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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, which—oh God, OH GOD—is just now realizing that we invited Michael Waltz to our Signal chat with other politics newsletters where we discuss our attack plan on our adversaries: influencers. Somehow this happened when we were trying to order Taco Bell delivery from another app.
Isn’t it nice when the top news story of the week ranks itself? Let’s see more of that hustle going forward, newsmakers. Aside from Signalgate, Republicans are getting mighty nervous about their special election prospects, stifling still-Rep. Elise Stefanik’s prospects for career advancement. Greenland was preparing to be mean to Usha Vance but ultimately didn’t have to.
First things first: 👊 🇺🇸 🔥
Michael Waltz
We’ll believe that his job is safe when he’s able to speak coherently again.
Perhaps you have heard, but if not: This week, we learned that national security adviser Michael Waltz had accidentally invited a journalist to a group text of the most powerful people in the country, who were debating and planning an attack in Yemen. No story since Trump’s second inauguration has cut through the noise quite like that of “Houthi PC small group,” and the response has been durable enough that someone in the administration may actually go down. If it’s anyone, it’s likely Waltz, especially as he doesn’t hold a Senate-confirmed position and could quickly be replaced. Waltz’s central crime, in the administration’s eyes, is less the slip of the finger in exposing national security secrets to a journalist than the fact that he had Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist loathed by MAGA and Donald Trump, in his phone contacts. Explaining this away is Waltz’s top priority in the cleanup, and he’s done a laughable job. Rather than just saying that Goldberg was someone who’s interviewed him or with whom he has an occasionally overlapping social events calendar, Waltz has suggested that Goldberg may have somehow sneaked his way onto the chat. Even by this administration’s PR standards, this is insulting to the intelligence. Waltz’s job has always rested delicately. There’s a power struggle among the White House foreign policy team between the “America First” wing and traditional defense hawks like Waltz. This episode has presented the former group with an opportunity to consolidate power. Waltz sure could use a diversion to turn the media’s focus away from this. What about bombing someone? Maybe he should group-text his colleagues and see what they think.
Pete Hegseth
What about firing this guy? No?
While Waltz committed the original sin of inviting the wrong dude to a sensitive group chat, it was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who most abused the thread. The demeanor in the chat of Hegseth, until recently a weekend cable news host, is one of insecurity; here’s a guy who wants to show off how many acronyms and proper nouns he knows. This leads him down a path, one that ends with him sharing specific operational details in advance of the attack outside a secure channel. Hegseth, along with other members of the administration, has been arguing that nothing in the chat was “classified information.” That is just as laughable as Waltz claiming that Goldberg digitally apparated himself into the chat. If specific attack plans ahead of an attack are not classified, then what is? This is not Hegseth’s first screwup, and it won’t be the last. The screwups will continue to be tolerated, too, because neither the White House nor the Senate Republicans who put their reputations on the line to confirm him are ready to acknowledge that their critics may have had a point. He’s not going anywhere.
Elise Stefanik
You’ll stay in the House, and you’ll be happy—got it?
The White House on Thursday withdrew New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to serve as United Nations ambassador, because it needs her to stay in office to secure the House GOP’s narrow majority. Stefanik was a quick pick of Trump’s after he won in November, and she sailed through a Senate confirmation hearing months ago. But she never got to a confirmation vote, and now she never will. The first and most important takeaway here is that this is funny. Stefanik entered the House as a sober-minded legislator a decade ago, only to wholly remake her personality into that of a frothing MAGA warrior for career advancement. After years of this debasement, she finally got the call-up and easily would have been confirmed in the Senate. She did a “Thank You” tour of her district in early February. Now she has to continue splitting her time between the icy Adirondacks and beautiful D.C. to provide another vote for tax cuts and quotidian messaging bills to protect gasoline-powered dishwashers. Ah, well! The decision is also a Republican acknowledgment of its majority’s precarity. This is a district that Stefanik won by 24 points and Trump by 21 in November. But given Democrats’ coalition of apoplectic college-educated voting addicts, the off-calendar special election in New York’s North Country would have been a competitive race. A loss in the special election wouldn’t just have cost Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson a critical vote. It would’ve been a watershed moment sending Republicans spiraling about their impending midterm doom, making it even harder to corral votes for Trump’s agenda. Stefanik should’ve quit the House two weeks ago and forced her own confirmation vote. Instead, it’ll be at least another couple of years of ribbon cuttings outside frigid rec centers.
No way Democrats can win this … right?
Why would Republicans be nervous about a hypothetical race in a New York district they should win by 20 points? Because they’re currently nervous about a very real race in a Florida district they should win by 30. Indeed, there will be two House special elections in Florida next week. One is for the Panhandle seat vacated by Matt Gaetz, and the other for the old seat of our dear friend Michael “Texty McGee” Waltz. It’s the latter where the focus is. Put simply: A congressional district anchored around Daytona Beach should not be a concern for Republicans. Waltz won it by 33 points in November. But, along with Democrats’ special-election turnout advantages, the Democratic candidate, Josh Weil, has outraised his Republican opponent about 10-to-1 in the race. There was a bit of alarm in Republicans’ tone this week, especially after the party suffered an upset in a Pennsylvania state Senate special election on Tuesday. Public polling shows the GOP candidate, Randy Fine, with a narrow advantage, but a private poll conducted by one Trump’s pollsters, Tony Fabrizio, showed Weil with a narrow lead. Both the House campaign chief, Rep. Richard Hudson, and the majority whip, Rep. Tom Emmer, have reportedly told Fine to “get his shit together,” and Trump himself has begun calling into telerallies. We smell a bit of expectations-gaming here from Republicans: They’re setting this up to be a nail-biter so if Fine wins by even a slim margin, they can declare it a smashing victory. But there’s nothing for the GOP to celebrate about a single-digit victory in a deep red district. And a loss would be a political earthquake.
John Thune and Mike Johnson
Another punt.
Last we left Republicans’ effort to pass their “one big, beautiful bill” of tax cuts, spending cuts, and assorted other goodies, House and Senate Republicans had each passed wildly different versions of the blueprint necessary to unlock a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill. The next step was to reconcile their differences in a single blueprint, pass it through both chambers, then set about writing actual legislation. How would the two chambers reconcile their differences on the size of the tax cuts? The spending cuts? The defense-spending increase? The answer, as we appeared to learn this week, is that they won’t. Leaders’ plan for now is to pass a joint blueprint with entirely different instructions for House and Senate committees—and make the eventual hard choices, especially on the level of spending cuts to pursue, down the road. This is a useful opportunity to explain how leadership strategy on signature legislation works, whether it’s Democratic or Republican leaders herding the cats. The job is to reassure reluctant members, at each procedural juncture where their votes are needed, not to sweat the small stuff and that things will be fixed down the line. Just keep it moving. That will continue all the way to the final phase in the process, after an ugly compromise is made, when leaders’ message will abruptly change: You have to vote for this, or else. So: Conservatives will be persuaded to keep moving along with a package that doesn’t guarantee deep spending cuts, and moderates will be persuaded to keep moving along with a package that doesn’t guarantee lesser spending cuts, until, at some point, Donald Trump credibly threatens to destroy their lives if they don’t vote for the final product. It’s a pretty good plan.
Anna Paulina Luna
America’s greatest threat: New parents’ temporary remote-work flexibility.
Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is not a moderate squish. The 35-year-old Freedom Caucus member, though, has caused a fascinating stir among House Republicans over her efforts to allow new parents in Congress to vote by proxy for 12 weeks. House GOP leadership is against her resolution, as are many of Luna’s Freedom Caucus members, arguing that they believe that proxy voting is unconstitutional and that this would lead to a slippery slope of exemptions for in-person voting. So Luna, earlier this month, organized a discharge petition to force a vote on the measure, and it quickly earned the necessary 218 signatures. Luna could force the vote as early as this coming week. Rather than accept that they’ve lost on the issue, though, Luna’s GOP opponents are going to war to prevent this. Some Freedom Caucus members opposed to the measure held up House floor action this week to talk strategy with leadership, and some have suggested changing House rules making it harder for discharge petitions to succeed. Luna said that she’s been offered committee assignments to get her to back down, and that other Republican petition signers have been warned they wouldn’t get votes on bills, or were threatened to have their fundraising cut off, to change their minds. Has anyone recommended that the opponents here just chill out?
A shame about that dogsled race.
In one of the administration’s most unnecessary international incidents, the White House announced that second lady Usha Vance and a U.S. delegation would be visiting Greenland this week to tour the place, visit heritage sites, and go to a dogsled race. Both Greenland and Denmark viewed this as a provocation from an uninvited foreign power openly trying to seize their land, which it was. According to a Danish news site, the U.S. advance team couldn’t find anyone willing to meet with Vance—they were knocking door to door—and the situation was threatening to turn into a PR disaster if Greenlanders lined up to protest Vance’s arrival. So the administration relented. In the new itinerary, J.D. Vance joined his wife on a visit to the U.S. military base in Greenland Friday, a much less controversial plan than strutting down the streets of Nuuk or playing with the island’s dogs. You know who else was on the trip? Mike “Definitely Best Friends With Jeffrey Goldberg” Waltz. Which raises the question: Did Air Force Two give Waltz a ride back?
Some political reads from Slate:
Trump’s Great American Crypto Scam, by Slate Staff
The New Video of Federal Agents Ambushing a Student and Disappearing With Her Should Chill You to Your Core, by Aymann Ismail
Why Is the Trump Administration Willing to Admit Fault in Signalgate?, by Jim Newell
The Trump Signalgate Leak, Annotated by an Expert on Fratty Group Chats, by Luke Winkie
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