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John:
Hello from Capitol Hill.
Welcome back from a beautiful Memorial Day weekend. Congress is currently in recess, but will return to session next week, where the storyline of the Big Beautiful Bill will continue in the Senate. Against all odds (according to Speaker Johnson himself), the House managed to pass a revised version of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill by one vote (215-214). This took a lot of effort from Republican leadership, President Trump, and the House Freedom Caucus. The next step in the process is getting the bill through the Senate, a (perhaps) surprisingly contentious process. Senate Majority Leader Thune, who assisted Speaker Johnson in boosting the bill, wants the Senate to at most leave “its imprint on” the bill. President Trump says that Senators should be able to "make the changes they want” to the bill. Speaker Johnson, on the other hand, wants the upper chamber to change as little as possible. Some Senators have put themselves out there as critics of where the bill is at, much along the lines of what several House Freedom Caucus members said, but we’ll have a better clue where the battle lines lie come next week when Senators return to Washington. Though not as tight as Speaker Johnson’s margin (relatively speaking), Leader Thune can only lose three votes. Everyone on the Republican side wants to get this bill signed into law by the Fourth of July.
The war between the Trump Administration and Harvard University escalated even further this week, with President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security nixing Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. Foreigners comprise over one quarter of enrollees at the university, and generally pay more than native-born American students. This, in addition to the President’s decision to cut billions in grant funding, disqualify Harvard from future grants, and launch investigations into potentially racist hiring practices at the university, shows that the Administration is not letting up. That, and his as-of-yet unrealized threat to also pull Harvard’s tax exemption status, suggest a serious, drawn-out conflict.
Washington was rocked by the murder of two Israeli embassy employees over the weekend by an unhinged, politically motivated man named Elias Rodriguez. Rodriguez allegedly brought a gun to the Capital Jewish Museum during a reception and fired into a group of people, killing a soon-to-be-married man and woman. He turned himself in soon after and shouted “Free, free Palestine!” as he was put into a police cruiser. Later, his manifesto was discovered and circulated, detailing his actions as “resistance” against the Israel-Hamas war. Condemnation rang out from most corners of the American public, however, a disturbing amount of sympathy was shown on social media, lionizing the terroristic act as “the highest expression of anti-Zionism.” The FBI is investigating whether they can charge Rodriguez with terrorism and hate crimes.
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One Last Thing
Sincerely,
Jake Chebowski
Government Relations
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