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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, the favorite politics newsletter of the Easter Bunny and its antithesis—the devil—alike.
We all knew it was coming, but now we’re at the part of the script where Trump might ruin the central bank. House Republican moderates are warning that they won’t agree to Medicaid cuts, but guess what? They will. Harvard University has made the list, though it will probably complain to the teacher about its placement.
Let’s begin with this week’s unlikely star Democrat.
1.
Chris Van Hollen
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is not a camera hog. He’s a longtime member of Congress turned senator who tends to his state and has an expert understanding of the budget and appropriations. This week, though, national news was glued to him as he traveled to El Salvador to try to visit the notorious prison where the Trump administration sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia by “administrative error.” Van Hollen said that guards who were “under orders” to prevent him from visiting initially turned him away. Eventually, though, Van Hollen was able to meet with Abrego Garcia at a hotel.
Back in the U.S., Van Hollen’s visit, and the ensuing spike in attention to Abrego Garcia’s case, became a question of strategy. Republicans felt they had the political upper hand, arguing that out-of-touch Democrats cared more about an “illegal immigrant” than they do about American citizens. Some Democrats worried about this impression, too. But the midterm elections aren’t for another 19 months, and these are the fears of overthinking consultants.
There are risks for Democrats in excessively sanctifying Abrego Garcia himself. But the controversy at hand is that the administration has flown someone to a prison in another country, in violation of a court order, and says that they have no legal recourse to get him back even as the courts insist that they “facilitate” his release. There are legal ways for the administration to deport Abrego Garcia, if that is what they would like to do. They are not doing that. So it’s not the end of the world if Democrats spend a week arguing against the administration abducting and disappearing people in violation of the law, and then dismissing court rulings. Why, it might even be unpopular for the administration to be doing this.
2.
Jerome Powell
One move that would rapidly accelerate America’s descent into a financial backwater that no one wants to touch would be the loss of the Federal Reserve’s independence, with the chairman and board of governors stacked with cronies implementing the president’s political objectives on monetary policy rather than following the data. Obviously, the possibility of Trump—who only ever wants to see the Fed lower rates—moving in this direction is one of Washington’s (and the world’s) great fears. That tension kicked up this week after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump initially selected for the post in his first term, gave a speech.
In the most polite of ways, Powell noted that Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to economic stability had heightened concerns over both inflation and slow growth—anyone know a good portmanteau for this?—creating a tricky situation for the central bank. The remarks prompted markets to fall another few percentage points and irritated Trump. In a social media post Thursday, Trump reiterated again his belief that Powell should be lowering rates and added that “his termination cannot come fast enough!” Whether Trump can fire Powell is related to a question that the administration is currently testing through the courts. Let’s be clear: You do not want to live in a country where the president can fire the central bank head for not giving him low interest rates at all times … but you may just end up in one!
3.
House Republican moderates
On Monday, a dozen House Republican moderates in competitive districts sent a letter to their leaders warning them that “we cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill
that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” But why should anyone believe that they won’t cave? At each procedural step so far, this group has fallen in line after receiving “assurances,” all while Speaker Mike Johnson tends to the sensitivities of the most conservative elements of the House GOP. And by voting for the reconciliation framework last week, the moderates cornered themselves into a position where they will have to vote on a bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts.
If you read between the lines of the moderates’ letter, too, they’ve left themselves quite a bit of space for cuts they could support. The letter focuses on preserving program access for “our nation’s most vulnerable populations” and emphasizes the need to protect “children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and pregnant women—those who the program was intended to help.” This language, with its focus on traditional Medicaid, shies away from addressing the 20 million people covered by Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.
One of the big ideas that the committee drawing up these cuts is batting around is to eliminate the Medicaid expansion’s generous arrangement in which the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost. And if that happened, a lot of states would simply end their participation in the Medicaid expansion. Keep an eye on the plans for the expansion population as they put this big, beautiful bill together.
4.
Harvard
Last week, some administration goons sent a threatening letter to Harvard University outlining all sorts of hiring and curriculum and faculty changes this private college would have to make to “maintain Harvard’s relationship with the federal government”—i.e., to keep its grants flowing. It’s the same old shakedown they tried (successfully) with Columbia University, left-leaning Big Law firms, and other independent centers of power. This week, though, Harvard rejected the administration’s demands, saying that “the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” and that it was “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
The nerds’ response set Trump off in all sorts of new goonish directions. It’s not just that the administration has frozen billions in Harvard grants. Trump has called on the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the IRS is indeed looking into that. The Department of Homeland Security has threatened to block Harvard from enrolling international students unless it hands over details about its students attending on visas. Now, you don’t have to like Harvard, its educational practices, or its student body. Its graduates are often insufferable—you should see the way Slate writer Ben Mathis-Lilley sings their fight song, waving his little pennant, in Zoom meetings. But this is an attempted authoritarian leveling of private Fox News boogeymen that will continue apace unless institutions with the capacity to fight it do so. Good luck, nerds! (They’ll probably settle by next week.)
5.
Grover Norquist
We are in unprecedented times: There is active discussion between Congress and the White House about raising the top marginal income tax rate in their upcoming reconciliation bill. This would break with one of the bedrock orthodoxies of Republican economic policy going back decades and could go halfway toward inoculating the party against the Democratic argument that Republicans want to cut Medicaid while cutting taxes for the rich. Will this actually get out of the chit-chat stage among policymakers and into the bill? It would have to be something that Trump himself really wants and is willing to push for, since congressional GOP leaders aren’t interested. If it does happen, though, we’d be watching the downfall of another major Reagan-era institution in Washington: Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who has long enforced a “pledge” by Republican lawmakers to vote against any tax increases. The thought of violating Norquist’s pledge used to terrify Republican lawmakers. But guess what? Now the only thing that scares Republican lawmakers is violating an edict from Donald Trump. Another shibboleth may well go down.
6.
David Hogg
David Hogg, a 25-year-old activist and survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting, is one of several vice chairs of the Democratic National Committee. What does a vice chair of a national party organization do? Not a whole lot, but his picture is above Chuck Schumer’s or Hakeem Jeffries’ on the official DNC leadership page. Hogg also leads a group, though, called Leaders We Deserve, which has announced it will spend $20 million to primary safe-seat incumbent Democrats in favor of younger, more combative ones. In an interview with the New York Times, Hogg said he knew that this would “anger a lot of people,” and predicted “a smear campaign against me” aiming to “destroy my reputation and try to force me to stop doing this.” Oh dear. Yes, this move can and will anger a lot of incumbents. It’s already doing so. For good reason: The gigs are at total cross purposes! If he thinks that older, overly comfortable House Democrats—and God, there are so many—should be primaried, he should do that job. If he wants to be a leader of a national party organization, which tends to focus on helping its elected officials, he should do that job.
7.
Lisa Murkowski
You never know what a senator is going to say during a congressional recess. And what Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said this week was both surprising and jarring. The senator, addressing a roomful of Alaska nonprofit leaders, was asked what she had to say to people who are afraid, or represent people who are afraid. “We are all afraid,” Murkowski said. She then paused for a long time, deciding whether to go for it. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where, I don’t know—I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell you: I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
People heard this different ways. Some felt it was an admission of cowardice, that she’s too concerned about her own political career if she speaks out against Trump. That’s not what the Surge heard—and, having watched Murkowski cast a number of difficult votes over the years and live to tell about it, we can tell you she’s among the gutsier members of the Senate. Instead, we heard the position of someone representing Alaska, far and away the state most dependent on federal dollars. Alaska can be made to pay if she steps out of line. It’s an unenviable position for her, Alaska, and everyone else. So! Weather’s looking pretty good this weekend, huh?
