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PRESENTED BY

BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN

THE TOP

Happening this morning: Jake and Anna will interview Gina McCarthy, President Joe Biden’s national climate advisor, at 9 a.m. Watch here! 

It feels like it’s been a really long time since the House — the people’s house — was in session in D.C. for the week solo with the Senate back home. If you couldn’t tell before, we’re big House fans. The Senate? It’s cool. But the House is colorful, strange, frenetic and always newsy.

So we have a lot of House news today. 

→ 🚨 Fewer than 10 House Republicans for the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill? Republican leadership sources told us that they expect fewer than 10 GOP lawmakers in the House to support a bipartisan Senate infrastructure deal — if it ever makes it across the Capitol. 

Yes it’s early, but this isn’t terribly surprising. House Republicans are not going to be helpful in passing this bipartisan bill. That is if the G10 bipartisan group of senators can round up the 60 votes they’ll need to get it through that chamber. So, let’s repeat: Bipartisan in the Senate and in America does not equal bipartisan in the House. The House is ground zero for the partisan brawls that have come to define Congress during the last decade.

BTW: We believe the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill and Democrats-only reconciliation bill will likely come to the floor this fall (if it happens.) There’s a chance the infrastructure bill could be ready in July, but even if it is and it’s cleared by the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) isn’t going to let it move through the House on its own. Pelosi isn’t very supportive of the bipartisan bill from everything we hear from inside the House leadership. The California Democrat has already said she won’t move it without seeing the larger reconciliation bill.

→ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) spoke with reporters Tuesday about the INVEST in America Act, the $715 billion surface transportation and water infrastructure bill that’s coming to the House floor on Thursday.

DeFazio was at his grouchy best while answering questions on the 1,500-page bill, including bashing “totally extraneous, stupid, gotcha amendments that are not relevant to the policy of the bill,” and noted that as a floor manager, he’ll have authority “to deal with things that are unreasonable.”

While two Republicans voted for the surface transportation bill in the Transportation Committee, we don’t believe any are going to support this package on the floor. That’s a good preview of the GOP support you should expect this fall for a larger infrastructure deal.

Despite that, DeFazio and House Democrats hope to use their bill to negotiate with the Senate over whatever infrastructure bill the bipartisan G10 group can pass.

“I don’t know about a formal conference, but in my discussions with the leadership and the White House and the Senate — I haven’t talked to the bipartisan group — but our analysis is that their numbers are pretty good,” DeFazio said, referring to spending levels proposed by the Senate group. “Actually, they’re slightly higher in transit, slightly higher in highways, and they’re a bit deficient in rail, but I think we can bargain that out.”

DeFazio added: “There’s no policy that I’m aware of attached to their bipartisan proposal. We have to have policy. The White House wants a transformative bill. We have to deal with climate change. I have written that policy. My message is ‘Let’s use substantially our policy and bargain on the numbers.’ I don’t know how it will formally get resolved.”

This is the first big bill with earmarks since the House brought them back this year, about $6 billion altogether out of $547 billion in surface transportation funding. And DeFazio said he’d keep the GOP projects in the bill even if Republicans don’t vote for the legislation.

“I’m not pulling that kind of retribution on people,” DeFazio said. “These are meritorious projects. The Republicans vetted theirs, we vetted ours. We have 15 pages of instructions and criteria. These are things being overlooked by state DOTs and the feds and people see as critical in their districts. No way am I gonna do that to them.”

(BTW: If DeFazio is going to include earmarks for lawmakers who vote no, what incentive would they have to vote yes? Anyway, we digress.)

DeFazio ended his remarks with this 25-second rip when talking about climate change: “Hey, I live in the Northwest. We just did temperatures 40 degrees above normal for multiple days in a row. Climate change is real. If these people want to pretend either to get fossil-fuel contributions or to suck up to Donald Trump, to say it’s not real, it doesn’t belong in a transportation bill, the single-largest source of carbon pollution in the United States, then they can take a hike.”

Mic drop, DeFazio out.

TODAY’S BIG VOTE

Jan. 6 select committee on the floor today

It’s been 175 days since the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol and, today the House will vote on establishing a select committee to investigate what happened. 

A few notes:

→ House GOP leadership is asking its membership to vote against this legislation. They anticipate the vast majority of Republicans will follow them. 

→ Don’t expect House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to name lawmakers to the committee immediately. He’ll probably slow walk his choices.

→ It would seem obvious for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to appoint Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as one of her selections. Her team said she was considering appointing a Republican. Another option for Pelosi is Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). If either of them accept a Pelosi appointment, expect Republicans to say that it looks like that lawmakers isn’t going to run for re-election.

→ As we told you earlier, Pelosi hasn’t given up any info on who she will pick as chair or the other members. We’re still hearing a lot of chatter about Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the Homeland Security Committee, to run the select committee, but again, that’s up to Pelosi.

SNEAK PEEK

A new Mike Bender book excerpt

Mike Bender of the WSJ’s “Frankly, We Did Win This Election” is on a hell of a run. Buy it. Click on that link there or on the cover above. It’s excerpts have been everywhere — most recently, Bender released the nugget of Gen. Mark Milley and former President Donald Trump in a shouting match. His book isn’t out until July 12, so we can probably expect a few more of these.

Javelin is repping Bender, and they’re quite good at this drip-drip cadence. Props to them.

Here’s a new excerpt about the 2020 GOP convention and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas): 

One of the prime-time speakers lined up for night three, “Land of Heroes,” was [Rep.] Dan Crenshaw, the thirty-six-year-old former Navy SEAL, who’d lost his right eye in Afghanistan. … 

During the 2016 race, Crenshaw posted on social media that Trump was an idiot, insane, and ignorant. But in his first eighteen months in Washington, Crenshaw voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump, then after the coronavirus lockdowns were about a month old, Trump retweeted a video Crenshaw recorded blaming China for the contagion instead of the president. “BRILLIANT,” Trump wrote. 

By the time the convention rolled around, Crenshaw’s past criticisms of Trump were forgotten. But maybe they shouldn’t have been. 

This freaking guy, Trump advisor Cliff Sims thought to himself after reading Crenshaw’s prepared remarks for the RNC Convention. Sims had read thousands of words of convention speeches at that point, and written just as many. Surely his eyes must just be getting tired. He must have just missed it. 

Sims pressed Command+F on his iMac and searched for the word “Trump.” Nothing. He erased that, and searched for the word “president.” Nothing. 

Sims had had to Trumpify a handful of convention speeches—adding some of the president’s accomplishments and additional superlatives. For Crenshaw, Sims added a few mentions of Trump to fit the military veteran’s remarks, including one that would credit Trump for taking out ISIS and a final line that endorsed Trump: “And by voting for Donald Trump on November third, you can be sure it will continue to be protected by the president as well.” 

Sims attached the revised remarks to an email, noted that he’d made a few edits, and hit Send. 

“Hey, Cliff,” came a reply from Justin Discigil, Crenshaw’s communications director, a few hours later. “Just spoke with my boss. He feels very strongly about the speech. The speech is written in his words, and he drafted it completely himself.” 

Sims called Discigil. “Dude. What is going on?” Sims asked as soon as the aide answered. “If you think your guy is going to speak at the president’s convention without mentioning him and no one is going to notice, you’re crazy.” 

The speech was in the middle of a political convention, but Crenshaw wanted to keep his remarks free from partisanship. The campaign had asked him to speak about military heroes. He’d had friends killed in action and didn’t view their valor at the province of Republicans or Democrats. Crenshaw was ready to walk if Trump World tried to take over his speech. But there was also a political calculation on the part of the Texas Republican. “The president is the biggest liability to our reelection,” Discigil said. 

Sims lost his mind. Why would Crenshaw agree to speak at the convention? Why would he think he could have it both ways? Crenshaw eventually agreed to credit “the president” for supporting the military but never mentioned Trump by name. Inside the campaign, Miller and Clark decided not to elevate the issue to Trump, and instead bumped Crenshaw out of a prime-time slot without informing the congressman about the change. After the speech aired, Sims texted Discigil the links to every tweet he saw mentioning the conspicuous lack of Trump mentions in the congressman’s speech. Discigil never responded.

WHAT THEY DO ON RECESS

Grassley and Cotton do pushups in Iowa

Iowa’s senior Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, is 87 and, as of now, he’s running for re-election next year. He will be 89 by Election Day. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is 44, and he’ll almost certainly run for president in 2024. Cotton visited Grassley and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst (R) in Iowa yesterday and they did a pushup competition. Yes. They did.

If you’d like to see it, we have it for you. Here’s a close-up view. And below is how the news covered it.

MOMENTS

9:35 a.m.: Vice President Kamala Harris will speak to the U.S. delegation to the Generation Equality Forum. 

9:50 a.m.: President Joe Biden will receive his daily intelligence briefing.

10 a.m.: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) will speak about their transportation bill in HVC Studio A.

11 a.m.: Biden and Harris will speak to Cabinet officials, western governors and private sector leaders to discuss “the devastating intersection of drought, heat, and wildfires in the Western United States.” Governors expected to attend include Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Spencer Cox of Utah, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Jay Inslee of Washington State and Jared Polis of Colorado.

1 p.m.: Jen Psaki and EPA Administrator Michael Regan will brief reporters.

CLIP FILE

CNN

→ “Tensions rise in policing talks as negotiations hit a delicate phase,” by Jessica Dean and Manu Raju

NYT

→ “Fed Unity Cracks as Inflation Rises and Officials Debate Future,” by Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley: “Central bankers are increasingly divided over how to think about and respond to emerging risks after months of rising asset values and faster-than-expected price increases. While their political counterparts in the White House have been more unified in maintaining that the recent jump in price gains will fade as the economy gets past a reopening burst, Washington as a whole is wrestling with how to approach policy at a moment of intense uncertainty.

“The Fed’s top officials, including Chair Jerome H. Powell, acknowledge that a lasting period of uncomfortably high inflation is a possibility. But they have said it is more likely that recent price increases, which have come as the economy reopens from its coronavirus slumber, will fade."

WaPo

→ “On narrow vote, Supreme Court leaves CDC ban on evictions in place,” by Robert Barnes

→ “South Dakota governor sending National Guard to Mexico border on mission funded by GOP megadonor,” by Alex Horton

→ “House votes to remove statues of Confederate leaders from U.S. Capitol,” by John Wagner and Eugene Scott: “The vote was 285 to 120, with 67 Republicans joining Democrats in backing the measure. A similar bill passed the House last year on a 305-to-113 vote but did not advance in the Senate, then controlled by Republicans.”

→ “U.S. military commander in Afghanistan warns of chaotic civil war,” by Pamela Constable in Kabul: “The top American military commander in Afghanistan expressed deep concern Tuesday that the country could slide into a chaotic civil war and face ‘very hard times’ unless its fractious civilian leadership united and the haphazard array of armed groups joining the anti-Taliban fight were controlled and made "accountable" for their actions in battle.

“The bleak assessment by Gen. Austin ‘Scott’ Miller, who met with journalists, came as Taliban forces continued their rapid advance across northern Afghan provinces and expanded into other rural regions. The insurgents also began drawing closer in a circle around the capital city.”

WSJ

→ “Biden Weighs New Executive Order Restraining Big Business,” by Jake Schlesinger

AP

→ “Kim berates North Korean officials for ‘crucial’ virus lapse,” by Kim Tong-Hyung in Seoul, South Korea

Politico

→ “Murkowski has the moxie to take on Trump. Will she?” by Burgess Everett

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images