The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Inside the controversy over Mace’s reimbursements

A vulnerable Senate Dem charts her own path on Israel-Gaza

The date’s set: Netanyahu to address Congress July 24

Democrats prepare for border battle in California

THE TOP

Inside the controversy over Mace’s reimbursements

Happy Friday morning.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) may have overcharged the House for thousands of dollars in personal expenses while she was in Washington, according to congressional records and personal bills reviewed by Punchbowl News.

Along with hundreds of other House members, Mace — a second-term representative — took advantage of a program that allows lawmakers to seek reimbursement for living expenses while in Washington.

The Washington Post reported this week that Mace, “who co-owns a $1,649,000 Capitol Hill townhouse she purchased in 2021 with her then-fiancé, Patrick Bryant, expensed a total of $27,817 in 2023, an average of more than $2,300 a month, according to [congressional] data released as of Tuesday.”

Our analysis of the bills from the home — Washington Gas, Pepco water, Xfinity internet, insurance and taxes — shows that Mace seems to have gotten more money from the federal government than the total of her expenses for the townhome on Capitol Hill, according to the documents reviewed by Punchbowl News. The amount overcharged by Mace comes to more than $8,900, per our analysis.

Here’s a spreadsheet detailing what we found.

Mace wasn’t available for an interview on the discrepancy between her expenses and reimbursements, her staff said.

“We follow all the rules for reimbursements and last year we were reimbursed less than what was allowed,” Gabrielle Lipsky, Mace’s communications director, said in a statement. “Our office also returned over $300,000 in taxpayer dollars from our office budget last year.”

The politics. Mace is in the midst of a competitive GOP primary against Catherine Templeton, a former Republican official in Nikki Haley’s gubernatorial administration.

Mace has won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, but Templeton is putting up a big fight in the increasingly pricey race. Longtime South Carolina GOP Rep. Joe Wilson is backing Templeton over Mace.

Super PACs have dumped millions of dollars into the contest ahead of the June 11 primary.

South Carolina Patriots PAC, which has received millions from anonymous donors, has spent $3.8 million backing Templeton as of Thursday, according to FEC records.

WFW Action Fund, which backed Mace in a previous race, has flipped and now supports Templeton. The group got $250,000 each from Charles Schwab and Warren Stephens, both longtime donors to political groups tied to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace voted against McCarthy for speaker when the California Republican was ousted in October 2023.

But Win it Back PAC and Club for Growth Action have spent a combined $2.7 million supporting Mace’s reelection. Club for Growth Action has sent Win it Back PAC more than $1 million.

— Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

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A vulnerable Senate Dem charts her own path on Israel-Gaza

The Democratic Party’s divisions over U.S. policy toward Israel have put the spotlight on a vulnerable incumbent who usually doesn’t seek it out: Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).

Rosen, the only Jewish woman in the Senate and a former synagogue president, is known in the Capitol for her low-key demeanor, a focus on combating antisemitism and a tendency to break from her party on foreign policy.

But Rosen is treading lightly — so far — on the latest Israel-centric issue as she navigates her party’s internal tensions over Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza.

Rosen released a statement with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slamming the International Criminal Court over possible arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. But she isn’t endorsing the House-passed bill to impose sanctions on the ICC, instead deferring to ongoing bipartisan Senate talks.

“We have to look at a bipartisan path,” Rosen told us this week. “There will be a group of senators trying to figure out if and what might be the path forward… People know me as being a good bipartisan broker in all of this.”

The White House has said it opposes ICC sanctions as well as the House GOP-drafted bill. That proposal got 42 Democratic votes in the House this week.

In our brief interview, Rosen declined to give her assessment of President Joe Biden’s handling of Israel or comment on the White House’s opposition to ICC sanctions. But she said the Senate should work its will regardless of what Biden prefers.

“I’m going to leave the president to speak for himself,” Rosen said. “Myself, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we have to decide from our perspective here in the Senate what we think is our statement.”

How it’ll play in November: Democrats see Rosen as a team player but also someone who isn’t shy about bucking the party, especially when it comes to Israel.

Rosen is likely to face off against Republican Sam Brown in November. The GOP primary is next Tuesday. Republicans feel good about their chances in Nevada and view Rosen as a top target.

Brown has attacked Rosen on a whole host of issues, but Israel isn’t one that’s broken through — in part because of her hawkish positions on foreign policy and on Israel specifically. Rosen has long been considered a swing vote in the Senate on these issues.

In January 2022, Rosen voted for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) bill imposing sanctions on a Russian natural gas pipeline, joining just a handful of Democrats in doing so. The White House intensely lobbied Democrats against it.

Later that year, Rosen voted to prohibit the Biden administration from removing the foreign terrorist designation for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the time, administration officials were considering lifting that designation as part of its bid to revive the Iran nuclear deal. Biden decided against doing so.

The NRSC sent us this statement when we asked about Rosen’s posture toward Israel, which is from Regional Press Secretary Maggie Abboud:

Rosen has called out her fellow Democrats in the past, including when it comes to Israel. After the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Rosen released a statement condemning “extremists in my own party” for calling to end U.S. assistance for Israel. And she has spoken out against progressives who have called for placing conditions on aid to Israel.

More recently, Rosen criticized Biden for threatening to cut off U.S. offensive aid to Israel if Netanyahu moved forward with an invasion of Rafah.

ICYMI: Every Friday from now until November, we’ll be bringing you election-focused coverage like only Punchbowl News can, with deep dives into what’s driving House and Senate campaigns, leadership influence efforts and the top issues to watch. Catch it all here.

— Andrew Desiderio

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

The date’s set: Netanyahu to address Congress July 24

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Washington to address Congress on July 24, setting up a major inflection point in the war just one week before the August recess.

We scooped the news on the Punchbowl News text platform Thursday evening.

Top aides to Netanyahu and Speaker Mike Johnson have been going back and forth all week in search of a date before the August recess and decided on July 24 late Thursday.

This will be Netanyahu’s fourth time addressing a joint meeting of Congress and his first time since 2015 when he came to the Capitol to lobby lawmakers to reject then-President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

That address, under then-Speaker John Boehner, was very controversial. But this speech may be even more divisive, if possible.

Some Democrats in the House and Senate have condemned the longtime Israeli premier, saying he’s uncensored about mass Palestinian civilian casualties during the now eight-month-long war. Republicans, meanwhile, have backed Netanyahu in his stated mission of rooting out Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

We’ve heard from several House Democrats that they will boycott the speech or protest during the proceedings. Sources close to Netanyahu say that would help the prime minister with his own domestic politics, as he wrestles with his fragile governing coalition, which includes several right-wing ministers.

But here’s a curveball: What happens if Israel and Hamas strike a ceasefire before the speech? That could dramatically change the dynamics of this address. Several top Biden administration officials are heading back to the region in another bid to bring about a ceasefire deal.

— Jake Sherman

THE CAMPAIGN

Democrats prepare for border battle in California

Democrats are done trying to ignore Republican political attacks on border security.

Months after Rep. Tom Suozzi’s (D-N.Y.) special election victory, California Democrats in tough races are all in on Suozzi’s playbook that laid the blame on Republicans for chaos at the border. Republicans aren’t the least bit concerned.

Candidates from both parties in key Southern California races know that the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is top of mind for voters this fall. While Democrats feel they have the upper hand thanks to the GOP rejection of the Senate’s bipartisan border deal, Republicans are confident that the issue will only end up energizing their voters.

For Democrats, this year is different. Illegal border crossings have spiked under President Joe Biden’s administration. Big cities have been overwhelmed by migrants bussed from GOP border states like Texas.

In turn, Democrats have tried to shift their posture. This week, Biden signed an executive order severely limiting asylum claims, which brought complaints and legal action from pro-immigration groups. Frontline Democrats are urging Biden to do more to limit undocumented migrant crossings. And in the Senate, Democrats made major concessions earlier this year when agreeing to a bipartisan deal that even the Border Patrol union endorsed.

But Senate Republicans killed that proposed deal. Former President Donald Trump told senators he wanted the border to be a political issue in 2024. So here we are.

Our swing through toss-up House seats outside Los Angeles recently brought us to districts with vibrant immigrant communities. Republicans believe their strict border security enforcement will play well even among immigrant families.

“We have 35% Hispanic population, and we go up to any one of the Hispanics and go ‘Hey, are you okay with securing the border?” And they say they say yes, because they came here legally,” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) asserted. “The Hispanics are pissed, because they feel like all 7 million of these people that came across are just cutting in line.”

The legislative impact: Any border talk on the trail quickly gets back to legislative friction in Washington. Think of the debate as a “choose your own adventure” between H.R. 2 — the hardline House GOP bill — and the Senate package.

Democrat Will Rollins, who’s trying to knock off Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) in November, is a leading proponent of leaning in on immigration.

“Republicans think as long as the public sees the border as broken, then they’ll blame Biden,” Rollins said. “The only way that we break through that BS is by going into unfriendly networks and telling voters where we stand on the issue.”

Garcia’s opponent George Whitesides is striking a similar tone.

“We talk about how Republicans walked away from a pragmatic thing,” Whitesides said. “It’s like Suozzi. We’re for fixing the border.”

Rollins argued that the bipartisan Senate deal gave Republicans most of what they wanted in H.R. 2. GOP incumbents laugh this off.

“I think it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for Democrats to go on the offense,” Calvert told us. “If the president was serious about the border, he would sign off on ‘Remain in Mexico’ immediately.”

House Republicans also reject Democratic hopes that the bipartisan deal will play in their districts.

“What the Senate is trying to do right now, it’s no different than what we already passed,” Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) said. “So they’re playing the political game. They just need to take [H.R. 2] up and get it done.”

— Max Cohen

THE CAMPAIGN

Trump world comes out for Brian Jack

Brian Jack, who is in a runoff for a Georgia House seat, is well-known to Trump world. Jack was White House political director under former President Donald Trump and served as a top political adviser to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

A huge number of Trump figures are throwing him a D.C. fundraiser next Friday.

Key names on the list include Tommy Andrews, who worked in Trump’s legislative affairs shop and is now a lobbyist at Squire Patton Boggs; Mike Catanzaro, a top Trump energy staffer now at CGCN Group; Kellyanne Conway; Rick Dearborn; Johnny DeStefano, a former counselor to Trump who also worked in top-level jobs on Capitol Hill.

There’s also Hope Hicks; Ben Howard, a lobbyist at the Duberstein Group who worked in Trump leg affairs; Shahira Knight, who ran Trump’s legislative affairs office; Kristan Nevins, the White House Cabinet secretary who is now at Blackstone; Tim Pataki, a Trump legislative affairs staffer at CGCN; David Planning, another Trump legislative affairs alum who recently left House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office; and Ja’Ron Smith, who worked in the Office of American Innovation and is now at Dentons.

— Jake Sherman

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