Morning Report — House GOP eyes another intraparty clash

Is House Republican infighting an endless loop?

Conservatives in the House GOP conference and the Democrats’ leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, agreed Sunday that activist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will not succeed in ousting Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week.

“She doesn’t lead anyone,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.) told NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”

He suggested Greene is isolated in her month-long threat to force a House vote on the motion she filed to boot Johnson as Speaker.

Two facts: Former President Trump backs Johnson, signaling to the GOP a distinct difference with Greene’s strategy, while Jeffries and top Democratic leaders say they’ll help shield Johnson from any motion Greene vows to trigger this week.

“I don’t want to predict what she will or won’t do,” Good said. “She’s pretty much operating on her own, with one or two others who have expressed support for what she’s doing.”

Good, a Johnson critic, said he does not think this election year is the right time for another major intraparty battle.

“I think we ought to have a Speaker contest in November. I don’t think Speaker Johnson can win that. I don’t support the work that he’s done over the last six months, but we need to do the right thing for President Trump’s reelection, for expanding the House majority and winning back the Senate,” Good added.

Greene has long criticized Good, who backed the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and initially supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Good has since endorsed Trump.

The Hill: Five House factions that will decide Johnson’s fate.

Jeffries, interviewed on CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” said it would customarily be the minority’s instinct to let the majority stew in its own discord.

“But when that mess starts to impact the ability to do the job on behalf of the American people, then the responsible thing at that moment might be for us to make clear that we will not allow the extremists to throw the Congress and the country into chaos,” Jeffries continued.

For Democrats, the situation at the border is a vulnerability for President Biden and for his party, the minority leader told CBS, but he pointed to voters’ support for bipartisan immigration reform in survey after survey. Trump and Senate Republicans scuttled a bipartisan border bill this year on the theory that it was a compromise that might cost the GOP votes.

On voters’ iffy reviews of Democrats’ economic policies and the party’s messaging about high costs, “It’s a work in progress,” he conceded. On the flip side, abortion and reproductive rights are a vulnerability for Republicans who face the voters this year, he added.

“If Roe v. Wade can fall, anything can fall. Social Security can fall. Medicare can fall. Voting rights can fall. And God help us all, but democracy itself can fall,” he said. 

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ Protests and the protesters: New York magazine worked with staff of The Columbia Daily Spectator to recap the protests on campus. … The New York Times “The Daily” podcast focused on protests at the University of California, Los Angeles — and Biden’s response to the nationwide demonstrations.

▪ Executive action: Biden pushes the clock on health regulations with an eye on a potential return to power by Trump.

▪ Bugs: This is where millions of cicadas will emerge this spring — and over their next decade. Prepare to hear their (loud) mating calls.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Alex Brandon | President Biden at the White House on Friday. 

POLITICS

CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Voters are six months away from an election unlike any in history, faced with a choice between two senior-citizen presidential contenders — one the incumbent and the other his predecessor. Biden flies in and out of swing states while battling for a second term. Trump, railing against a “Gestapo” administration, returns to a criminal courthouse in Manhattan this morning.

The president will return to Wisconsin Wednesday for the fourth time this year, following two visits to the state by Trump. Ahead of his visit, Biden’s campaign dispatched Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to Wisconsin to mobilize college students in another concerted effort to appeal directly to young voters, a group they’re heavily investing in nationwide. The president has continued to struggle with low approval among voters under 45, particularly Gen Z and younger millennials — the same age groups that decidedly voted for him four years ago (NPR).

With polls showing a tight presidential race in the battleground state, Trump rallied a crowd in Wisconsin last Wednesday around immigration and economic issues (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). But the former president declined to commit to accepting Wisconsin’s November election results in an interview last week, his latest instance in hedging over whether he will contest the results of the election.

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

▪ The Hill: Biden’s reelection campaign is increasingly leaning on a longtime ally to play a starring role and help him pull off a win in November: Hollywood.

Trump over the weekend traded a New York courtroom for Florida banquet halls, where he mingled with his vice-presidential contenders and wealthy donors during the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) spring retreat in Palm Beach, Fla. Not included this year were several party rabble-rousers, including Greene, Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) (The Wall Street Journal and CNN). Here’s who was in attendance.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will speak today at Johnson’s Sunday to Monday donor event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington. Team Johnson funnels its money through the entire House GOP fundraising apparatus (Punchbowl News).

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ Veepstakes: GOP potential running mate South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem went up in smoke. Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are thought to be ascendent. Trump did not call Noem to join him on stage during the RNC Palm Beach fundraiser, although he praised her; she joined a panel with Scott and Burgum.

▪ A Colorado Republican group canceled a weekend fundraiser for Noem, citing security threats.

▪ Noem initially declined to explain why she wrote in her memoir that she once met North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. “I want the truth to be out there,” the governor told CBS’s “Face the Nation” while defending her account and refusing to retract any part of her memoir.

▪ Republican National Committee chief counsel Charlie Spies — who previously worked for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) during the GOP presidential primary and knows campaign law and Federal Election Commission rules — will step down two months after taking the job, NBC News reports. The RNC cited time commitments.

▪ Maryland’s Senate Democratic primary between Rep. David Trone (Md.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks has turned sharply negative ahead of the May 14 contest to determine who will face former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

▪ Trump was the guest of New York and Florida developer Steve Witkoff at Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix Sunday. Witkoff planned to throw a fundraiser for Trump. Not so fast, said race organizer and Miami Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel, who noted that VIP box license agreements bar campaign events. 

▪ Gen Z activists want to shake up the anti-abortion movement.

▪ Will abortion turn Florida from red to blue?

▪ Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) face a test with the Chicago Democratic National Convention this summer.

▪ A testy Nevada Senate contest puts nuclear waste at its center.   

▪ Voters see Trump as more effective on border issues, according to a new poll. And on the economy, according to a separate survey.

▪ Is a televised debate ahead among Biden, Trump and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? 

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at noon.

The Senate will convene Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will depart Wilmington, Del., and return to the White House. At noon, he will present the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the United States Military Academy Army Black Knights football team. The president will have lunch at 1 p.m. with King Abdullah II of Jordan. Biden and first lady Jill Biden will host a Cinco de Mayo reception in the Rose Garden at 5:15 p.m.

Vice President Harris will travel to Detroit to continue her tour of cities in which she focuses on economic opportunity, especially for minorities, small business entrepreneurs and communities. She speaks at 1:55 p.m. before returning to Washington.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in San Francisco for the RSA Conference to discuss biotechnology and quantum information science and technology (RSA is the acronym for the basis of cryptographic algorithms used in securing sensitive data). He begins at 9:30 a.m. local time with biotech experts in Menlo Park, Calif., then meets with quantum technology experts in San Francisco at 11:30 a.m. local time. Blinken will deliver the RSA conference keynote speech in San Francisco at 3:50 p.m. local. He will then travel to Guatemala.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in her role as managing trustee of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, will join a virtual meeting at 2 p.m. with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco today will join U.S. Marshals Service Director Ron Davis at a memorial service in Charlotte at North Carolina’s Bojangles Coliseum to pay tribute to the late Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas “Tommy” Weeks Jr., who was shot and killed by a fugitive April 29.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Patrick Orsagos | Proteserts demonstrated in January for transgender rights and health care in Ohio.

COURTS

SALACIOUS CELEBRITY SCANDAL peppered with foundation-building evidence defined the second week of testimony in Trump’s New York criminal trial. But key witnesses’ credibility has also been sharply drawn into question, setting the stage for defense attorneys to take aim at critical future testimony. The Hill’s Ella Lee and Zach Schonfeld have five key takeaways from week two of the trial and look ahead to week three.

▪ The Hill: “This was a crisis.” On the witness stand, former Trump aide Hope Hicks detailed being at the center of Trump’s 2016 damage-control operation.

▪ USA Today: Would cameras in the courtroom change Trump’s New York hush money trial?

FIFTEEN REPUBLICAN-LED STATES have sued the Biden administration over new Title IX regulations — which prohibit sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding — that add protections for transgender students, setting up a legal battle over enforcement of the decades-old civil rights law and increasing the likelihood that the measures will be blocked in court before taking effect in August. The GOP-led states argue the new regulations are “plainly illegal” and undermine protections meant for cisgender students (The Hill).

“The timing and the sheer number of courts that have been invoked here sort of stack the odds against the Biden administration because there are just so many hoops to jump through,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “You have to basically beat every single one of them to win. And if any one of them vacates the rule, under the general understanding today, that vacates it nationwide.”

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Evan Vucci | National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House in April. 

INTERNATIONAL

PROSPECTS FOR A CEASE-FIRE in Gaza are slim after Hamas on Sunday reiterated its demand for an end to the war in exchange for the freeing of hostages, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly ruled out. The two sides are blaming each other for the impasse; the Hamas delegation said they planned to return to Cairo, where Egypt and Qatar are mediating negotiations, on Tuesday (Reuters).

The talks are viewed by some U.S. officials as the “last chance” to avoid a return to all-out war in Gaza. Hamas claimed credit Sunday for a mortar attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel; the Israeli Defense Forces alleged that the mortars were launched from Rafah, which Israel claims is Hamas’s last stronghold and is determined to invade. CIA Director William Burns traveled to Doha Sunday night for an emergency meeting to salvage the hostage deal (The Hill and The Jerusalem Post).

Despite concerns from Washington and other allies about the humanitarian implications — more than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah — the planned attack remains a key sticking point in cease-fire negotiations. The Israeli army on Monday ordered tens of thousands of people in Rafah to start evacuating from the area, signaling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent (The Washington Post and The Hill).

“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday at the Sedona Forum in Arizona.

HOLD ON AMMUNITION: The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel, Axios reports. The White House did not comment on the reason for the pause, but Biden is facing sharp criticism among Americans who oppose his support of Israel as the humanitarian toll in Gaza mounts. The administration in February asked Israel to provide assurances that U.S.-made weapons were being used by Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in accordance with international law.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Israel wants to go into Rafah. It could go badly.

▪ The New York Times: The director of the United Nations World Food Programme said starvation is entrenched in northern Gaza and is “moving its way south.”

▪ NPR: Israel’s cabinet shut down the offices of the Al Jazeera network operating in the country. Al Jazeera on Sunday condemned Israel’s move.

UKRAINE WILL MOUNT a new counteroffensive against Russia in 2025 after receiving $61 billion in U.S. aid to help it fight additional gains from Moscow this year, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said over the weekend. Sullivan added he still expects “Russian advances in the coming period” on the battlefield, despite the new aid package, because “you can’t instantly flip the switch.”

But he said that with the new assistance, Kyiv would have the capacity to “hold the line” and “to ensure Ukraine withstands the Russian assault” over the course of 2024 (Financial Times).

Politico: The addition of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the Kremlin’s “wanted list” shows “the desperation of the Russian state machine and propaganda,” Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs said Saturday.

OPINION

■ Biden’s abortion push reeks of desperation, by Kathleen Parker, columnist, The Washington Post.

■ Kant goes to college. Independent thinking vs. the progressive herd, by Andrew Latham, opinion contributor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Safruddin-Suaq foundation | A wild male Sumatran orangutan, pictured in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park in 2022, was observed by researchers applying chewed leaves from a medicinal plant to his own facial injury, which healed with barely a scar.

And finally … Orangutan, heal thyself! Researchers witnessed a wild male Sumatran primate called Rakus chewing leaves and applying a medicinal plant to a gaping wound under its right eye, which eventually closed with a faint scar. The ape’s intriguing 2022 experience using a healing poultice was described in research published Thursday in the Scientific Reports journal. 

“They are our closest relatives and this again points towards the similarities we share with them. We are more similar than we are different,” biologist and lead author Isabella Laumer told the BBC. “I think in the next few years we will discover even more behaviors and more abilities that are very human-like.”

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