The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

A good week for Trump’s noms

House Dems ditch DOGE after controversial Musk moves

The reconciliation rollercoaster

A welcome break for laughter in a busy week

THE TOP

A good week for Trump’s noms

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.

This week was a great example of how quickly things can change in politics and how conventional wisdom is often wrong in D.C.

If you talked to most people who watched last week’s hearings for Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., they would have told you the proceedings didn’t go well.

Gabbard left members of the Senate Intelligence Committee aghast when she refused to unequivocally condemn NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Over at the Senate HELP Committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a doctor, delivered a point-by-point evisceration of Kennedy’s decades of vaccine skepticism.

But on Tuesday, both Gabbard and Kennedy advanced out of their respective Senate committees.

Cassidy backed Kennedy, with political pressure ahead of his 2026 reelection year a likely factor. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another Republican up in 2026, voted for Gabbard. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) also voted for Gabbard after Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk reached out to him.

All those Republicans had shown resistance to Trump in the past. Collins voted against his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Young didn’t support Trump in the 2024 election. And Cassidy voted to convict Trump in 2021 after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Yet in the modern GOP, there’s a limit for many senators in how much they’re willing to break with Trump.

At the outset of the Congress, many wondered how much of a check the Senate would provide on Trump’s agenda. When Trump announced his intention to nominate former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to lead the Justice Department, the backlash was swift and Gaetz was pulled.

But for other outside-the-box nominees, initial shock gave way to a begrudging acceptance. It’s clear that for establishment Republicans who are hawkish on national security, Gabbard wouldn’t be their first choice to be director of national intelligence. Likewise, Republicans who believe in the power of vaccines didn’t jump for joy that Kennedy was in line to helm the Department of Health and Human Services.

But the online MAGA army, intense pressure from top GOP officials and a desire to avoid Trump’s ire ahead of an election cycle have all contributed to their nominations moving along.

Gabbard and Kennedy will receive full confirmation votes in the coming days on the Senate floor. And after overcoming their top opposition in committee, they’re likely to get over the finish line.

It’s a stunning turn of events for two former Democrats who are now set to assume roles as powerful Trump government officials.

What I’m watching: As we approach March Madness, I’m tuning in more closely to college basketball. This week had some amazing buzzer-beaters and promotional drama — get those brackets ready!

— Max Cohen

You can find The Readback in your inbox every Saturday at 8 a.m. And don’t hesitate to reach out to readback@punchbowl.news with feedback. Enjoy The Readback.

House Dems ditch DOGE after controversial Musk moves

After their stinging losses in November, Democrats decided they needed to find some spots where they could work with President Donald Trump instead of just reflexively resisting him at every turn.

So when Trump announced an Elon Musk-led effort to root out government waste, fraud and abuse, Democrats felt like they found their perfect opportunity to show their bipartisan bona fides. Who doesn’t support making the government more efficient?

Three House Democrats joined the DOGE Caucus, a congressional counterpart to the Department of Government Efficiency. And scores of other Democrats — ranging from centrists to progressives — expressed support for the DOGE mission and said they were willing to coordinate with the new administration on the initiative.

Then, to quote the great Miley Cyrus: Musk came in like a wrecking ball.

After Musk’s dramatic and legally questionable blitz to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, Democrats who were previously supportive of DOGE were quick to distance themselves from the effort. In fact, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) announced Thursday evening that she was quitting the DOGE caucus.

“I joined to be a voice for working people and their interests,” she said. “But it is impossible to fix the system when Elon Musk is actively breaking it, so I have made the decision to leave.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who was the first House Democrat to join the DOGE caucus, also expressed deep reservations about staying in the group. While he said his Republican colleagues had an “admirable” idea, Moskowitz questioned the point of the caucus if Musk was just going to take a sledgehammer to government agencies without working with Congress.

“Whether I stay in the caucus, I think is questionable. I don’t need to stay in a caucus that’s irrelevant,” he told us earlier this week.

Last we checked, Moskowitz was still a part of the caucus. But we wouldn’t be surprised to see him dump DOGE, too.

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is taking active steps to fight DOGE. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries introduced legislation this week to block DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment system.

So it seems like Democrats will need to find a different bridge with Trump — that is, if they still want to work with him at all.

What I’m listening to: I have Doechii’s Grammy-winning album “Alligator bites never heal” on a loop right now. And I also just watched her stellar performance on NPR’s “Tiny Desk.”

– Melanie Zanona

The reconciliation rollercoaster

House Republicans have had a long week, and this is only the beginning.

With such a thin GOP majority in the House, anxieties have already been running high for a while now among Republicans about getting a tax bill done this year. If Republicans don’t pass a bill, a bunch of tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term will go away. That would be a disaster for Republicans, so the pressure is on.

There’s still a lot of year left for Congress to cobble together a tax bill and get it to Trump’s desk. So we’re sure there’ll be a lot more late nights to come!

But some key dynamics for the GOP are coming into sharper focus. The Senate is moving ahead with its own reconciliation plans, regardless of what the House is doing. That’s putting more heat on the House.

And the House is squeezed between GOP hardliners demanding big spending cuts and how squeamish those cuts will make more moderate members of the conference.

Given all this, the House has been eager to show it’s working around the clock to try to bridge divides and get a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill of Trump’s priorities going.

That meant late-night huddles in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office multiple times this week. Plus, House Republican leadership and key members spent four hours hashing things out at the White House on Thursday. The meeting blew way past its scheduled end time and so it was a long stakeout for reporters waiting for lawmakers to return to the Capitol with news.

Several Republicans were saying a marathon Thursday of meetings was the most productive day they’d had in Washington. Now we’ll see if that pays off.

What I’m watching: The rightful MVP Saquon Barkley and all the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl. With Brandon Graham working to come back for the game, this clip never gets old. GO BIRDS!

– Laura Weiss

A welcome break for laughter in a busy week

In the midst of another chaotic week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers and reporters got to let loose on Hump Day for the annual congressional press dinner.

The dinner, which typically falls on a Wednesday, is a chance for journalists and elected officials to mingle in a casual fashion while also enjoying a cocktail or two. Or three. And good food. And more importantly, to toast to a free press.

This year, GOP Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore headlined the dinner while also inviting comedic performances from Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) and Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.

The gathering is also one of the best opportunities to embrace bipartisanship where Republican and Dem ocratic lawmakers alike can mingle like old friends.

For example, at one point in the night, we had an unusual group of lawmakers making small talk near our table.

We had Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), New Democrat Coalition Communications Vice Chair Marc Veasey (D-Texas), Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) all engaged in conversation at one point.

But of course, the point of the dinner is to celebrate a free press. And despite the occasional (or sometimes frequent) headbutting between lawmakers and the media, we all felt some camaraderie that night.

Here’s a tidbit from Aguilar’s speech on the importance of protecting the Fourth Estate:

“The public needs a free press in this moment to rise to the occasion, to do the best, to tell the truth and report the news without fear or favor.”

What I’m watching: I just finished the Netflix documentary Cold Case: Who killed JonBenét Ramsey.

– Mica Soellner