speak out against the Kremlin’s threat to host nuclear missiles in Belarus. TRADING FIRE — Militants fired a barrage of rockets from Lebanon at Israel earlier today , the Israeli military said, forcing people across Israel’s northern frontier into bomb shelters, wounding at least one person and ratcheting up regional tensions as Israelis celebrated the Jewish Passover holiday. In response, Israeli tanks along the border fired shells at two southern Lebanese towns, reported Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. The rockets from southern Lebanon, where there are regular tensions between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, raised fears of a larger conflagration. Over the past two days, tensions have already skyrocketed at Jerusalem’s most prominent holy site and along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.
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Less than 3 percent The predicted global growth rate over the next five years , according to Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. The rate is the lowest medium-term growth forecast since 1990. The growth rate is down from 3.4 percent in 2022 and underscores the persisting economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion into Ukraine and rising global inflation. Georgieva cautioned that a more fragile global economy will bring slower growth and greater financial fragility in a conversation with POLITICO’s Ryan Heath . |
| | | BEE BRAINS — When Stephen Buchmann, an author based in Tucson, Arizona, finds a wayward bee inside his home, he goes to great lengths to ensure its safety. After trapping the tiny creature in a glass container, he walks it to his garden, and places it on a flower to recuperate. Buchmann is part of a growing group of scientists engaging in research he calls “fringe” to understand the emotional capacity of bees . His own research suggests that bees express and experience a highly sophisticated network of emotions, including ones that resemble optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear. Other experiments have also produced evidence that bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize human faces and process long term memories, raising complex ethical questions. Read Annette McGivney ’s peak into the changing nature of melittology for The Guardian.
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On this date in 1990: Demonstrators march through downtown Cincinnati in support of an exhibition of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. When the exhibition opened at the Contemporary Arts Center, prosecutors charged CAC Director Dennis Barrie and the museum itself with obscenity, the first time that criminal charges were levied against a U.S. museum. Barrie and the museum prevailed in court that October. | David Kohl/AP Photo | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | |
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