📝 The Readback: What you missed on defense as shutdown continues

IN THIS EDITION

What you missed on defense as the shutdown drags on

Redistricting gone wild

Off-Hill and around the world

Watching the Merkley marathon

THE TOP

What you missed on defense as the shutdown drags on

Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News this week – a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included a few of our favorite outside reads from the week.

Defense drums on: The government shutdown might be taking up all the oxygen in the room. But there’s still been some big news on the defense beat this week — with big implications for the Hill and military contractors.

Between the Pentagon’s new policy for sharing information with Congress and DOD’s ”initial tranche” of spending tied to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the military has been keeping defense hawks busy with new developments.

First, the memo: One surefire way to irk lawmakers is by limiting communication channels. That’s effectively what military leaders seem to do with their push to crack down on “unauthorized engagements with Congress.”

The directive would require outreach to the Hill to be routed through a centralized office in DOD. The process could jeopardize lawmakers’ and their staff’s ability to quickly get military insights on pending legislation and amendments that come up in real-time during committee markup of the annual defense policy bill, for example.

To the SCIF: Meanwhile, the Pentagon sent lawmakers part of its long-overdue plan for spending the $150 billion earmarked for defense in the reconciliation package.

The underlying plan is classified — meaning interested lawmakers will need to read it in the Hill’s secured rooms, called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. But an overview we obtained this week shows the money will be spent on shipbuilding, munitions, fighter jets and more.

That’s important intel for defense contractors, who could see this money start flowing their way in the coming months. Despite the shutdown, DOD’s operating guidance said that work funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill could continue.

What I’m watching: I am roughly two decades late to this, but I recently started watching the TV series “Lost.” I’m finally starting to get the hype.

– Briana Reilly

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Redistricting gone wild

Here’s an astonishing statistic to consider: With Virginia’s foray into the redistricting wars this week, one-third of all the states with more than one congressional seat are considering redoing their maps or have already done so.

Not all of those states will be successful. But three states have already done it of their own volition: Texas, North Carolina and Missouri. Two more have been ordered to by courts or state law: Ohio and Utah.

And by my count, another 10 states or so are openly discussing mid-decade redistricting, in litigation that could result in it or launching referendums to trigger it: California, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas and South Carolina.

That brings us to 15 states and counting!

A few of these places have deep barriers to redistricting. But some of them are eroded by political pressure from President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ eagerness to counter him.

One big question we ask ourselves at Punchbowl News is whether this is a one-time push or the new normal? Right now, the deck is stacked against Democrats, who moved to create redistricting commissions in blue states like New York, New Jersey and Colorado. Those commissions can’t be undone by 2026, but they could be by 2028.

This could quickly become a race to the bottom. And no one agrees on who started it.

We had White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair on Fly Out Day this week. Blair said the White House believed Democrats began this arms race by spending big on state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina in the hopes of securing a friendly bench for redistricting lawsuits.

Democrats have leaned on state supreme courts recently. But Republicans spent in many of those races too. And suing to get a court to order a new map is quite different from a legislature drawing one of its own accord.

This truly might just be the beginning of a never-ending merry-go-round of redistricting. One last wild card: The Supreme Court will weigh the future of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Without that protection in place, a slew of states, especially in the Deep South, could embark on their own redraws to erase historically Black districts.

Redistricting just might go on forever.

What I’m reading: I just started reading “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween” by Lisa Morton. It’s a timely journey through the pagan and Christian origins of the holiday and its lasting global influence in the 21st century. And for everyone keeping count with me, this is my 42nd book of the year! Eight more to go!

– Ally Mutnick

Off-Hill and around the world

Newsgathering has required a little new thinking during the shutdown.

Or, in my case, a little old thinking and a little selfishness.

You see, I’ve become a true believer in the credo of the Hill: The best way to break news about Congress is to go to the Capitol and ask the lawmakers what’s going on.

The shutdown is now in its 25th day, however, and while senators have been voting, the House has been out the entire time.

On an abstract level, I know that, if lawmakers and policy stakeholders aren’t coming to the Hill, I’ve got to go find them where they are.

I didn’t expect, though, to find my latest story at the Meridian Summit, where I hosted a fireside chat on “Shaping the AI Frontier” with Gerry Petrella, Microsoft’s general manager of U.S. public policy.

My lack of expectation for a story wasn’t because Petrella works off the Hill. I cover tech companies’ Washington, D.C., operations closely. And besides, Petrella was previously a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for more than a decade.

Rather, given the Meridian International Center’s focus on diplomacy, I’d written most of my questions to dive into international affairs and global strategy, especially Microsoft’s role in building artificial intelligence abroad.

Or maybe I’d just gotten out of the habit of getting news outside the Capitol.

Some part of me must have remembered, though, given that I wrote a bit of a different question for the end of the conversation. It was about an export control provision in the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill.

Chips manufacturers have been furious about the idea, but cloud giants like Microsoft had been almost suspiciously quiet on it.

Frankly, it was an awkwardly detailed question for the context, but the issue is the talk of tech in Congress. Plus, export controls are genuinely an international affairs issue. And — this is where that selfishness comes in — I wanted to push forward a scoop I’d had earlier this week.

When I veered a bit off-topic to get into the proposed chips policy, Petrella didn’t miss a beat. The idea, he said, could be “really positive.”

Even a shutdown-weary, Capitol-scouring reporter who’d maybe forgotten the olden days when he had to troop all over town for stories, knew that was news.

What I’m watching: As it’s October, I’ve been rewatching some classic “Treehouse of Horror” episodes of “The Simpsons” from when I was kid. Now that I’m old enough to have watched the scary movies they’re spoofing, I think I love them even more.

– Ben Brody

Watching the Merkley marathon

The shutdown has brought Washington to a standstill, but Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) wasn’t about to just stand by.

Merkley took his gripes to the Senate floor starting Tuesday night through Wednesday, railing against President Donald Trump’s policies and warning that the United States is turning into an “authoritarian state.”

My job for the day on Wednesday was to watch Merkley’s marathon speech.

I started at 9 a.m. on Wednesday — he’d already been going for hours by then — until the speech’s very end around 5 p.m. that evening. Merkley pulled in 22 hours and 37 minutes on the Senate floor by the time he was done.

I followed every time Merkley took a drink of water, cracked a joke to ease the tension, or read from the book “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

Merkley kept his enthusiasm for the entirety of his speech, discussing topics like the National Guard deployment in Portland, Ore., freedom of speech and immigration.

Throughout the day, Democratic senators came to Merkley’s rescue and asked him questions. The Oregon Democrat frequently joked to make the question “a long one.” No matter how exhausted he was, Merkley still kept his sense of humor.

I almost felt bad thinking about how tired I was feeling watching him speak. Merkley was clearly fatigued hitting the later hours of Wednesday afternoon, but I thought he would try to break Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) record of 25 hours and five minutes.

Merkley later told reporters after he left the floor that he understood his speech “didn’t stop anything tonight” in terms of the direction of the government shutdown. He instead wanted to “dramatize how fast authoritarian takeover is occurring.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, along with other GOP senators, quickly criticized Merkley’s speech.

“What did Democrats actually accomplish?” Barrasso said. “The government is still closed, Capitol Police officers and Senate support staffers who were here for the entire 22 hours are still not getting paid.”

Merkley’s speech may not have ended the government shutdown, but it will hold significance as the second-longest Senate floor speech in history. It will also hold significance for the longest time I’ve stared at my computer screen in a day.

What I’m watching: I’m drowning out serious news with season 9 of “Love is Blind.” Turns out, it’s messier than the government shutdown.

– Hannah Campbell