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State of Play: Power and Performance
We’re in DC this week for the White House Correspondents Dinner — more specifically, for the reception we host the evening before. I arrived a day early, and yesterday I went with Adriene, who oversees all of our news programming, to Capitol Hill to meet with some of the staffers we rely on to land interviews and stay informed.
It was a weird experience. While we did not have the good fortune to spot the Freedom Truck — evidently some part of Trump’s beloved America 250 celebration — the whole congressional complex gives the impression of a MAGA pageant. Many House Republicans have memorial posters of Charlie Kirk taped up outside their offices. Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, a loon among loons, has taken things a step further, displaying next to his door a large color photo of Trump raising his fist in Butler, PA, the moment after getting shot.
I worked in the Senate and then in the House a million years ago, in a different era of Democratic powerlessness. The regal buildings have not changed. The context has. Being in the minority then felt more like playing the field while the other team bats. Now it feels like being locked out of a stadium where people you love are getting thrown to the lions for sport. Even the Capitol building itself, which used to convey promise, now reads as the setting of a coup attempt that never really failed. Even if we win the majority back — and if they give up power willingly — how much of what they hand over will be wrecked beyond repair?
The Democrats we met with don’t have the luxury of being so morose. They’re busy devising ways to slow and blunt Trump’s abuses for as long as they have to, and making plans for what a new majority will need to do. They laughed more than I was expecting. They were generous with their time. And then when they’d finished their coffees, they got up and politely excused themselves. Time to get back to work.
What We’re Watching
Dan and Jon arrived in DC last night, and we’ll be recording this afternoon in a studio in Dupont Circle that we use often. The incomparable Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic will join us to talk about the gross ritual that is the Correspondents Dinner and the state of media in Trump’s Washington. One challenge: Trump’s only public appearance today is a pooled-press healthcare event in the Oval Office right as we start rolling. We’ll have to figure that out. In the meantime, here’s what we have tabbed for news blocks, with thanks as always to Saul, Makena, and Greg.
Iran Yet Again
We have a lot of small updates since Tuesday’s show — but it’s not clear that the big picture’s changed all that much. That might argue for pushing the topic farther down in the rundown, but in cases like this we usually decide to leave it up top, tick through what’s important, and then move on to the politics.
We’ll see what Trump says when and if he gets questions this afternoon. As we understand it this morning, the ceasefire continues after the president magnanimously extended the deadline [ [link removed] ] on Tuesday night, citing fractures [ [link removed] ] in the Iranian regime.
Administration officials are spinning this as a final offer of clemency from the boss — “Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together,” one of them told [ [link removed] ]Axios [ [link removed] ] — but it certainly doesn’t feel like they want to restart the bombing.
One potential reason for that: Iran retains much more military strength [ [link removed] ] than Trump can bring himself to admit publicly. Iran seized two commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz hours after the ceasefire extension. Trump claimed on Truth Social on Thursday morning that the US has “total control” [ [link removed] ] of the Strait — but in a companion post [ [link removed] ] said he’d ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill” any ship laying mines in the waterway.
Might orders like this have something to do with the fact that Pete Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan? “Phelan didn’t understand he wasn’t the boss,” one anonymous official said. “His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks should be given.”
JD Vance’s trip to Islamabad is on hold indefinitely until another round of talks materialize, and for now it looks like the administration is waiting and watching, attempting the usual mix [ [link removed] ] of threats and peace offerings to get Iran back to the table.
For their part, the Iranians seem to be enjoying trolling us. The U.S. “did not achieve their goals through military aggression, nor will they through bullying,” Speaker Ghalibaf wrote [ [link removed] ] on Twitter on Wednesday. “The only way forward is to recognize the rights of the Iranian nation.”
Virginia and the Midterms
At what point do we declare that Trump’s decision to start a redistricting war has officially backfired? We may be there — almost. On Tuesday, Virginia voters narrowly approved a referendum [ [link removed] ] to redraw the state’s congressional maps in a way likely to hand Democrats 10 of Virginia’s 11 House seats (up from their current six). The New York Times’s Reid Epstein called it [ [link removed] ] “as extreme a political gerrymander as exists in the United States.”
But first, a legal battle. A Republican-appointed circuit judge in the state issued an order [ [link removed] ] voiding the result just a day later. State Attorney General Jay Jones vowed to appeal, saying “Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People’s vote.”
The case now heads the Virginia Supreme Court, which previously stayed [ [link removed] ] an earlier ruling by this same rural judge and allowed the vote to proceed.
Letting the referendum stand “creates the possibility that Democrats will enter the midterm elections with a one-seat edge,” VOX concludes [ [link removed] ], after tallying up the results of similar battles from Texas to California. Little wonder Axios [ [link removed] ] notes [ [link removed] ] “buyer’s remorse” among Republicans about their decision to start this fight last year, at Trump’s urging.
Still, it’s not over yet. Florida is likely to launch its own redistricting effort soon. And the Supreme Court is weighing a change to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which could allow southern states to make big changes in the GOP’s favor.
Everything Else
There’s a bunch more out there to cover, though we don’t have resolution yet on whether we’ll do a third block or save these morsels for the Leibovich portion of the show.
Kash Patel’s flailing continues. Asked directly at a DOJ press conference whether he could say unequivocally whether he’s ever been intoxicated or absent during his time as FBI director, Patel said, [ [link removed] ] “I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia.” His boss Todd Blanche’s answers were no less awkward.
We’ve also got the incredible story of “sugar baby” Julia Varvaro, the 29-year-old counterterrorism advisor at DHS who’s been outed [ [link removed] ] by a former partner for soliciting older men online to pay for her lifestyle. Her whistle-blowing ex, who said he spent $40,000 on trips and gifts for her over three months, said he believes Varvaro is “under financial stress” that poses a national security risk. Varvaro has now been suspended [ [link removed] ].
I’d love to hear Mark’s thoughts on both of those stories, but mostly we’ll want to talk to him about WHCD, why it still happens, why Trump is attending this year — his first time doing so as president [ [link removed] ].
Open Tabs
My reading goal this week is to make more progress on the Caity Weaver bread opus [ [link removed] ]. Here are three important stories that might suffer because of that effort:...

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