Letters from Capitol Hill that Members of Congress have written and signed on to lately.
The House is out. The Senate is in.
DEI is out. America First is in.
Gulf of Mexico is out on Google Maps. Gulf of America: in.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent is out as the first openly gay man to serve as Treasury Secretary. Bessent is also in, confirmed by the Senate 68-29 on Monday.
Tulsi Gabbard’s nom panel hearing on her appointment to serve as National Intelligence Director for President Trump may be out in the open. Pete Hegseth is in as Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
Hegseth is already making history on the job as one of only a handful of presidential noms who needed the Vice President to break the vote on passage of his confirmation.
For some clarification, the House isn’t just out - Republicans are out-out in Florida at a conference retreat. No better time to escape the damp dreary D.C. weather than late January, and we will absolutely be FOIAing the scores of this week’s golf course teambuilding.
No better way to achieve consensus on budget cuts to social programs than when being served bourbon by golf cart girls.
No word on where the Dems are retreating this month, if retreating, but the capital 'L' Liberals did have a caucus meeting last week on the finer points of how to produce viral videos - a positive signaling of their acceptance that the Democratic party needs a social and media makeover.
President Obama and his Democrats had less of an image problem during the Hope era. If you’ll recall, Obama was able to achieve passage of his signature Affordable Care Act over margaritas and Sunset Dip at the storied, delicious Capitol Hill institution Tortilla Coast. RIP to Obamacare and T Coast’s overpriced happy hour.
Back in the land of the living, Trump is still pushing for “one big beautiful bill” to move his myriad policy priorities via a budget tool known as reconciliation. The procedural maneuver is rooted in pettiness, not only for how each provision of a reconciliation bill is required to be tied to financial revisions, but for how it reduces the vote threshold for passage and minimizes the need to negotiate with the minority Democrats in the instance of the 119th Congress.
While the last supermajority across the House, Senate, and White House was some time ago for the Republicans, there is a clear conviction to try and capitalize on the opportunity to install deep-rooted conservative rules and law through consensus.
Thus far, there is some consensus among House conservatives, as well as between House and Senate Republicans, and even some Democrats are joining in GOP votes and initiatives, particularly trendy in states and counties where Trump won his race for President. Thirteen trendy Districts Republicans are already dressing up with a midterm strategy.
Immigration is one of these trendier midterm strategy topics where Dems are crossing the aisle to show their constituents they see their support for Trump and his ideas.
Action on a budget and spending plan, as well as contention on how to handle a debt ceiling to tamper sovereign repayment authorities, however, are proving to be one of the sticking points among the GOP, between the chambers, and deeply divisive for Democrats decrying talk of hogtying passage of their minority policies in exchange for votes.
Budget and the debt ceiling are long-standing hardline topics for Members of Congress in both parties in both chambers; for example, at least 30 current Members of the House have never voted on legislation to raise or suspend the debt ceiling on fiscal principle, and, if they make the jump to the Senate, these budget hawk practices tend to prevail.
Join us in launching a campaign to designate more birds of prey to congressional voting behaviors - China Hawks can stand. But, perhaps, Fiscal...Owls? Because owls…count things?
A group of owls is also known as a parliament, so, maybe Budget Hoots.
We’ll keep workshopping.
Of course, the President Trump tsunami of power and force is moving high and fast, and perhaps these Members will surf this wave instead of refusing to get on (their) board.
Elsewhere, country leaders are not so shy to push back on Trump and his demands, suggesting his words are nothing more than rhetoric.
Just this week, the President suggested Jordan and surrounding countries to Palestine receive the displaced population, only to be met with resistance and, ultimately, rejection of the idea.
Closer to Washington, as part of efforts to demonstrate action on the growing immigration crisis that largely supported Trump’s platform for re-election last year, the White House began deportation flights this week.
Colombia was one of the destination countries to unilaterally receive their citizens, which, like the Middle East, first responded with resistance.
Rhetoric or not, Trump’s threats are not without their effects: following word of Colombia’s pushback to receive the deportees, the President threatened to enact tariffs, nearly instantaneously reversing the refusal.
Guatemala, China, and India are also on the list of countries welcoming residents home from their time in the U.S.
Less a quickfire threat, more the shaping plan, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Bessent is reportedly weighing ideas for implementing a universal tariff, which the President said he would like to see above the initially floated 2.5 percent.
On the tariff ledger still is the Feb. 1 deadline the President promised to enact a 25 percent tariff rate on Canada and Mexico. China has received a revised campaign promise rate of a 10 percent tariff, perhaps lowered following their demonstration of goodwill to receive a once-PRC sanctioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Although just a phone call, and mention of aggression in the South China Sea probably didn’t set too friendly a tone for a first time dial since taking charge of the State Department, China is also signaling a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. to reach a consensus on a codified law that requires divestiture of TikTok from its Beijing-linked parent company ByteDance.
Although President Trump was the one who raised the national security concerns on TikTok when he was 45, as part of his race to become 47, he utilized the entrancing social media platform, along with 170 million other Americans.
Story of TikTok and the U.S.-crafted controversy with China, like Trump, has evolved.
In essence: ByteDance is based in China; its crown jewel TikTok is wildly popular around the world; Congress responded to Trump’s previous cries of concern for TikTok’s familial ties to China by passing a law to require removal of ByteDance’s majority ownership to continue operating in the U.S.; Trump heard the cries of users and countless small business owners that use the platform in the U.S. to monetize their brands and enterprises that killing TikTok would kill their livelihoods; on Inauguration Eve, Trump extends the divestiture deadline by 75 days; which leads us to today, where a number of offers for purchase of TikTok without its proprietary, and, apparently, hyper-effective algorithm that the China Hawks are certain will be the downfall of America, are taking shape, including from Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and whoever else may be able to piece together the $50-200 billion rumored going rate.
Add in now a growing number of Senators demanding a showing of evidence of an actual threat from the alleged mishandling or sharing of user data, of which TikTok maintains there is none, Members who voted for the divestiture bill are finding more rocks pushing them harder into place to change their position should the platform manage to find a way to stay.
You eat elephants - and crow - one Byte at a time.
Byte Birds?
From birds of prey to mysterious mammals of the sea, DeepSeek, whose logo is a very cute smiling whale, is churning up a wave of its own.
Comedy is always best when explained, but AI tech bros and investors are not laughing, as the China-based DeepSeek stands to burst the multi-billion dollar bubble the industry has blown on monetizing machine learning.
For starters, requiring less rare Earth mineral conductive material for processing is, on its face, a good thing - less hard metal means less power required to run the conduction of the chips, and that means less carbon emissions and pollution.
Of course, this also means China needs chips produced in the U.S. and Taiwan much less, and the demand for energy correspondingly decreases, both of which would be great, but for Trump’s call for increased manufacturing in the U.S. going hand-in-hand with energy infrastructure construction and fortification he sees for his Golden Era of America.
Unbothered by the U.S.’ champagne problems and its growing demand for revitalization of a blue collar middle class, DeepSeek is making a point to highlight how their code is fully open source, and paying for it all with less than a 10th of the U.S. price tag on a project to match the efforts, really damages credibility of valuation, not to mention American ability and understanding of what AI is and can do.
Inviting immigrants and foreign brainpower in to further develop critical tools and make these clearly much-needed improvements to U.S. efforts would be a solution to close some of the gap, but images of Indian nationals being shipped back to south Asia doesn’t paint such a rosy picture for the traditional, once-powerful imagery of the American dream.
What’s more, the tech community reportedly became deeply divided when the Biden administration was said to have made a play to keep AI tightly held by the government.
Precious tools and inevitable technology weren’t the only things Biden and the 46th White House tried to keep a tight grip on, but, like eventual truths from media coverups and the mammals' need to breathe oxygen, whales come to the surface.
The space race is still alive and well for First Buddy and the-special-rules-under-a-national-emergency agency Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Director Elon Musk and many countries around the world, but there’s a race in a new space under Trump II, and AI is the rocket.
While the atomic space race of the 60s nearly, by design, bankrupted the Soviet Union in their efforts to keep up America’s moonshot, the race to AI dominance may be one to the bottom if costs can be slashed as much as DeepSeek is reporting.
A sign of a legacy race is disinformation: people today still doubt the authenticity of the Gemini landings, and there’s a big question if what DeepSeek is saying is actually true.
Congress has not proffered any laws to ban the Chinese-GPT counterpart as of this morning, but Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is one of the Members who is pushing back on demands for showing evidence that digital ties to China are damaging and a threat to U.S. national sovereignty.
Cruz much prefers his own government to take opaque control over his data and digital extension.
Sticking on theme with imparting chaos - intended or otherwise - to garner control, perceived or otherwise, President Trump has aligned his acting cabinet appointees to all but pause government spending for evaluation.
Done under the guise of a declared national emergency and a pending review status, as well as part of another campaign promise to trim the fat in Washington spending, the announcements on pausing foreign aid among the flurry of floated tariff threads are putting the world’s nations on edge, from Africa to Ukraine, where Europe says ending U.S. spending to defend against Russia would spell their demise.
Russian President says he’s ready to talk Ukrainian turkey with Trump, the EU has agreed to extend certain derogations permitting import of Russian gas and crude into critical markets along NATO’s Eastern Flank, like Hungary and Slovakia, Trump says tariffs go away if you move your manufacturing to the U.S. or purchase more of our energy supplies, but Putin money where your mouth is isn’t always such a low hurdle.
We’re cutting this off before the puns get any worse.
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Today’s Hearings
Defense innovation and acquisition reform will be the subject of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today.
The Panama Canal’s impact on national security, as well as trade, will be the topic of a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing today.
Senate Republicans are expected to bring up concerns about Panama’s management of the canal and worries about China’s power there at the hearing today in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
“Senator Cruz will emphasize the Panama Canal’s importance to the U.S. economy and ways to ensure fair treatment for American shippers while addressing China’s growing influence in the region,” Senate Republican Commerce Committee spokesperson Melissa Braid said.
In the Chambers
Senators take a final vote on Sean Duffy‘s nomination to lead the Transportation Department at noon. He’ll likely be easily confirmed after yesterday’s 97-0 vote to limit debate.
The chamber voted 68-29 last night to confirm Scott Bessett to lead the Treasury Department and become the chief economic spokesman for Trump and his sweeping agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and trade rebalancing, Viktoria Dendrinou and Daniel Flatley report. Read More
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) filed for cloture on another batch of nominees, setting up votes later in the week: Douglas Collins for the Veterans Affairs Department, Lee Zeldin for the Environmental Protection Agency, Doug Burgum for the Interior Department, and Chris Wright to head the Energy Department.
Sanctions related to the International Criminal Court get a procedural vote at 2:15 p.m. The House-passed bill (H.R. 23) would require sanctions on individuals involved in ICC prosecutions against Americans or citizens of US allies — including Israel — who haven’t consented to the court’s jurisdiction. Sixty votes would be needed to move the measure forward.
The House meets in a pro forma session with no votes.
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Jan. 27 | This Greenland is Your Land, This Greenland is My Land
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) issued a joint statement with Aaja Chemnitz, a member of Danish Parliament and chair of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, pushing back on Trump’s push to buy Greenland.
While the pair said “Greenland is not for sale,” they touted the possibility of a closer relationship.
“We can also affirm that Greenland welcomes increased cooperation with the U.S. on defense, mineral development, trade, and our common values of freedom and democracy,” they said in the joint statement.
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Jan. 27 | Durbin Short on Kash
U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense (DOD), the State Department, and the Department of Treasury requesting they produce all relevant materials related to alleged misconduct by Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee to be Director of the FBI, related to the rescue of two Americans held captive by Iranian-backed militants in Yemen. Allegedly, Mr. Patel publicly commented without authorization and prior to the confirmed safe retrieval of the two hostages. If true, Mr. Patel appears to have inappropriately involved himself in a sensitive operation with no regard to the safety of the hostages or the success of the mission.
Durbin wrote, “I have recently received highly credible information revealing that while serving in the first Trump Administration’s National Security Council, Kash Patel broke protocol regarding hostage rescues by publicly commenting without authorization on the then in-progress retrieval of two Americans held captive by Iranian-backed militants in Yemen in October 2020.”
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Jan. 27 | Stanton to Sec. of State
Representative Greg Stanton and Democratic members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio today expressing concerns over the Trump Administration’s recent actions that undermine the State Department’s mission, its workforce, and U.S. global leadership. The letter urges Secretary Rubio to reverse the removal of career foreign and civil service professionals from their posts, to follow the law on matters related to advancing, diversity, equity, and inclusion at the State Department, and to unfreeze critical foreign assistance programs.
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Jan. 27 | Trump Turns Off Faucet
Top Democratic appropriators sent Trump’s acting budget director a letter expressing “extreme alarm” about the pausing of funds. “The scope of what you are ordering is breathtaking, unprecedented, and will have devastating consequences across the country,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) wrote.
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Jan. 25 | Ranking Member Rebuke Revocation of Watchdogs
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led House Committee Ranking Members in a letter to President Donald Trump condemning his attempted late-night purge of at least 12 independent inspectors general, which appears to have violated federal law designed to protect their work from political interference and intimidation.
The Ranking Members wrote: “We write to express our grave concern about your recent attempt to unlawfully and arbitrarily remove more than a dozen independent, nonpartisan inspectors general without notice to Congress or the public and in the dead of night. Your actions violate the law, attack our democracy, and undermine the safety of the American people.”
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Jan. 25 | Connolly Calls on Trump for Compliance
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led House Committee Ranking Members in a letter to President Donald Trump condemning his attempted late-night purge of at least 12 independent inspectors general, which appears to have violated federal law designed to protect their work from political interference and intimidation.
The Ranking Members wrote: “We write to express our grave concern about your recent attempt to unlawfully and arbitrarily remove more than a dozen independent, nonpartisan inspectors general without notice to Congress or the public and in the dead of night. Your actions violate the law, attack our democracy, and undermine the safety of the American people.”
Cosigners: Rep. Huffman (D-CA-2)
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Jan. 25 | Amo for Rhode Island
A recent directive from President Donald Trump may delay hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants intended for infrastructure upgrades across the state. Trump’s order pauses billions of dollars in already awarded grant money for projects nationwide.
In an effort to ensure the pause doesn’t negatively impact Rhode Island or hold up work, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressmen Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo sent a letter to the Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) urging him to confirm that the law will be upheld and the funds will be released to the state.
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Jan. 24 | Mulling Over Military for Mass Deportation
U.S. Representative John Garamendi (D-CA-08), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and Ranking Member of the Readiness Subcommittee, released the following statement regarding his letter sent to Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses after public reporting of the use of military aircraft to deport undocumented immigrants:
“President Trump's use of military aircraft to enforce his immigration policy is deeply alarming, potentially unconstitutional, and a blatant abuse of presidential power. What is worse is the Posse Comitatus Act explicitly prohibits using active-duty military personnel for domestic law enforcement functions. Pulling U.S. troops and taxpayer resources from life-threatening disasters to support immigration enforcement is dangerous, inappropriate, wasteful, and a direct threat to our democratic principles.
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Jan. 24 | Hawley’s Disaster Demands
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to insurance companies regarding reports that claims related to Hurricane Helene are being denied after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton devastated American communities. In his letter, the Senator calls on them to publicly testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Management—which Senator Hawley chairs—and pushes for answers about their claim processing practices.
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Jan. 24 | Salazar on Security
Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffman urging the Department to continue protecting Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians without criminal records and pending cases from deportation in response to the Department’s newly issued guidance to revoke the CHNV program.
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Jan. 24 | Nursing an Agreement
Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Val Hoyle (OR-04), Andrea Salinas (OR-06), Maxine Dexter (OR-03), Janelle Bynum (OR-05), and Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley sent a letter urging Providence and the Oregon Nurses Association to reach agreement on new employment contracts for doctors, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and clinical staff. The health care workers have been on strike since January 10th.
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Jan. 23 | Freezing in January
U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) joined a letter urging President Trump to exempt all Veterans Affairs (VA) employees from the federal hiring freeze he issued this week. In response to this letter, the Trump Administration has announced it’s exempting health care and law enforcement positions, but other jobs related to veteran’s benefits are still affected. The hiring freeze will negatively impact Nevada’s veterans, including by blocking the hiring of personnel needed to process benefits.
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Jan. 23 | An Ask for Arizonian Hospital Administrators
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) sent a letter to hospital administrators in his Arizona’s 7th Congressional District inquiring into plans to protect immigrants’ access to emergency healthcare services. The letter is in response to President Trump’s recent executive action that rescinded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guidance against carrying out immigration enforcement efforts in sensitive locations, including medical centers.
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