POLITICO Nightly: The populist right takes a victory lap

By Ian Ward Oren Cass speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington D.C. on July 10, 2024. | Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images MORAL COMPASS — A who’s who of Republican elites is set to gather this evening at the National Building Museum for a swanky gala hosted by American Compass, the institutional home of conservative economic populism in Washington. The black-tie affair is nominally being held to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the think tank, which was founded in 2020 by the conservative economist and former Mitt Romney adviser Oren Cass. But among American Compass’s supporters in the capital, the event is broadly understood to represent a victory lap of sorts, marking the ascendancy of Cass’s brand of economic populism in the Trump era and the newfound prominence of two of American Compass’s primary political allies: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — both of whom are scheduled to speak at tonight’s event. Yet despite American Compass’s success in establishing itself as a buzzy hub of new conservative economic thinking in Washington, the gala comes at a particularly fraught moment for this ascendant wing of the GOP. Cass’s brand of economic thinking — which rejects the GOP’s traditional mélange of free trade, tax cuts and deregulation in favor of trade protectionism, industrial policy, immigration restriction and a relatively friendlier stance toward organized labor — has made definite inroads in Washington, as the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff policies and public courting of organized labor suggest. But the limits of the administration’s commitment to American Compass-style populism have been put on stark display in recent weeks thanks to the fight over Trump’s “big, beautiful” domestic spending bill. The legislation, which is currently under consideration in the Senate, includes a slew of decidedly un-populist provisions — tax cuts for corporations and high-earners, rollbacks to Medicaid coverage and funding cuts for food assistance programs for low-income Americans — and has been met with unusually strong resistance among populist-leaning Republicans in the upper chamber, especially Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has publicly opposed the bill’s Medicaid cuts. Notably, Cass has also spoken out publicly against some of the bill’s tax provisions. In a recent interview with POLITICO Magazine , Cass criticized congressional Republicans for their inability to articulate a coherent economic rationale for proposed tax cuts, calling the negotiation process “a death march through a series of choices that nobody really wanted to be making.” He also called out the House package for exacerbating America’s ongoing “fiscal crisis” by adding to the national debt — a claim that the Trump White House continues to deny, despite multiple independent estimates showing that the bill would add over $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade. The tension inside the Building Museum will be heightened by the presence of Vance and Rubio, both of whom serve as ambassadors of sorts between the GOP’s economic populist wing and the Trump White House. In the Senate, both Vance and Rubio emerged as leading champions of Cass-style economic populism, with Vance taking a stand on tariffs and rail-safety regulation, and Rubio positioning himself as a vocal advocate of targeted industrial policy as a tool for the U.S. to compete with China. Vance’s elevation to the No. 2 spot in the administration was also a major win for the cohort: Vance and Cass have been friendly for nearly a decade, Cass told me, dating back to the publication of Hillbilly Elegy in 2016. The two have deepened their political ties in recent years as well, with Vance headlining a conference hosted by American Compass in 2023 and hiring the group’s former research director to his Senate office. But now that both men have left the Senate for Cabinet-level roles in the administration, they have had to downplay any ideological daylight between Trump’s economic agenda and the conservative populist’s vision. That’s especially true on tax reform — where American Compass and others in the movement have unsuccessfully urged the administration to raise rates on corporations and high-earners — and welfare cuts, where populist have come out against the “big, beautiful” bills cuts to Medicaid and other popular social safety net programs. The departure of Vance and Rubio from the Senate has also thrust Cass and his fellow economic populists into another sort of political bind. When acting as a unified bloc in the upper chamber, Vance, Rubio and Hawley (and, to a lesser extent, other populist-curious Republican senators like Tom Cotton and Eric Schmitt) wielded significant leverage over leadership. But with Vance and Rubio now out of the picture, Hawley has been forced into the uncomfortable position of allying with more moderate (and MAGA-skeptical) Senate Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to push populists’ preferred changes to Trump’s mega-bill. That dilemma points to a broader challenge facing Cass and his fellow conservative populists at the dawn of the second Trump administration. Although American Compass has found champions among a handful of high-profile Republicans in Washington — and, importantly, has made inroads with a broad swath of younger Republican staffers on the Hill — they’ve yet to win broad-based support among rank-and-file Republicans. In particular, Republicans in the House have kept American Compass’s heterodox economic argument at a comfortable arm’s length, giving the anti-tax budget hawks in the Freedom Caucus disproportionate power over the economic agenda in the lower chamber. That lack of broad-based political support is partly a function of the relative novelty of American Compass’s message — it is, after all, only five years old — and partly a result of the personality of its founder. Cass, a bespectacled and soft-spoken budget wonk, has always appealed more to the self-styled conservative intellectuals in the Senate than he has to the conservative bomb-throwers in the House. Cass is also not a typical go-along-to-get-along creature of the Washington swamp: As his recent criticisms of the “big, beautiful” bill suggest, he is one of the few MAGA-aligned conservatives in Washington who is still willing to offer principled criticisms of the administration’s actions — a tendency that has not always endeared him to White House officials. A self-described policy nerd, he is also something of an odd fit within the smashmouth rhetorical frame of the MAGA mainstream. With all these low-level tensions simmering in the background, the gala represents an opportunity for two of the administration’s high-profile emissaries to tend to some sore spots between the White House and the GOP’s economic populists. Vance — who is slated to sit for a Q&A with Cass at the gala — has emerged as a particularly adept mediator among MAGA’s various factions: In March, he used a similar speech at a high-profile gathering of right-leaning tech figures to broker a truce of sorts between the tech right and the populist-right. In that respect, the Building Museum serves as a thematically appropriate venue for the event. With Trump’s domestic policy agenda dangling in a delicate legislative limbo, the administration needs to quickly build some bridges with the party’s economic populists to get the bill across the finish line. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at iward@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ianwardreports .   A fresh chapter for Playbook — same mission, new momentum. Jack Blanchard sets the scene. Dasha Burns brings the inside scoops. Adam Wren takes Washington into the weekend. Playbook delivers must-know reporting with style, clarity, and serious scoops. Subscribe now —and don’t miss a beat.     What'd I Miss? ***RESCISSIONS MEMO!**** — Congress finally gets Trump’s request to codify DOGE cuts to NPR, PBS, foreign aid: President Donald Trump has sent Congress a request to nix $9.4 billion in current funding for public broadcasting, National Public Radio and foreign aid — the first test of Republicans’ willingness to back the administration’s gutting of federal agencies. The “rescissions” memo was officially transmitted today to Capitol Hill, according to Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), but it has yet to be publicly released. The request now starts a 45-day clock — not counting breaks longer than three days — for Congress to either approve or rebuff Trump’s request to claw back funding that’s supposed to be flowing now. excerpts: The “rescissions” memo was officially transmitted Tuesday to Capitol Hill and seeks to eliminate $8.3 billion in foreign aid, along with $1.1 billion from public broadcasting, including for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. It also asks Congress to claw back funding from more than a dozen accounts across the State Department, including U.S. contributions to UN peacekeeping efforts and $900 million for global health programs, as well as $800 million for migration and refugee assistance. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, who has been publicly critical of Trump’s funding moves, lamented Tuesday that the request targets funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The senator said she would not support cutting that program, touting it as an initiative that has “saved literally millions of lives, and has been extremely effective.” Collins is in talks with the Senate parliamentarian about the rules of modifying the president’s rescissions request, since Congress hasn’t approved such a package in well over two decades. “It’s extremely complex in the rules, because there hasn’t been a successful rescission package in many, many years,” Collins said, noting that lawmakers aren’t allowed to claw back funding from an account that isn’t already targeted in the president’s memo. Rolling back federal funding for public broadcasting is a piece lawmakers are likely to consider striking from the package, since many Republicans are fond of local PBS programming in their districts and states. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, for instance, said Tuesday that he will be scrutinizing the proposed cut to public broadcasting, since native American tribes in South Dakota rely on public radio stations and rural areas use the emergency broadcasting system. Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the panel that funds the Pentagon, said “there’s no reason for us to be here” if Republicans are going to approve Trump’s request after already enacting a lengthy funding patch — while also unilaterally increasing budgets for the military and border security in the GOP’s party-line megabill. “If we, as appropriators, allow the majority to pass a full-year CR, reconciliation and rescission, why are we here?” Coons said. Even as the White House delivers the request for clawbacks after months of begging from Republican lawmakers, top Trump administration officials are threatening to undermine Congress’ other funding prerogatives this fall. Democrats find it ironic. The Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, Washington Sen. Patty Murray said Tuesday that by sending the rescissions memo, “Trump is conceding what we’ve known all along: that Congress — not the President — must approve the rescission or withholding of investments that were signed into law.” In sending the rescissions request, the White House is using the main tool created under the decades-old “impoundment” law enacted in 1974 to stop presidents from withholding federal dollars lawmakers approve while exercising their constitutional “power of the purse.” At the same time, Trump administration officials continue to argue that the impoundment law is unconstitutional — and publicly telegraph their plans to pull back funding regardless of Congress’ instructions. White House budget director Russ Vought said on CNN this week that the Trump administration “may not actually have to get a Congress to pass the rescissions bill” to block some funding. — Fetterman’s chief of staff leaves amid string of departures: Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s chief of staff is leaving her post , two people familiar with the matter confirmed to POLITICO today. The move is yet another key departure for a congressional office that’s been marked by turnover amid mounting questions about the Democrat’s health and shifting political persona. Axios first reported Krysta Sinclair Juris’ plans to part ways with Fetterman’s office. POLITICO has learned Cabelle St. John, who previously served as Fetterman’s deputy chief of staff, senior adviser and scheduling director, is taking over as his new top aide. excerpt:  In a Monday debate in Boston with Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), Fetterman said that reporting about his missing votes and committee hearings is a “weird smear.” Previously, he criticized a New York magazine article about former and current aides who expressed concerns about his health “a one-source hit piece.” “I’m here. I’m doing that job,” he said in the debate that aired on Fox Nation. “For me, if I miss some of those quotes — I mean some of those votes — I’ve made 90 percent of them and, and we all know those votes that I’ve missed were on Monday; those are travel days, and I have three young kids, and I — those are throwaway procedural votes. … That’s a choice that I made, and if you want to attack me for that, go ahead.” In addition to concerns over his health, some ex-staffers have been frustrated with Fetterman’s hardline support of Israel and recent meeting with President Donald Trump. ***INCOMPETENT BOOB HEGSETH PURGING HISTORY!*** — Navy set to rename ship honoring Harvey Milk amid DEI purge: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to rename a naval vessel named after gay rights activist Harvey Milk , with several other ships honoring civil rights activists and women also potentially being rechristened. The move targeting the ship named after the gay rights icon comes as LGBTQ+ communities kick off pride month celebrations across the country. The step furthers Hegseth’s agenda to stomp out DEI initiatives at the Pentagon, which has included removing books from service academies and scrubbing some mentions of women and people of color in the armed services from DOD websites. excerpts:  The other ships in the class are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Cesar Chavez, USNS Medgar Evers, USNS Dolores Huerta and the USNS Lucy Stone. There is no timeline yet for the renaming of these ships, one of the officials said. Milk served in the Navy before his political career. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in City Hall in 1978 by a former member of the board. The planned erasure of barrier-shattering historical figures from the vessels is just the latest move in Hegseth’s mission to stamp out any trace of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Defense Department. Previous efforts in that direction have proven controversial for Hegseth, who came under scrutiny for stripping mentions of key figures from military websites — including baseball legend and World War II veteran Jackie Robinson — eventually prompting the reinstatement of some webpages and even eliciting an admission of error from the Department of Defense. California politicians quickly criticized the Navy’s planned renaming. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who shares a home city of San Francisco with Milk, sharply criticized the move as a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream” in a statement on Tuesday. “Our military is the most powerful in the world – but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country,” Pelosi said, encouraging the Navy to “reconsider this egregious decision.” “Stripping his name from a Navy ship won’t erase his legacy as an American icon,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement, “but it does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans fight to protect.” ****BIG BEAUTIFUL DISASTER WITH ENDLESS DEFICITS SLASHING MEDICAID & FOOD PROGRAMS!**** — Musk goes nuclear on Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’: Elon Musk came out swinging against President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” today, slamming the reconciliation package as a “disgusting abomination” in a massive break from the president just days after stepping away from his role in the administration. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” Musk, who Trump had tapped to lead the federal expense-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, went on to criticize the bill for setting up Congress to “increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!)” and saddle Americans with “crushingly unsustainable debt.” excerpt:  Musk, who Trump had tapped to lead the federal expense-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, went on to criticize the bill for setting up Congress to “increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!)” and saddle Americans with “crushingly unsustainable debt.” His comments come as the bill is set to face Senate scrutiny after narrowly passing in the House last month. Musk’s bombshell attack on Trump’s prized megabill marks a dam-breaking moment for the billionaire presidential adviser, shortly after stepping back from his position helming DOGE last week as the end of his designated time as a special government employee came to a close. The Tesla CEO had criticized some of the president’s policies while he was serving in government. But the harsh rebuke of legislation pushed by Trump — who said in May that the bill was “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country” — marks the most severe split between the Trump ally and the president. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed off Musk’s criticism, which he posted as she was at the briefing room podium. “The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” she said. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.” Musk’s social media post emboldened some of the reconcilation’s package Republican critics. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of two Republican defections against the bill last month, was quick to boost Musk’s tirade, writing “He’s right” in a post on X. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who Trump criticized repeatedly earlier Tuesday for his opposition to the bill, came out in support of Musk. “I agree with Elon,” Paul wrote on X. “We have both seen the massive waste in government spending and we know another $5 trillion in debt is a huge mistake. We can and must do better.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also jumped on the post, replying to Musk that “The Senate must make this bill better.” But the message came as a blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was instrumental in pushing the bill through the House. Musk “coming out and panning” the GOP megabill is “very disappointing,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, “and very surprising in light of the conversation I had with him.” While Musk’s role at DOGE fundamentally reshaped Washington, the close Trump ally has signaled his frustration with the administration in recent weeks, from launching an attack on Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro on X over the administration’s sweeping tariff policy — which impacted Musk’s business holdings — to indicating that he had “done enough” in politics after throwing significant funds at an ill-fated Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April. Musk continued his tirade Tuesday afternoon against the big beautiful bill and upped the ante against Republicans in Congress — reposting a tweet questioning why the GOP is spending money on “luxury hotels in Ukraine” or “not voting on any DOGE cuts.” “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” Musk added on X. The thinly-veiled threat shortly after blasting those who supported the megabill could become a financial albatross for the GOP, after Musk’s America PAC poured millions into Trump’s reelection campaign and downballot races. In Musk’s series of posts, he backed up Massie — who Trump has openly called to be primaried. AROUND THE WORLD Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in Kyiv on May 13, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images SPY GAME — Ukrainian spies launched an underwater assault against the pillars of the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia’s mainland with Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow has illegally occupied since 2014. “The underwater supports of the piers were severely damaged at the sea bottom level — 1,100 kg of explosives in TNT equivalent contributed to this. The bridge is in an emergency state,” the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, Kyiv’s main counterintelligence agency, said in a statement today after the attack. The bridge was closed for transport as of 3 p.m., Russian authorities reported, issuing no more details. The attack on the Kerch Bridge happened just two days after the SBU’s daring Spiderweb drone operation damaged dozens of strategic bombers thousands of kilometers inside Russia. The Kerch Bridge was personally opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 and today marked Ukraine’s third attempt to strike it. QUITTING TIME — Dutch far-right figurehead Geert Wilders announced this morning that his party would quit the government in The Hague , throwing the Netherlands into turmoil. Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) left the coalition in a heated dispute over the government’s position on asylum. “No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the [coalition] agreement. PVV is leaving the coalition,” Wilders posted on X. Prime Minister Dick Schoof announced this afternoon that he’d hand in the resignation of the government to the King, triggering a new election less than a year after his government took office. While the PVV members of the government are resigning, Schoof said that the remainder of the government — including himself — would stay on in a caretaker capacity until there’s a new administration. Schoof called Wilders’ move “unnecessary and irresponsible.” But, he said, “if one party lacks the will to continue [to carry out the government program], you cannot move forward with each other.” The outgoing Dutch government, a coalition between Wilders’ far-right PVV, the populist Farmer-Citizens Movement (BBB), the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) and the liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), had scheduled crisis talks this morning to discuss Wilders’ demands for stricter asylum measures.   Cut through policy complexity and turn intelligence into action with POLITICO’s Policy Intelligence Assistant —a new suite of tools designed to save you time and demonstrate your impact more easily than ever—available only to Pro subscribers. Save hours, uncover critical insights instantly, and stay ahead of the next big shift. Power your strategy today— learn more .     Nightly Number 89 The total staff employed by the U.S. DOGE Service — a White House technology shop that was rebranded when Trump took office — in fiscal 2025. That number would grow to 150 in fiscal 2026 under the White House’s fiscal 2026 budget request. RADAR SWEEP AI ANXIETY — While the advent of generative AI has bolstered unconventional uses of large language models like ChatGPT, it has also become a go-to therapist and interpreter for relationship woes. Users appreciate the platform’s constant availability for emotional analysis and its stark evaluations of personal conversations. However, WIRED’s Megan Farokhmanesh reports that such practices actually promote greater social anxiety in users while inhibiting the growth of their interpersonal communication skills. Privacy concerns also abound as users upload extensive chat records and personal information into the model to have it fully assess their emotional needs. Parting Image On this date in 1989: A young woman is caught between civilians and Chinese soldiers, who were trying to remove her from an assembly near the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. The Chinese government deployed troops to capture the square from protesters on June 3 into June 4 — at least hundreds of people were killed. | Jeff Widener/AP Marisa Guerra Echeverria contributed to this newsletter.  Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on X Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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