Dems push back on FBI investigation

IN THIS EDITION

FBI probe of Democrats sets off furor

Punch Power Matrix

The Vault: Hill upends defense talks on CDFIs

Hell Cats try to recapture 2018 magic

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FBI probe of Democrats sets off furor

Happy Wednesday morning. And Happy early Thanksgiving.

This is our last edition of the week. We’ll be back Monday morning.

Here’s another precedent that could come back to haunt Hill Republicans one day — President Donald Trump’s administration is launching an investigation into Democratic lawmakers for a critical video posted to X.

The video, posted Nov. 18, featured six Democratic lawmakers with national security backgrounds telling military service members they shouldn’t feel compelled to comply with illegal orders. Service members must follow “lawful orders’’ under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

It’s precisely the kind of Democratic video clip we’ve come to expect during the Trump era — veterans, former intelligence officials and others in the defense space taking a whack at the president in a manner that questions his fidelity to the nation’s constitutional order.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he may punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for his participation in the viral video. Hegseth ordered Navy Secretary John Phelan to review Kelly’s comments and report back to him by Dec. 10. Kelly is a retired Navy captain and former astronaut.

On Tuesday, all six lawmakers revealed the FBI is seeking to question them. In addition to Kelly, the other Democrats are: Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), a former Army officer; Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.), a former Air Force captain; Chris Deluzio (Pa.), a former Navy lieutenant who served in Iraq; Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), who served in the Navy reserves; and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), who worked at the CIA.

Slotkin said the FBI outreach was from the agency’s counterterrorism division.

“No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution,” the four House members said in a joint statement.

The FBI declined to comment on the investigation.

While Kelly can technically be court-martialed given his retiree status, there’s no precedent for going after a sitting senator in this way. The issue could eventually be resolved in the courts.

Another point — lawmakers are entitled to constitutionally protected speech under Article I of the Constitution, so there are major separation of powers questions at play here.

Republicans react. With Congress out of session for the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s difficult to get a full sense of just how many Republicans think it’s unwise to launch federal probes into Democrats for the social media video.

But Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John Curtis (R-Utah) quickly came to Kelly’s defense.

Curtis said he respects Kelly. Murkowski said this of the Arizona Democrat:

The politics. On Truth Social, Trump accused the Democratic lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!.” Trump also reposted a user who said they should be hanged.

These new probes centered on the video come as both Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel are under increasing internal pressure over a variety of issues.

Hegseth has been upstaged, in a sense, by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Driscoll, a Yale Law School friend of Vice President JD Vance, was dispatched to Ukraine to try to end its war with Russia.

Patel has been under withering criticism for his use of local FBI SWAT teams to protect his girlfriend. MSNOW reported that Patel’s days leading the FBI may be numbered.

Trump’s top law enforcement deputies had yet another setback on Monday when a federal judge dismissed all charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two high-profile Trump enemies.

It’s worth pointing out that Hegseth’s public comments may politically only help Kelly, a possible 2028 presidential candidate.

But like the other five Democrats being targeted by Trump, the political benefits come with a cost. They’re now facing escalating death threats. Slotkin, for example, now has a Capitol Police detail.

One health care update. Brace for a raft of discharge petitions when Congress comes back post-Thanksgiving. Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to call the White House to communicate just how unpopular an Obamacare subsidy extension is has unleashed some furor in the House GOP.

One House Republican told us moderate members are “apoplectic” that Johnson is blocking votes to extend the Obamacare subsidies. They said GOP members plan to join up with Democrats to “unload” several discharge petitions on the issue. Here’s more from the member on the anger within the House Republican Conference toward leadership:

Trump addressed the subsidies during a gaggle on Air Force One Tuesday evening. Trump said he’d “rather not” extend them but may need to in order to pass a larger health care plan next year.

“Somebody said I want to extend them for two years,” Trump said. “I don’t want to extend them for two years. I’d rather not extend them at all. Some kind of extension may be necessary to get something else done because the ‘Unaffordable Care Act’ has been a disaster.”

— Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio

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WHO’S UP, WHO’S DOWN

Punch Power Matrix

— Max Cohen

The Vault: Hill upends defense talks on CDFIs

News: House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) walked away from another set of financial policy talks tied to the annual defense authorization package, according to multiple people familiar with the decision.

The four corners of financial policy leadership in Congress were negotiating a series of NDAA amendments last week that would have bolstered the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

CDFIs have strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, but the program has been under scrutiny from the Trump administration for much of the year. CDFIs are specialized lenders certified by the Treasury Department to do community development lending and other activities.

Staff representing three of those corners — Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — were supportive of language to bolster the CDFI Fund, the people familiar said. But aides for the Arkansas Republican abruptly announced their opposition to the amendments via internal talks on Wednesday. The collapse hasn’t previously been reported.

The amendments under discussion would have introduced a new requirement for the Treasury secretary to testify before Congress about the CDFI Fund, expand the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program and enhance CDFIs’ access to capital and liquidity, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.

Hill’s aides declined to comment.

Lawmakers could return to the table before the conference version of the NDAA is finalized. But time is running out for committee leaders to hammer out these types of disagreements as defense lawmakers are pushing to introduce a finalized NDAA early next week.

Resistance redux. This isn’t the first set of bicameral talks that has run into opposition from the House Financial Services Committee this year.

As we wrote last week, House Republicans threw up opposition to bipartisan housing talks that would have incorporated much of the ROAD to Housing Act into the annual defense package, subject to approval from congressional leadership.

These CDFI policy talks were on a separate track from housing negotiations.

— Brendan Pedersen

DEFENSE

Hell Cats try to recapture 2018 magic

It’s 2018 all over again, and the path to a House Democratic majority may run through a slate of female first-time candidates with deep national security credentials.

This time around, one of the leading members of the 2018 class — Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) — is positioning herself as a mentor for that next generation of Democratic candidates.

Known as the Hell Cats, the group includes JoAnna Mendoza, who’s running to challenge Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.); Cait Conley, who hopes to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.); Maura Sullivan, who’s seeking the open seat being vacated by Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.J.); and Rebecca Bennett, who’s vying to battle Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.).

“We’re sober, and we’re service-minded, and we are battle-tested, so to speak, and usually quite willing to be pragmatic,” said Houlahan, an Air Force veteran now caught up in the X video controversy (see above.). “People are just angry — they’re tired of watching people not get along, and they’re tired of the government not working.”

Houlahan said she’s held multiple calls, both individually and collectively with the group, providing guidance on the process of running a congressional campaign while taking care of oneself and messaging. All four seats are seen as competitive in the midterms.

“This wasn’t a planned endeavor. It was a friend chat group,” Conley, an Army veteran and former National Security Council official, said in an interview. “We don’t care how you register to vote or how you vote. We just care that we are a community first, that we are Americans first, and that is where our priority and loyalty lies.”

The candidates could also take lessons from lawmakers like Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) and Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), as well as Govs.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), who leaned on their own national security backgrounds during their successful first runs for office in 2018.

The Hell Cat ranks could expand to include other national-security-minded Democratic candidates, such as former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.). Luria is making a comeback attempt against Rep. Jen Kiggins (R-Va.), after being part of the inaugural group of female “badasses” elected to Congress in 2018.

Houlahan expects she’ll advise the Hell Cats through the course of their campaigns.

“A lot of what I’ve talked to them about has to do with their taking care of themselves, making sure they understand where their boundaries are and their red lines are — and making sure that they come into this and leave this whole people,” Houlahan said.

— Anthony Adragna and Briana Reilly

… AND THERE’S MORE

Redistricting news. Indiana State Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said he’d bring the chamber back into session Dec. 8 to “make a final decision that week on any redistricting proposal sent from the House.”

Bray and other state senators have been vocally opposed to President Donald Trump’s push to redraw the Hoosier State map to help eliminate Indiana’s two House Democrats, Reps. André Carson and Frank Mrvan.

The Indiana House will likely pass the redistricting proposal. Bray seems to realize he can’t ignore it. There will be tremendous pressure on Indiana Senate Republicans to pass the map.

Senate news: We obtained a DSCC memo focused on hitting Senate GOP candidates over cost-of-living concerns. The memo links rising prices over Thanksgiving to tariffs. Read it here.

The Campaign. Two new ads are airing in the Nashville media market in the pricey race to replace former Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.).

Matt Van Epps, the Republican, has a new spot in which he says that “radicals” shot at him in Afghanistan. “So these radical attacks now? Piece of cake,” Van Epps says. The ad also features a snippet of Democrat Aftyn Behn saying that she is a “very radical person.”

“Tennessee can’t afford [Democrats’] radical agenda,” the narrator says in the ad.

Behn has her own spot up, in which she takes a whack at Republicans’ inability to control prices.

“Worried about prices? Worried about health care costs? Feeling burned by tariffs?” Behn says in the ad. “Then December 2 is your day to shake up Washington.”

The election is Dec. 2.

– Jake Sherman and Max Cohen

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