Impoundment

Joyce Vance Jan 29

We all know that Congress has “the power of the purse,” but what if he disagrees with the programs they decide to fund? What happens if the president doesn’t want to spend the money Congress allocates? Can he refuse to spend it?

That’s how we started the day, with the fallout from a memo issued by Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Monday night, which you can read in full here. It references a so-called duty of the executive branch “to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people,” before unloading this rather incredible sentence: “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”

So, what was the plan? OMB ordered executive branch agencies “to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities” for ideological purity, and in the meantime, they were supposed to stop payment. The memo directed each agency to “complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their Federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities” that run afoul of any of Trump’s executive orders.

The agencies were also ordered to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders,” while the review is underway. That included programs such as “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.” Federal aid spending was slated to come to a halt the next day, Tuesday. By Tuesday morning, there were reports that Medicaid portals were shut down. Access to funding that supported programs for people experiencing homelessness, Head Start, and Meals on Wheels was reported to be offline.

The massive confusion over which programs were impacted seemed to culminate in a combative first press conference by Trump’s newest spokeswoman, Karoline Levitt, during which it became clear that the poorly worded, confusing memo issued by OMB required additional clarification. Then, a lawsuit filed by the National Council of Nonprofits caused federal district Judge Loren AliKhan to temporarily block Trump’s plan to stop spending so she could hold a hearing on Monday to consider whether she should issue a temporary restraining order that could block the freeze for an additional two weeks. The outcome of that hearing will turn on whether the plaintiff groups challenging the Trump administration’s plans can show that they will be irremediably harmed by the measure.

That leaves us with the question, can a president unilaterally substitute their own funding decisions for those of Congress? The answer is, they can’t. The attempt to do so is called impoundment, and it’s prohibited by the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. The Act bars presidents from withholding funds from congressionally mandated programs they oppose.

The Impoundment Control Act, like much of the legislation requiring presidents to follow the law, was passed in reaction to the Nixon presidency. It effectively ended a president’s power to impound funds. The year following its passage, the Supreme Court held in Train v. City of New York that even without the Act, presidents lack the authority to impound funds. Train reaffirmed the clear grant of the power of the purse to Congress in the Constitution.

The only way Trump can proceed with impoundment is if the Act is unconstitutional and Train is reversed.

In December, Trump nominated Washington, D.C., lawyer Mark Paoletta to retread his role during Trump’s first administration as OMB’s General Counsel. Previously, Paoletta authored an article titled “The President’s Constitutional Power of Impoundment,” in which he argued that “Since the Founding, it has been understood that Article II vests the President with authority to decline to spend the full amount of an appropriated fund.” Paoletta argues that the impoundment power is “grounded in the text and structure of the Constitution and supported by centuries of history and practice”—precisely the type of argument the Supreme Court has used to buy into dramatic reversal of precedent in other areas, like abortion.

We end the day with this looming constitutional confrontation taking shape. Could it be that easy? Can Trump simply yank the funding for any programs he believes are “woke” or in pursuit of a “green new deal” (that never became the law in any event)? Can Trump rip up protections for the LGBTQ community, and beyond that, for any at-risk group he’s at odds with, because the Supreme Court is going to restore his impoundment power? It’s possible that an impoundment case could make its way to the Court promptly, at least on the temporary stay order, and we could get an early inclination of how the Court is leaning later this year.

Elections have consequences.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

 

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

Instead of Five Questions...

Joyce Vance Nov 9

No Five Questions edition for tonight. I had a piece planned for you on transition teams, but it feels too soon.

There are, however, legal developments in two cases that you’ll want to be aware of. The first reads like an international spy thriller, and the second signals the end of the federal criminal prosecutions against Donald Trump. It has been an undeniably rough week.

Iran

The headline was that DOJ charged three Iranians with an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Donald Trump during the campaign. There is more to the story, though.

The three men were charged with material support of terrorism, murder for hire, money laundering, conspiracy, and other crimes in a 26-page complaint filed in the Southern District of New York. They were working at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. The IRGC is an Iranian military and counterintelligence agency that operates under the authority of Iran's Supreme Leader.

The ringleader is Farhad Shakeri, originally from Afghanistan, who came to the United States as a child and lived in New York until his arrest for robbery. He was deported after serving a 14-year sentence in New York state prisons and currently lives in Tehran. While in prison, he met the co-conspirators, who he enlisted to join the scheme. Two of those men were named in the complaint and arrested yesterday in New York. The complaint indicates that at least one additional co-conspirator is expected to be brought to New York and arrested, but that person is not identified.

The charges involve more than a conspiracy targeting Trump. There are four murder-for-hire plots and an additional plan to create a mass casualty attack. The complaint lays out:

• A plot to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin, identified as “a journalist, author, and political activist, and an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime's human rights abuses and corruption.”

• A plot targeting two American-Jewish businesspeople.

• The plot targeting Trump, which in September of 2024 became the sole focus for the IRGC.

• Plans for a mass casualty shooting attack on Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka in October 2024, which fell apart after Israel and the United States issued travel warnings following the arrest of one of the co-conspirators, who is not identified by name in this complaint.

The complaint tells a curious story beginning on page 22, when we learn that the FBI did what they characterize as five “voluntary telephonic interviews” with Shakeri while he was in Iran. The first was on September 30 and the last on November 7. The complaint explains that his “stated reason” for speaking with agents was to try and get a reduced sentence for someone in U.S. custody by “providing assistance to law enforcement on this individual's behalf.” A few pages later, we learn Shakeri told agents during one of the calls, “If these people [The IRGC] gimme a green light . . . I'm gonna come pretty close so you guys can be convinced that [Individual-I] needs to get released." That’s not exactly a cooperation agreement with the government. Along the line, agents realized Shakeri was lying about both the nature and extent of what he was doing, but we don’t know for certain how their conversations began.

This complaint appears to be part of a larger story. It is not an indictment—the government did not go to a grand jury, probably signaling a desire to move quickly and arrest defendants on U.S. soil before they learned they were under investigation. The information dropped about another defendant being brought to this country is cryptic. We may learn more when/if that happens or when the government goes to a grand jury to indict. Shakeri’s two American co-defendants will have plenty of incentive to cooperate—three of the charges against them each carry a 20-year maximum sentence. But, it’s unlikely they’ll know much, if any, detail about the Iranian terrorists behind the crimes, which involve what, at any time, would be a headline story about terrorist attacks planned on American soil and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, we have to move on from this example of what DOJ is capable of accomplishing to protect Americans and our country.

Washington, D.C.

Early Friday afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan granted Jack Smith’s request to stop all activity in the Washington, D.C., case in which Donald Trump is charged with plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Smith asked for and was granted until December 2 to decide on his course of action given the “unprecedented circumstance” of his criminal defendant being elected president of the United States.

The reality is that one way or another, the two federal prosecutions, the one in D.C., and the classified documents case dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon and currently on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, are going away. The question undoubtedly under discussion at the Justice Department is whether there is a reason to dismiss it now, on Smith and Merrick Garland’s watch, or to leave it for after the change in administration, forcing Trump’s team to dismiss the case against their new boss.

One benefit of terminating the investigations now could be the ability to write some form of report memorializing the evidence against Trump for the historical record. A document of that nature, like the Mueller Report, might be made public through either the Department or Congress. In his report, Mueller stopped short of recommending charges against Trump because he would have no forum to respond, since he couldn’t be charged while in office. It’s hard to know how the Department will weigh those concerns here, when the charges have already been brought and Trump could have, but has chosen not to, have his day in court.

Decisions about how to wind down could be particularly important in the Mar-a-Lago case, where the government’s evidence has never been discussed in detail, unlike in the January 6 case, where it was fully briefed. That case involves mishandling classified documents and trying to prevent the United States from recovering them, conduct that, because it occurred after Trump left office, can’t be cloaked in presidential immunity. With Trump about to resume the role of commander in chief, the facts in this case, including Trump’s reasons for holding onto the material and lying about it, are literally a matter of national security. At a minimum, it’s critical to make certain the historical record can’t be destroyed.

We don’t know yet whether the government will dismiss this case outright—its reply brief is due next Friday and we may get some inkling then—or try to obtain a ruling from the court on the legal issues. There is also the matter of Trump’s two co-defendants in the case, whom the government can proceed against even after Trump is inaugurated. He can, of course, order the case dismissed and give them preemptive pardons.

Whether the dismissals happen now or on Trump’s watch, it’s an incredibly unsatisfactory end to two of the most important criminal cases in the nation’s history. The cases should have stood for the principle that no man was above the law and restored faith in the American system of justice. Instead, one was derailed by an unnecessarily lengthy appeal that gave the president virtual immunity for crimes committed in office, while the other was kneecapped by a judge appointed by the defendant himself whose ability to hear the case was never challenged by prosecutors.

The End of DOJ’s Independence from the White House

Since the Watergate era, when the line between justice and abuse of the justice system was crossed, every new administration has signed off on “contacts memos” between the White House and the Justice Department, designed to ensure, among other things, that the president does not use the criminal justice system to help friends or to punish enemies. Even the first Trump Administration adhered to that procedure, the norm that has separated our country from banana republics where criminal prosecutions were another tool in the toolkit of autocratic leaders, until now.

That’s probably not going to happen in the new Trump Administration. One of Trump’s persistent themes is his desire to use the Justice Department as a vehicle for revenge.

Mark Paoletta, the General Counsel of OMB under Trump and author of a recent book about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tweeted yesterday that the president should control all aspects of the Justice Department’s work like he does the rest of the executive branch. Paoletta’s name has been bandied about as a likely AG for Trump. For now, he is part of Trump’s transition team for the Justice Department.

Paoletta retweeted a post from another confidant of Trump’s tonight, which calls for “probes” of Jack Smith, his office, and “their co-conspirators inside and outside of government” by both Congressional entities and multiple DOJ offices, referencing the ruinous expense and stress that comes with being targeted in a federal investigation, even though Smith’s team is “confident their work can withstand legal scrutiny.”

Paoletta wrote in the earlier tweet that a “President has a duty to supervise the types of cases DOJ should focus on and can intervene to direct DOJ on specific cases.”

It’s a sharp departure from the way generations of Justice Department and other government lawyers have understood the system needs to work if we are going to uphold the intent of the founders. The norms were there for a reason. Dissolving them serves no one other than Donald Trump.

As Jimmy Kimmel said, the night of the election was “a terrible night for everyone who voted against him [Trump], and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too. You just don't realize it yet.”

I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you tonight. I know it’s been a long week. But as I wrote to you earlier, we did not give up during the first four years of Trump’s time in office, and we are not going to give up this time either. That means we have to prepare ourselves. We have to understand what’s going on, commit to sharing the truth in an era where accurate news may become increasingly more elusive, and get ready to fight for our country. I’m not looking forward to it, but by the time January gets here, I intend to be ready.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

FOCUS: Dahlia Lithwick | Alito's Billionaire Pals Reeled in a Big One - and It Wasn't the Salmon

 

 

23 June 23

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

THE SMALL DONORS ARE TRYING — While we are making little progress overall on the June fundraiser the small donors are in fact responding. A ten dollar donation is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t move the progress bar much. A one hundred dollar donation matches ten $10. donations. The RSN community is large and small working together.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS: Dahlia Lithwick | Alito's Billionaire Pals Reeled in a Big One - and It Wasn't the Salmon
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Lithwick writes: "Calling this an ethics scandal misses the point." 

Calling this an ethics scandal misses the point.

The new ProPublica reporting about Justice Samuel Alito’s fishing trip to Alaska in 2008 makes perfectly clear that the justice did exactly what the reporters said he did—accepted a free flight on a private jet and a stay at a private resort, organized by the Federalist Society’s judicial kingmaker, Leonard Leo, and funded by Leo’s billionaire big donors. Justice Alito knew perfectly well that such gifts were to be reported, because he had reported others. He also knew that his relationship with Paul Singer, the hedge fund magnate with business before the court, might require recusal. Nothing in that reporting was in fact undermined by the justice’s response to ProPublica in the Wall Street Journal. He took the trip. He just also determined that a private jet was a “facility” for purposes of hospitality, and apparently he had no idea Singer was behind the Argentine debt case heard by the court in 2014, even though my cats knew it.

There’s no need for me to gild the lily in terms of debunking the justice’s textualist reading of the relevant disclosure provisions, as others have ably rebutted Alito’s prebuttal since it surfaced. If Leonard Leo’s risible “he’s a stand-up guy with unimpeachable integrity and nothing but nothing can influence him” defense were a real defense, nobody would need to follow ethics and anticorruption rules, ever. They could just be honorable. Same with the “but here’s a time he didn’t do what Paul Singer wanted” defense, which is Dr.-Pepper-out-your-nose funny, but not a defense. I won’t waste your time or mine on the this-is-all-just-a-“liberal-smear” defense, because it’s boring.

The problem with continuing to frame the Harlan Crow/Barre Seid/Paul Singer stories as “ethics” issues is that we tend to think of “ethics” scandals in league with failures to use the correct shrimp fork. This is kind of what happened when we framed the great pay-to-play Supreme Court Historical Society caper that permitted one couple, the Wrights, to purchase access to the Alitos and the Scalias for the price of $125,000, as a “leak” story. We keep centering the justices and their “ethics” misfires at the expense of the real grifting here: Billionaires being assigned, like something out of the Big Brothers program, to individual justices for the purposes of lavish gift giving and influence.

Look again at ProPublica’s photos of Paul Singer, Antonin Scalia, Leonard Leo, and Samuel Alito and the Big Shiny Fishes they netted. If you think the fish is the trophy in this picture, you’re making a galactic-category error. The trophy is the justice. The vital question here is not why did Justice Alito agree to take the trip, because the trip sounds quite awesome. The question is why did Leo pick him to go, empty seat on the private jet notwithstanding, and why was building a friendship with someone who was in the literal business of reshaping the court to favor his own business so urgently necessary?

As professor Steven Lubet points out, no justice wants to believe him- or herself to be a large salmon: “Justices would surely deny any such subtle influences, sincerely insisting that their judgment could never be affected by the generosity of their well-heeled friends.” But, as Lubet continues, “social science research has determined that the receipt of gifts can powerfully sway later decisions, often in ways unrealized by the recipients.” Research he cites shows that simply receiving a pen was associated with physicians’ increased prescription of a pharmaceutical company’s brand-name medication.

So long as we continue to think of Alito’s and Thomas’ failures to disclose expensive gifts in terms of ethical lapses, the focus stays on them. Look again at Harlan Crow’s now-infamous dogs-playing-poker portrait of himself, Leo, Mark Paoletta, and Clarence Thomas, smoking and Adirondacking, and not talking about anything that might come up before the court, ever. Why is Harlan Crow having that moment commemorated for all time in oils? A #protip that will no doubt make those justices who have been lured away to elaborate bear hunts and deer hunts and rabbit hunts and salmon hunts by wealthy oligarchs feel a bit sad: If your close personal friends who only just met you after you came onto the courts are memorializing your time together for posterity, there’s a decent chance you are, in fact, the thing being hunted.

Let me say it again, because it’s important: Justices and judges and all public servants are human beings who deserve to have friendships and love lives and families and cocktail parties and awards dinners and book clubs and fight clubs as they see fit. But the presumption that when other people seek access to public figures, they are currying favor and influence, but when they seek access to you, it’s because you’re just generally outstanding, well this formulation of facts cannot become the basis of recusal rules, or disclosure statutes, or your sense of self-worth in this world. And if you do the simple thing required of you, which is to disclose that it happened? The worst thing that would result is a clerk suggesting years later that you perhaps recuse yourself from hearing the case.

Finally, when the people mounting the most spirited defenses of your honor and integrity are the same exact folks who have been rendered in oils sitting next to you, well, let’s just ask ourselves whether they are indeed the objective finders of fact they purport to be. If it’s a contest between the objective good judgement of influence-seekers, or the many, many, many ethics experts who have weighed in to say that trips like this one are not OK, and they must be reported, and that recusal would be proper, I think I’m going with the experts, and not the guy who has the head of a powerful person more or less mounted on his wall.

Nobody in this world enjoys hearing that they are the salmon. But that is why we don’t allow the salmon be the sole arbiter of whether they are the salmon. Let’s please stop framing this issue in terms of “ethics” and “friendships” and “honor.” It is a big-game safari for access to powerful people, and this game has been played since power was first invented. Naming this as an influence scheme clarifies the rules and it clarifies the stakes, and most of all, it clarifies the stench.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

FOCUS | Clarence Thomas Is Exactly What He Appears: A Corrupt, Plutocrat-Backed Ruling-Class Elite

 

08 April 23

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

GIVE US A “FIGHTING CHANCE” — We are holding our own right now along side of high-powered political fundraising machines using very sophisticated methods … and we are holding our heads above water. If you come here, if you believe what we do makes a difference, help out with what you can afford. In peace and solidarity.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS | Clarence Thomas Is Exactly What He Appears: A Corrupt, Plutocrat-Backed Ruling-Class Elite
Ben Burgis, Jacobin
Burgis writes: "A blockbuster new story reveals that Clarence Thomas has been traveling around the world on a superyacht and private jet owned by billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Yet somehow, right-wingers continue to pretend that Thomas is an enemy of 'the elites.'"   

A blockbuster new story reveals that Clarence Thomas has been traveling around the world on a superyacht and private jet owned by billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Yet somehow, right-wingers continue to pretend that Thomas is an enemy of “the elites.”

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s new book, The Courage to Be Free, strikes a populist tone. He rails against the “the elites.”

But he’s eager not to be misunderstood. Not everyone “of tremendous aptitude, great wealth, or major achievement” is part of the elites. The real elites are defined by their adherence to the “ideology and outlook of the ruling class” and their shared interest in “virtue signaling.”

Governor DeSantis even provides an example of someone whose exalted position might make us think he’s part of these elites even though he totally isn’t.

That example is… Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.

DeSantis’s book came out less than two months ago. Yesterday, ProPublica published a story revealing that Justice Thomas has routinely traveled around the world on the superyacht owned by billionaire real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. Thomas also often flies on Crow’s private jet, even for very short trips, and stays in Crow’s palatial invitation-only resort. The justice never pays a dime for any of this — and he doesn’t disclose it, as is required by both judicial codes of ethics and the letter of the law.

Then again, if Crow isn’t into “virtue signaling,” I suppose he doesn’t meet DeSantis’s definition of a member of “the elites” either.

A painting hanging at Crow’s resort shows Crow and Thomas smoking cigars by the woods outside the facility while the pair chats with three other men. One, Mark Paoletta, served as the general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration. Another, Peter Rutledge, brags on his CV that he “filed over thirty briefs, amicus briefs and petitions” in the Supreme Court on behalf of “corporations, industry associations and individuals.” The final member of the group is Leonard Leo, “the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right.”

If not for DeSantis’s helpful clarification, I might have assumed that the five people smoking and gabbing in that picture were part of the elites. I might have even thought that they shared “the ideology and outlook of the ruling class.”

But then I remember what Governor DeSantis wrote:

These “elites” do not include some individuals who reach the commanding heights of society. A major figure in our government like US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a graduate of Yale Law School, is not part of this group because he rejects the group’s ideology, tastes, and attitudes.

Now, if I were a cynical person, I might think that if we were really talking about “the ruling class” in a way that was connected to real-world power — and not just “people, whether elite or not, whose tastes and cultural attitudes Ron DeSantis happens to dislike” — the ideology of that class might have something to do with cutting taxes, gutting regulations, and attacking organized labor. I might even wonder if that congenial conversation over cigars outside Crow’s private resort touched on any of those subjects.

But I’m sure that would be unfair. They were probably just gabbing about all the cool amenities at the resort — which include “more than 25 fireplaces, three boathouses, clay tennis court and batting cage, along with more eccentric features: a lifesize replica of the Harry Potter character Hagrid’s hut, bronze statues of gnomes and a 1950s-style soda fountain where Crow’s staff fixes milkshakes.” If the cases that come to the Supreme Court ever happen to touch on the business interests of any of the people who stand around that soda fountain sipping frosty milkshakes with Thomas, there’s no need for him to recuse himself. He probably doesn’t even know what any of Crow’s friends do for a living.

It’s important to remember that Thomas is a regular guy at heart. In a recent documentary about his life — which “Crow helped finance” according to ProPublica — Thomas said that he doesn’t mind visiting Europe, but he really prefers the United States, and “the regular parts” of the United States at that. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.”

All of this is to be expected from a warrior against “the elites.”

There is one detail I find confusing, though.

I know from DeSantis’s book that Thomas — and presumably his good buddy Crow and the rest of the gang they hang out with at the resort and on the superyacht — rejects “the ideology and outlook of the ruling class.” So when I saw that an interviewer recently asked Crow what “scares” him the most, I naturally expected that Crow would say something like, “Well, my greatest fear is that the ruling class will have too much wealth and power.”

Instead, his answer was one word long: “Marxism.”

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The unlikely alliance that’s reshaping Washington

 

View in browser   BY ARI HAWKINS With additional reporting from Calder McHugh 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 .   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 .     FROM THE LAW DESK 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.” WHAT'D I MISS? — 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.” NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 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. AROUND THE WORLD 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.   GO INSIDE THE 2023 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE:  POLITICO is proud to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage, insider nuggets and unparalleled insights from the 2023 Global Conference, which will convene leaders in health, finance, politics, philanthropy and entertainment from April 30-May 3. This year’s theme, Advancing a Thriving World , will challenge and inspire attendees to lean into building an optimistic coalition capable of tackling the issues and inequities we collectively face. Don’t miss a thing — subscribe today for a front row seat .     NIGHTLY NUMBER 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 . RADAR SWEEP 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. PARTING IMAGE 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 .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong Ari Hawkins @_AriHawkins   FOLLOW US

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA