Gas over $6 in California

US gas prices jump another 9 cents to $4.39 a gallon

By Chris Isidore

After a brief respite, US gas prices are officially surging again.

Prices at the pump jumped another 9 cents to $4.39 for a gallon of regular. It marked the biggest one-day jump in prices in the last six weeks.

US gas prices are now at their highest level since July 2022, according to the data from AAA.

Gas prices are up 33 cents, or 9%, in the last week — and they’ve gained 47% since the start of war in Iran.

Oil futures suggest higher prices lay ahead. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is up another 1%, just under $112 a barrel.

Gas prices fell for two weeks after the start of the ceasefire, taking the average down to $4.02 by April 22. But concerns over failure of peace talks to reach an agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz have sent prices shooting higher once again.

$187 Billion Cut to SNAP

House Cements $187 Billion Cut to SNAP—But Hey, Free Chicken!

Abby Vesoulis

It has always perplexed me that the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)—known colloquially as food stamps—doesn’t allow recipients to use the benefit to purchase hot food items at grocery stores.

Bread, steak, fish, potato chips, bananas and nearly every other food item lining the shelves? Sure. The ready-made rotisserie chickens, mac-and-cheese, or mashed potatoes on warming racks near the check-out? Nope.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, nearly 80 percent of SNAP households include a child, an elderly individual, or someone with a disability—families that would plausibly benefit from having affordable and efficient meals and side dishes as dinner options. Until now, it’s been a no-go.

However, there was a tender development in the US House of Representatives on Thursday, when the legislative chamber voted to include an amendment on their broader $390 billion Farm Bill package that redefines “food” from an earlier law to cover rotisserie chicken too. (The other hot-and-ready dishes weren’t lucky enough to be included.) Before being folded into the Farm Bill, the idea was most recently touted as a stand-alone bill, the aptly named “Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act” by a bipartisan group of Senators earlier this month.

While the legislation still needs to move through the Senate, the House passed the Farm Bill mostly along partisan lines, 224-220. Just 14 Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in supporting it.

You may be wondering what kind of monster would want to deprive SNAP households—75 percent of which live below the poverty line—of such a convenient delicacy. But to vote for the rotisserie chicken would have meant to vote for other components of the Farm Bill, too. Namely, $187 billion in cuts to the SNAP program.

That part wasn’t as appetizing to most House Democrats.

True Partisan Colors

The Roberts Court Shows Its True Partisan Colors

A Republican power grab triumphs over minority voting rights.

Pema Levy

The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority would have you think that its latest gerrymandering decision is a mere tweak to the legal rules governing political map drawing. No doubt hoping for mild headlines, the court’s 6–3 opinion framed its holding as hewing to “the plain text” of the Voting Rights Act and “consistent with” the 15th Amendment’s prohibition against racial discrimination in voting. In compliance with these two guideposts, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion styles itself as a humble “update.”

Don’t be fooled. This is a counter-revolution. Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requires that people of color have an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. Wednesday’s decision effectively strikes down Section 2—at least what this Supreme Court had left of it—and takes the country back to the dark days when Black and brown voters in many states cast meaningless ballots, having been diluted and gerrymandered into powerlessness. In the decades since the Voting Rights Act, southern states have sent Black representatives to Congress, state legislatures, and local political bodies because this seminal civil rights law demanded that minority voters have an equal voice in the political process. Congress has repeatedly defended and continued these protections. On Wednesday, a court majority watered them right down to nothing.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan laid out the stakes of what the court had just done, and repeatedly chided the majority for downplaying the gravity of its holding. Wednesday’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais “could destroy most of the majority minority districts that in the past 40 years the Voting Rights Act created,” Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The decision has “thus laid the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction. Under cover of ‘updat[ing]’ and ‘realign[ing]’ this greatest of statutes, the majority makes a nullity of Section 2 and threatens a half-century’s worth of gains in voting equality.”

This case is not the first that the Roberts court has taken to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, but it may be the last. It is likely the final nail in its coffin, and the lid is now so firmly in place that it is improbable that any plaintiff will be able to pry it open and avail themselves of the law’s protections. This court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, began its assassination of the law in 2013, striking down the requirement that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination get pre-clearance for new maps and changes in voting rules. The court went on to make it harder to win cases against discriminatory voting laws that block minority voters from casting their ballots. And in a related line of cases, the justices green lit partisan gerrymandering and made it increasingly difficult to prove racially discriminatory map drawing had occurred. The Callais decision marries these two lines of cases, destroying the Voting Rights Act while elevating permission to conductpartisan gerrymandering above minority voting rights. 

The dissent opens with a hypothetical that illustrates the import of the majority’s decision: Imagine a state with a history of virulent racial discrimination, in which Black and white voters prefer different political parties. The population is 90 percent white, save a single county, shaped like a circle, which is 90 percent Black. The Black voters elect a representative of their choice because they belong to one congressional district. Then “the state legislature decides to eliminate the circle district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one each to six new, still solidly White congressional districts,” Kagan writes. “The State’s Black voters are now widely dispersed, and (unlike the State’s White voters) lack any ability to elect a representative of their choice. Election after election, Black citizens’ votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.”

Congress, under the Voting Rights Act, forbid this kind of racial vote dilution. Under Callais, the Roberts court brings it back. Indeed, if the white majority in the dissent’s hypothetical seeks to hand all their state’s congressional districts to Republicans, then the Black population cannot have a meaningful vote because they would choose a Democrat. “The majority straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders,” Kagan writes. “For how else, the majority reasons, can we preserve the authority of States to engage in this practice than by stripping minority citizens of their rights to an equal political process? And with that, the majority as much as invites States to embark on a new round of partisan gerrymanders.” Notably, the majority does not dispute this. Alito does not counter that this hypothetical district—the paradigmatic Section 2 district—would survive Wednesday’s opinion. It’s a damning silence that tacitly admits just how sweeping his decision is. 

Partisan gerrymandering, the court’s preferred tool for dismantling Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, is not a constitutionally protected practice. In fact, it’s long been viewed as a big problem. As recently as 2017, the Supreme Court appeared poised to limit extreme partisan gerrymandering and its obviously corrosive impact on democracy and individual rights. But two years later, after Justice Anthony Kennedy was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court swung in the other direction. In Rucho v. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that federal courts could not adjudicate partisan gerrymandering claims because they were ill-equipped for the task. Rucho “did not pretend that partisan gerrymanders were something in need of safeguarding,” Kagan recalled in her Callais dissent. “To the contrary, the Court conceded that they were ‘incompatible with democratic principles’ and ‘lead to results that reasonably seem unjust.’” But, seven years later, the majority has transformed partisan gerrymandering into a weapon with which to extinguish the political voice of minority voters.

Partisan gerrymandering—indeed any partisan concern that a legislature might raise—can now perform the same function that Jim Crow tactics did prior to the Voting Rights Act. There’s no need to resurrect poll taxes or literacy tests when legislatures can simply draw maps to exclude minority’s preferred candidate from winning. Against any accusations of discrimination against minority voters, legislators can simply invoke a political motive and prevail. The Voting Rights Act was “born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” Kagan wrote. Callais not only tramples the Voting Rights Act, it creates the scaffolding upon which to build a new discriminatory political system.

Defenders of the Roberts court chafe at the accusation by liberal critics that it is guided by partisan concerns rather than faithful application of the law. But on Wednesday, the Republican appointees literally elevated partisan concerns above the individual and collective rights of minority voters. They ruled that helping your preferred political party trumps the rights of Black and brown citizens. It’s hard to imagine a less justifiable decision—or a more precise representation of this court’s agenda.

General Strike

So You Want to Organize a General Strike

Trump opponents are marking May Day with walkouts, boycotts, and marches. What’s the next step?

Schuyler Mitchell

On Friday, International Workers’ Day, tens of thousands of people across the US will walk out of school, skip work, and refrain from shopping as part of a nationwide economic blackout against President Donald Trump’s agenda. Organizers with the May Day Strong coalition, a coalition of labor unions and community groups, are helping oversee more than 3,500 marches, rallies, and teach-ins. The coalition’s May Day action is inspired by the mass popularity of the Day of Truth and Freedom, in January, when more than 70,000 people took to the streets in Minnesota to demand ICE leave their state.

But are either of these events general strikes? And does it matter?

To better understand this moment, I spoke with Erik Loomis, a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island and author of Organizing America and A History of America in Ten Strikes. We discussed the history of the general strike in America, the legal barriers hindering today’s labor movement, and how workers can use their strategic power to stand up to the Trump administration.

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

What is a general strike, and how does it differ from a typical labor strike?

A regular strike comes out of a workplace. It’s usually affiliated with a singular workplace action by a group of workers who are angry about something going on in the workplace. They’re trying to form a union and the company won’t negotiate, or they have a union and the company won’t come up with a fair contract.

The idea behind a general strike is that the workers writ large, workers generally, will all come together and walk out in favor of some goal—a kind of broad-based revolution. It can be across sectors. Let’s say I go on strike as a college professor because my university is treating me really badly, and the hospital workers also walk out on strike with me. They’re trying to use their influence over their sector of the economy to increase the stress of the conditions so that I can win what I want to win. It doesn’t have to be about the workplace if a bunch of unions come together. Part of what they were trying to do in Oakland in 1946, for instance, was to overthrow the Republican political machine that controlled the city.

Has the US ever had a true general strike? What conditions preceded them, and what were the demands?

Basically every general strike in the US has come out of the established labor movement. We’re talking about Seattle in 1919, San Francisco in 1934, Oakland in 1946, New Orleans in 1892. These general strikes have been attempts by the labor movement that usually come out of a specific workplace issue but then explode as part of a general discontent with the system as it exists at that time—to place pressure on employers, the city, the forces of order.

In Seattle in 1919, it’s very much about employers not raising wages on docks after World War I, and the Seattle labor movement comes together as one to try to force a general increase in wages. In San Francisco in 1934, the longshoremen were led by the famed radical Harry Bridges, who had come out of the Industrial Workers of the World, in an attempt to form a union, which the companies and the police were very strongly resisting. In Oakland in 1946, it starts at a department store and spreads throughout the city of Oakland. In that case, it’s very much also about wages.

These have not always really been that radical. But the second thing you have to understand is that the general strike—or more specifically, sympathy strikes, where you strike in sympathy to try to put more pressure on the employer—were declared illegal by the United States as part of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. A union cannot actually legally engage in what would be required to hold a [true] general strike today. They could do it, but they would break the law and face all kinds of penalties for doing so.

Some people were using the term “general strike” to describe Minnesota’s Day of Truth and Freedom in January, and other people were pushing back against that word choice. Is “general strike” the correct term, and how much do definitions matter?

I am one who is a little skeptical about the way this term is being used. I don’t think what happened in Minnesota is a general strike, and I don’t really think what’s going on May 1 qualifies either.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. People are using the terms and the ideas that they have access to through their education and trying to apply them to the presently terrible political situation, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s exactly what people should be doing. Whether or not it is technically a general strike is far less important.

If people can use these terms in order to push for a more just world, then that’s a heck of a lot more important than whether it technically is or is not a general strike.

In 2022, it felt like we were seeing an inflection point in the American labor movement. There were key unionization efforts with companies like Amazon and Starbucks. Do you think that momentum has continued, or has it been really diminished by Trump’s second term?

I think there’s a few things there. One is the anger over economic inequality is very real. I think that hasn’t changed at all. I think we’re seeing that with the increased success of more left-wing candidates in the Democratic Party. Trump may be a liar and a terrible human being, but one of his lies is that he’s good for the working man. A lot of working people believe that because they’re so angry about the system as it exists.

So the economic anger is still very much there. And then every time a union wins something these days, there’s a sort of liberal-left world of writers and readers that want to blow up every single small victory into the revival of the labor movement, and that’s more pressure than it can bear.

We saw this with the Amazon vote, which, let’s face it, was one vote in one factory. We saw this with the Starbucks workers. And we saw this with the successful organizing by the United Auto Workers at that one plant in Chattanooga.

The reality is that the barriers to successfully organizing, in part because of the Taft-Hartley Act, are enormous. The Starbucks workers have done one heck of a job, but what they’re facing is a company that simply refuses to negotiate a contract. The burden to win a union vote and then win a contract is enormous, and if anything, winning that first contract is even harder than winning that first union election, and so companies can wait for years before actually seriously negotiating.

The reality is American labor law is broken. It’s controlled by corporations. President Biden’s idea of the [union-supporting] PRO Act would have tried to reset the playing field on this. But that’s what we need to happen in order to see this kind of energy turn into wins. It really is about political power. The reason that the unions were able to succeed in the 1930s, yes, it was going out on strike and all of the actions they took—but that had happened before.

The difference was massively electing pro-union officials to office, and then those pro-union officials putting the laws into place that create a pathway for those union actions to succeed. You need both the action on the ground, the strike, and you need the electoral side. And we haven’t had that electoral side in many, many decades. And that often has been true under Democrats and is always true under Republicans. So I think the energy is there, and there’s a huge demand for unions. But I don’t think people understand just how hard it is, because labor law is completely captured by corporations, backed by the courts and with the full support of the Republican Party.

I’d like to dive into the Taft-Hartley Act some more. What led to its passage, and how does it shape what’s legally possible when striking today?

First off, the Taft-Hartley Act is one of the worst laws in American history. It continues to severely limit what unions can do today. 1946 is a huge strike year in America. You have all these workers who had struggled through the 1930s and the Great Depression, and even if they’re forming unions, there’s not a lot of money in the economy, so their standard of living is still pretty low.

Then World War II happens, and sure, everybody has a job, but the government’s controlling wages, and we’re not really making consumer goods because everything’s for the war. And so there’s all this massively pent-up demand for increased wages. People want to live a good life, and that’s what a lot of these strikes were about, right? And so it was an enormous strike wave. Over 5 million Americans go on strike in 1946—almost certainly the most in any year in American history.

At the same time, Congress and America generally were moving sharply to the right. We’re seeing the beginnings of Cold War anti-communism, and some unions were led by communists. They were seen now as the enemy, and a lot of employers hated everything that had happened since the unions had started forming in large numbers a decade earlier in the mid-30s and wanted to roll all of that back. So the Taft-Hartley Act bans almost everything that labor unions were able to do to succeed. The sympathy strike is banned. Wildcat strikes—in which you’re under a union contract, but the employer does something bad and you walk out [without a formal strike vote]—are banned.

States were then allowed, through this law, to create the so-called “right to work” laws, in which anti-union states basically incentivize people to not join unions. These have been used in more recent years to try to destroy the labor movement. Taft-Hartley also requires union leaders to pledge they’re not communists, which takes out many of the best-organizing unions in the labor movement [of the time]. It’s a horrible law that continues to have massive impacts on the American labor movement today and goes very far to explain why the movement has become weaker.

It often feels like workers in European countries are engaging in the types of mass strikes we haven’t seen in the US in a long time. Part of it, like you said, is because there’s a lack of the political conditions that that we need to have in the States.

But is there anything else we can learn from other countries that maybe have stronger labor movements?

I think the key is the cultural differences. And this goes back to the mythologies that Americans tell themselves about America: That this is a nation of the individual. This is a nation where you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This is a nation where the poor man can become rich if he just works hard enough, and all this other bullshit. And you don’t see that in nearly the same kind of way in Europe, in which you have a much more defined system of class consciousness.

Not that European politics are an amazing utopia. But I think it’s always been a challenge in this country to overcome the cultural barriers within the working class that can be this kind of pro-capitalist pathology that lots and lots of people have. And the gig economy, or the rise of Uber, really builds on that—saying, You can make more money by your side hustle.

Racial divisions also absolutely have been a major issue in American labor history. In the past, American workers have often chosen to divide themselves by race. And on top of that, the power of evangelical Protestantism and religion has been a real issue too, in that you have many, many Americans being told messages at churches about individualism, about getting rich, about power structures, about listening to your employer, about obeying. Religion has often been used to crush and bust American strikes as well. So politics is a piece of it, but the biggest difference between here and Europe are cultural issues around class consciousness.

I think a lot of people are looking for strategic actions to take to resist the Trump regime outside of just going to protests and see the general strike as one potential pathway. Given the state of the labor movement, do you think a general strike is the most useful tool to deploy in this moment? Or are there other more strategic pathways?

I think that people want to have one thing that they do and it stops Trump. That’s not going to happen. Everybody’s looking for a shortcut, and I think a lot of general strike rhetoric is a shortcut—if only we come together, we could solve this problem—but I’m not sure that’s really true unless it’s a very real general strike, where the American labor movement leads millions of workers off the job and says they’re going to keep it up for days with clear demands against an anti-worker Republican Party.

Unfortunately, the labor movement is doing nothing. A few unions are even Trump-supportive. The labor movement as an actual organized movement continues to not rise to the occasion. Some state federations have done a pretty good job, but at a national level, it’s been very poor.

So in the absence of that strong labor movement, what do we have?

We have people doing the best they can. And I think that that’s really noble in its own way. We can’t just snap our fingers and stop Donald Trump, and I think this is where learning from other historical movements really makes a difference— thinking about the ways in which people were organizing in the American context in tremendously difficult conditions.

We’re talking about civil rights organizers from the 1920s through the ’50s and ’60s pushing back on Jim Crow. We’re talking about the early organizers in the gay rights movement in the ’70s and ’80s, and the hate and murderous violence that they faced. These are people that we could be inspired by. It might not happen overnight, but we have to understand that struggle happens over the long term, and we have to commit ourselves to that struggle and continue to try to move these conversations forward through our actions, through our organizing.

Whether or not what’s happening on May 1 is a general strike, people using those terms to come together and try to put more pressure on a terrible situation is really a positive thing. And people should take heart from whatever happens out of that and use it as the next moment to continue to build the struggle.

Markarian's Chain

Near the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, a string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain stretches across this telescopic field of view. Anchored in the frame at bottom right by prominent lenticular galaxies, M84 (bottom) and M86, you can follow the chain's gentle arc up and toward the left. Near center you'll spot the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known to some as Markarian's Eyes. An estimated 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster itself is the nearest galaxy cluster. With up to about 2,000 member galaxies, it has a noticeable gravitational influence on our own Local Group of Galaxies. Within the Virgo Cluster at least seven galaxies in Markarian's Chain appear to move coherently, while others may appear to be part of the chain by chance.

Louisiana election delay

Mike Johnson backs Louisiana election delay, urges other states to redraw maps

The Supreme Court invalidated the map in the speaker’s home state Wednesday.

Meredith Lee Hill

Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map Wednesday.

“The governor has no choice but to suspend it,” Johnson told reporters. “The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.”

He spoke as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Louisiana could not carry out elections under the current map and would be working “to develop a path forward.” Any new map is likely to threaten the seats of Democratic Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, who are both Black.

The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the longstanding practice of requiring line-drawers to protect racial minorities’ voting power.

The exact timing of the rescheduled elections is “not my decision,” Johnson added, but said “the way it was typically done” was to hold an all-party “jungle” primary in November, with a runoff in December, and “it looks like it may be that way again.”

“But again, my fingerprints aren’t on it,” Johnson added. “It’s a decision of the state Legislature.”

He also encouraged other states with VRA-mandated minority districts to act quickly and potentially redraw their maps before November, even though many have their election processes well underway already.

“All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,” he said.

They don't care if you die... Remember that...

House strikes pesticide language from farm bill

The vote notched a major win for the MAHA movement on their highest-profile agriculture priority.

By Grace Yarrow and Rachel Shin

The House voted 280-142 to remove controversial pesticide labeling language from the farm bill Thursday morning after a revolt from Make America Healthy Again activists.

The vote is a major win for MAHA-aligned Republicans and Democrats who argued that the provisions would protect pesticide makers that have faced hundreds of thousands of lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging they weren’t informed about health risks associated with the products.

The amendment, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), was the subject of contention within the GOP after she threatened to “BLOW UP the farm bill” over the issue. House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and other Republicans pressured GOP colleagues to reject Luna’s move.

“It would prevent frivolous lawsuits if it’s in compliance with the science that the EPA has put forward,” Thompson told POLITICO. “I think this is a tool that’s really important for food affordability, because these are tools are important for yield, to be able to feed the nation, feed the world.”

Six Democrats voted to keep the pesticide language: Reps. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (N.C.), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.) and Hank Johnson (Ga.).

And 73 Republicans voted with Luna to deliver MAHA a victory in an ongoing fight over pesticide use.

Luna said during debate that she’d faced fierce opposition from her own party, saying on the House floor Wednesday night that one of her colleagues called her a “damn liar.”

“I never thought I’d have to be debating liability protections for pesticide companies,” Luna said. “Yet here I am today.”

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who has fought for years against Republicans’ previous efforts to include similar language in funding and farm bills, backed Luna’s amendment.

“This amendment is not extreme,” Pingree said Wednesday. “It would not ban pesticides or require any additional regulatory burden on the manufacturers. Quite literally it would preserve the status quo and allow the Supreme Court to examine this issue separately and the complicated legal issues at its core.”

House Epstein probe

Maxwell’s former boyfriend testifies in House Epstein probe

Democrats say they didn’t learn anything new; Republicans said Democrats just asked about Trump.

Hailey Fuchs

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said they left an interview Thursday with Ted Waitt, Ghislaine Maxwell’s former boyfriend, largely empty-handed after an hourslong grilling as part of the panel’s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

The committee was interested in what Waitt knew about Epstein’s crimes during his relationship with Maxwell, a former British socialite who is now serving 20 years in prison for her part in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme. Waitt amassed his wealth founding the computer company Gateway and has become a philanthropist supporting ocean conservation. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the late convicted sex offender.

“Epstein was committing some of his crimes while Waitt and Maxwell were in a romantic relationship, so [we] want to understand what if anything he knew about that,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight panel, before entering the interview room Thursday morning, adding, “I find it very hard to believe that they had no knowledge or indication of it.”

But the interview did not appear to be fruitful. Partway through the interview, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) claimed that the committee had learned nothing new.

“I’m interested to see what the Republicans want to know from this,” Subramanyam told reporters. “Maybe it was to connect [President Bill] Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell a little more, because [Waitt] came up in the Clinton deposition.”

Waitt, whose communications with Maxwell appear in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, also happens to be a friend of the former president and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He brought Maxwell as a plus-one to the wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, in 2010 and she appears in at least one photo taken during the ceremony.

Hillary Clinton said she did not recall speaking with Maxwell at the wedding during her deposition before the committee in February.

A GOP committee spokesperson countered the claim that the interview was ineffective in producing new information, saying in a statement that Democrats “made today’s interview as they always do all about President [Donald] Trump, and Ted Waitt had no information about him.”

“In fact, he said Maxwell never brought Trump up,” the spokesperson continued. “Unlike Democrats, Republicans asked substantive questions and gained new information. We will have follow up actions soon.”

During the interview, Democrats only asked about Trump once, according to a person familiar with the questioning who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door conversation.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Waitt could not recall the answers to many of the panel’s questions.

In her interview with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July, Maxwell said she began dating Waitt around 2003 after her relationship with Epstein and stayed with him until around 2010. She met him at a dinner with Bill Clinton in Hong Kong, she told Blanche.

Maxwell also maintained that her former paramour was the subject of blackmail because of her association with Epstein. She stated that Waitt “was asked for $10 million to keep me out of any of Epstein’s civil suits” in 2009, when the convicted sex offender was in litigation.

“He had everything. He was way, way more wealthy than Epstein, if anyone cares,” Maxwell said last July, of her former boyfriend.

A lawyer for Waitt did not return a request for comment.

Workforce data bill

Anthropic, OpenAI back Warner-Budd workforce data bill

Support from industry heavy-hitters is a good sign for a bipartisan framework.

Gabby Miller

A bipartisan Senate bill that would create a federal framework to track how artificial intelligence is reshaping the U.S. workforce has won backing from Silicon Valley tech giants including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) introduced the Workforce Transparency Act on Thursday, which intends to give Washington the real-time information needed to develop policy solutions for economic disruption and job losses associated with the technology.

The legislation would direct the Labor Department to collect and publish anonymized data on AI adoption across the public and private sectors. Data collected would include how workers use the technology and how that usage evolves over time.

The proposal comes as anxiety rises in Washington about the long-term effects of AI on the labor market and as both political parties craft messaging to respond to public concerns about the technology.

It would also establish a voluntary reporting system where companies and agencies can submit AI adoption data, and would then make anonymized versions of the data available to businesses, researchers and agencies.

Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of U.S. Government Affairs Fred Humphries said the framework is helpful for “understanding AI deployment, productivity gains, and the creation of new jobs.”

“We know AI is beginning to transform work, but we don’t have enough data to understand how,” said Joshua New, director of policy at SeedAI, a nonprofit focused on American AI readiness that’s backing the bill.

The proposal is also supported by Alliance for Secure AI, Business Software Alliance, SCSP Action Program and Erik Brynjolfsson, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI.

Warner has made this issue a cornerstone of his reelection campaign, launching an ad in December highlighting how the rise in AI adoption is coinciding with steep job losses and an affordability crisis in the U.S.

Senate bans senators

Senate bans senators from prediction market trading

The prohibition would apply to senators and staff.

Jordain Carney

The Senate Thursday unanimously voted to ban senators and their staff from trading on prediction markets, a practice that has come under growing scrutiny on Capitol Hill in recent months.

The resolution, spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), prohibits senators and staff from using prediction markets. It goes into effect immediately.

“United States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” Moreno, who spearheaded the resolution, said in a statement.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was “a good thing that the Senate is moving swiftly” and urged the House and the administration to enact similar rules.

“Speaker Johnson should immediately do the same thing in the House,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

He added that once the Senate returns from a one-week break in mid-May that he will work to ensure administration officials also “can’t get rich off betting markets.”

The development received swift applause from Polymarket itself, which wrote on a social media post, “We’re in full support of this. Our Rulebook & Terms of Service already prohibit such conduct, but codifying this into law is a step forward for the industry. Happy to help move this forward however we can.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) wrote on X he hoped this wasn’t the end of progress on the Hill in putting guardrails on use of prediction markets by members of Congress and aides.

“This applies to senators and Senate staff and is a good first step in response to concerns I and others have raised. I encourage the House to follow suit,” he said. “At a minimum, we should pass my bill with [Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)] to prohibit all federally elected officials and government employees from using insider information to bet on a prediction market contract.”

Not Funny

 

Renewed scrutiny

Schumer faces renewed scrutiny after Mills meltdown

Democratic critics of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer say his ill-fated backing of Maine Gov. Janet Mills shows he should stay out of the way in pending primaries.

By Adam Wren, Lisa Kashinsky and Jordain Carney

Chuck Schumer’s critics are using the faceplant of one of his star recruits to argue he needs to get out of the way in other races.

After Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of her state’s primary Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called on the Senate minority leader and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to drop their involvement in remaining contested primaries across the map including Iowa and Michigan.

“I think the math and polling would indicate that that would be a good idea,” Heinrich told POLITICO in an interview.

Heinrich, who endorsed against Schumer’s favored candidates in both Maine and Michigan, said Schumer’s Maine miscalculation showed he and the DSCC have operated on an old model of electability in an anti-establishment year.

“We’ve gotten over-analytical as a party, and sanitized and thinking about resumes,” he said. “None of these candidates are perfect, but I think there’s an expectation by voters today that if you seem perfect, you’re probably hiding something.”

Asked if he had misread a race that divided his caucus, Schumer instead kept his focus on November, telling reporters in the Capitol Thursday that Democrats are “going to take back the Senate and win Maine.”

A spokesperson for Schumer, Allison Biasotti, added that “We’ve expanded the map and are running on a clear agenda to lower costs across the country — creating multiple paths to the majority.”

But Mills’ nosedive against progressive oysterman and military veteran Graham Platner in a must-win race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins marks the latest in a long line of what some of his own members and top party strategists view as critical missteps for Schumer. “It’s not like having the establishment stamp is helping their candidates win anyways — it’s having the opposite effect as we saw in Maine,” said a longtime Senate Democratic campaign strategist not involved in any of the races where Schumer and the DSCC have taken sides, granted anonymity to give a candid assessment.

Maeve Coyle, a spokesperson for the DSCC, said the Schumer-aligned group has “one goal: to win a Democratic Senate majority.”

“We’ve created a path to do that this cycle by recruiting formidable candidates, expanding the map, and disqualifying Republican opponents – the same strategies that led Senate Democrats to overperform in the last four election cycles,” she added.

Sen. Bernie Sanders — like Heinrich, part of the “fight club” of senators challenging Schumer’s midterms strategy — demurred when asked whether Schumer and the DSCC should now rethink their larger primary strategy: “That’s a longer question.”

Schumer has long relied on recruiting known figures with proven political track records for key Senate races — with mixed success. He and the DSCC spent big on Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon in 2020, and Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin in 2016, only to watch them fall short. But he’s also notched major wins in the past by landing candidates like now-Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Schumer’s strategic approach has its defenders in the caucus. “He’s got a very good batting average in recruiting and electoral strategy,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO in an interview. “And I think that if you take a beat and you wait for the noise to settle you realize that nobody thought it was possible that we were going to take the Senate and now because of recruiting success we are a coin flip or even slightly better and that’s due in large part to Chuck Schumer.”

This cycle, Schumer scored some star recruits who have won statewide before in former Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina and former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska, each of whom are raising massive amounts of cash as they charge into general elections in red states Democrats need to flip if they hope to regain control of the Senate. Schumer views his path to the majority as running through these three states and Democrats believe recruitment has helped them expand the map and increase their odds of flipping the chamber.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), in a recent interview with POLITICO, sidestepped if he would support Schumer for leader after November. But he predicted that “if Democrats do win this time and come back ... I think a lot of the critique of Chuck will go away, because he did a lot of the recruitment, and along with [Sen.] Kirsten [Gillibrand], has done a lot of the fundraising.”

But some establishment-backed candidates are struggling. In Michigan, Rep. Haley Stevens is mired in a tight race against a pair of more progressive rivals, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed. Hours after Mills dropped out in Maine, McMorrow posted a video on X of her saying she wouldn’t back Schumer as leader with the caption: “The party establishment in DC doesn’t get to pick our next Senator.”“Let it play out,” McMorrow told POLITICO Thursday evening. “This is a moment for Democrats, and I mean Democratic voters on the ground, to decide what party we want next. It is our turn. It is not the party’s turn anymore.”

In Iowa, state Sen. Zach Wahls is attempting to yoke rival state Rep. Josh Turek, who the DSCC has quietly backed in the race, to Schumer — ramping up the attack line as VoteVets, a group often aligned with the party apparatus, works to boost Turek on the airwaves.

And in Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is leading Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) in polling — sometimes by double digits — and has been racking up big-name support, including from retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and seven other senators including Heinrich. (Schumer and the DSCC haven’t publicly taken sides there).

Schumer set off a firestorm within the Democratic Party after he caved to Republicans during the first government shutdown of Trump’s second term last year, infuriating progressives within his caucus and a party base desperate for its leaders to show more spine against the administration. Schumer argued that a shutdown would empower Trump, and that Democrats would have a stronger hand later in the year as Trump’s favorability sank.

While there was never a significant threat to his leadership from within the caucus, Schumer has become a bogeyman on the campaign trail. His leadership quickly became a litmus test in Democratic Senate primaries, with several insurgent candidates outright rejecting him as caucus leader come 2028 and even some of Schumer’s own picks staying noncommittal. It’s a dynamic that other legislative leaders, namely Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, have faced in the past but still gone on to be reelected in closed-door, secret ballot leadership contests.

But now, those anti-Schumer candidates are starting to win their primaries, potentially complicating his path to retaining power next session. Juliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor of Illinois who is poised to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Schumer’s No. 2, has long said she would not support the New York Democrat for leader. Platner, now the presumptive party nominee in Maine, launched his campaign saying he wouldn’t give Schumer his blessing. Wahls has called for Schumer to step down as leader.

Schumer has made some effort to reach out to his critics. He and McMorrow had a short but cordial meeting a few months ago, well after the DSCC had backed Stevens in the race, according to people familiar with the meeting. He called Stratton after she won the primary; the two also had an introductory meeting in Washington a couple of weeks ago, according to her campaign.

The backlash to Schumer comes as Democratic voters who’ve grown disillusioned with party leadership clamor for fighters who will take a more aggressive approach to the second Trump administration. Schumer’s critics say his picks are generally more old-school, and cautious to a fault.

It also reflects the growing alarm about Democrats’ aging standard bearers, after voters watched President Joe Biden decline in real time and a growing number of congressional lawmakers die in office. Some Democrats were particularly critical of Schumer, 75, pushing Mills, who turns 79 at the end of this year and who would have been the oldest first-term senator ever elected.

As some Democrats knife Schumer, national Republicans are salivating at the potential for left-leaning picks to emerge from their primary fields as the GOP stares down toughening terrain in their bid to hold the Senate majority.

The party’s Senate campaign arm rushed on Thursday to cast Platner as a “scandal-plagued” and “extreme” left candidate, recirculating his various controversies and attempting to tie other Democrats across the battleground map to him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a phone interview that he “can’t think of a more challenged, disgusting position for the Democrat Party to take than supporting Graham Platner.”

“You now have a radical becoming the face of the Democrat Party, along with El-Sayed in Michigan. You’ve got these folks who are just remarkably out of step even with their own party. And you go to Minnesota and you have Flanagan,” Scott said. “So there is this consistent theme of extremist radicals who are dangerous for America’s future, and in their own states they’re out of step with even the Democratic Party and the entire state as a whole.”

Satellite frequencies

France and Spain want space reserved for EU firms in satellite frequencies

Brussels and EU capitals are mulling restrictions on non-EU players.

By Eliza Gkritsi

France and Spain have teamed up in a bid to reserve space for European companies in an upcoming spectrum auction for mobile satellite communications, effectively pushing out U.S. players.

The move comes as Brussels and EU capitals are mulling restrictions on non-EU players in a vast array of technologies from cloud computing to software, and grappling with the bloc’s reliance on U.S. and China-made tools.

In 2009 the European Commission issued licenses for the 2 GHz spectrum bands used for mobile communications to two U.S. companies, Viasat and EchoStar. Ahead of their expiry in 2027, the EU must decide whether to renew them or launch a fresh auction, setting new conditions on which companies can bid.

In a last-minute addition to the agenda for Thursday’s meeting of digital ministers in Nicosia, Spain and France said the EU must include satellite spectrums in its wider effort to set up a preference for homegrown technology, effectively excluding foreign-owned firms from critical sectors, according to a text seen by POLITICO.

“It is time to decide whether we want our skies to be stronger or dependent,” Spain's Digital Transformation Minister Óscar López told his counterparts on Thursday. "It is time to make European satellite industry great again."

“From the ground to the sky, infrastructures like telecommunications are a critical asset if we truly believe in digital sovereignty,” López said. The minister said national capitals must be closely involved in the auction.

European Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen told reporters that the spectrum allocation will be "co-legislation" involving both the Commission and EU countries. Brussels is finalizing its proposal, which will come out “very soon,” she added.

Just this week Beijing threatened retaliation if Brussels limits the access of Chinese companies to the EU's critical tech sectors.

Virkkunen said any restrictions on the providers of critical tech infrastructure “will be a very, very tailor-made approach." She added any limitation “will look at each component and what kind of risk and how to mitigate the risks.”

The commissioner also pushed back against China's complaints, noting that Bejing is “also excluding some of the companies from their markets because of security reasons.”

Amid the debate over spectrum allocation, the EU is also considering how to deal with American companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX under a new bloc-wide rulebook, which will ramp up regulatory oversight of satellite operators.

In an interview with POLITICO last month, Brendan Carr, the head of the U.S. communications regulator and an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, warned Brussels against placing unacceptable regulatory burdens on successful American companies.

Crashes into reality

Trump’s threat to pull troops out of Germany crashes into reality

An American drawdown from Germany would take years, cost billions — and potentially damage the U.S. military campaign in Iran.

By Victor Jack and Chris Lunday

 U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to pull U.S. troops out of Germany — but turning a social media edict into an actual withdrawal is far more complicated.

Any American withdrawal would mean sinking billions of dollars into a yearslong process. Then there’s the usefulness of German bases to American global power projection. Without them, U.S. forces would face difficulties in prosecuting the war against Iran.

“Such a withdrawal would require long-term planning and entail significant costs,” said German liberal lawmaker Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the European Parliament’s Defense Committee. “The United States relies on this location, particularly with regard to operations in the Middle East.”

Trump lashed out at Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz needled the president over the war against Iran.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” Trump wrote overnight Thursday, later adding: “The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine ... and fixing his broken Country.”

Merz on Thursday avoided direct reference to Trump's threats. “Our compass remains clearly set on a strong NATO and a reliable transatlantic partnership,” he said.

The latest scrap underscores Trump’s enduring frustration at his European partners for largely dodging the Iran conflict more than two months after he first ordered airstrikes.

The president has also threatened other countries not toeing the line on Iran — including the U.K. and Spain — but so far that hasn't led to any changes in their military relationship.

The U.S. has been reconsidering the scale of its presence in Europe since before Trump's presidency, but has so far indicated it would not carry out major drawdowns, instead calling on the continent to shoulder more of its own defense and pivoting toward the Asia-Pacific.

“If they look at where they might have the best use of their bases in Europe ... I don't think it's irrational,” said one senior NATO diplomat, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “If it's done as a vengeful wish to punish allies ... then it wouldn't be wise.”

But any sudden pullout could undermine Europe's defenses against Russia at a time when there are growing fears Moscow could attack a European country by the end of the decade.

“It would … weaken the deterrence posture of NATO as it would signal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that the Americans care less every day, that Europe is increasingly exposed,” said Gerlinde Niehus, a security expert and former longtime NATO official.

Words, not deeds

Despite Trump's threat, removing soldiers won't be easy.

Roughly 36,000 U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in Germany, around half of Washington’s total military presence in Europe. The country is home to dozens of American installations including the top U.S. commands for Europe and Africa, and also has critical military assets including B-61 nuclear bombs.

During his first term, Trump ordered the withdrawal of 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, but he was not able to complete it before President Joe Biden took office.

In theory, “there are no significant legal or political obstacles” stopping him from trying to pull troops out of Germany again, said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank, given the “very limited leverage” the U.S. Congress has over military matters.

The only concrete limit is a 2025 law that prevents the president from leaving fewer than 76,000 troops in Europe. With up to 85,000 soldiers on the continent, that gives him a legal maximum of 9,000 soldiers.

But even doing that would take “four years at the minimum” and could cost “hundreds of billions” of dollars when accounting for indirect expenses as well, said retired Gen. Mark Hertling, the former commanding officer of U.S. Army Europe who helped manage a significant American drawdown between 2003 and 2011.

That doesn’t account for broader complexities and costs, he argued, including shifting thousands of soldiers’ families, firing local German workers, closing down hospitals and leaving newly upgraded bases abandoned.

A rapid pullback would also be “extremely damaging” for the U.S. military campaign in Iran, he added, given the significant role that bases like Ramstein play in coordinating drone attacks and shipping personnel and equipment to the Middle East.

There are other practical obstacles to removing soldiers. “Where would they go? You need infrastructure, you need bases, you need housing — that doesn’t just exist somewhere else waiting,” said Claudia Major, senior vice president for transatlantic security at the German Marshall Fund.

For now, Germany isn’t worried.

Berlin is “prepared” for a potential U.S. drawdown and has been discussing the issue “closely and in a spirit of trust in all NATO bodies,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Thursday.

“Despite some impulsive statements by the president, I still have a basic level of trust in transatlantic relations,” said Christoph Schmid, a lawmaker for Germany’s governing Social Democratic party. “You have to measure the U.S. administration more by its actions than by its words.”

Threatens Sánchez and Meloni

Trump threatens Sánchez and Meloni with US troops withdrawal

The remarks follow similar threats aimed at Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier this week.

By POLITICO

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he would "probably" remove American troops from Spain and Italy, in renewed attacks against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the American leader said Italy had "not been of any help to us," and accused Spain of being "absolutely horrible." Both Spain and Italy have denied U.S. military planes that are taking part in the Iran war from using their bases.

The remarks follow similar threats aimed at Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier this week. All three European NATO allies have been critical of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.

Sánchez has styled himself as a European counterweight to Trump, while Meloni — one of Trump's European staunchest allies after his reelection in 2024 — has been distancing herself from the U.S. president recently, in a bid to save her premiership ahead of the national election expected in 2027. Merz said the U.S. is getting "humiliated" by Iran in the Middle East conflict.

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto responded to the comments, telling media outlet ANSA he "wouldn’t understand the reasons" for a possible withdrawal of U.S. troops from Italy.

The United States has around 12,000 armed forces personnel stationed in Italy, with only Germany having a higher number in Europe at over 36,000. Spain hosts about 3,800 troops, according to an overview published by the Pentagon in December.

Merz long walked a tightrope to keep his relationship with Trump smooth, and Berlin, unlike Rome and Madrid, does allow the U.S. to use its Ramstein Air Base to coordinate military operations against Iran.

Any U.S. withdrawal from Germany would cost billions and take years, while weakening a key strategic advantage in its conflict with Iran and its ability to project military power globally.

Defense officials told POLITICO that there are no immediate plans for a drawdown but that they take Trump’s comments seriously.

Shocks Pentagon

Trump’s call to reduce US troops in Germany shocks Pentagon

The Defense Department "was not expecting it," a congressional aide said.

By Jack Detsch, Paul McLeary and Stefanie Bolzen

President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he was considering pulling some U.S. troops out of Germany stunned defense officials, who scrambled to figure out if the president was serious about following through on his threats this time.

Trump’s social media post was the first that many had heard of a potential new push to take hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops out of Germany, according to three defense officials. It strongly contrasts a recently concluded monthslong review of the Pentagon’s global troop footprint, which did not call for major pullbacks from Europe.

The Pentagon “was not expecting it and has not been planning any kind of drawdown,” said a congressional aide familiar with the situation. “But we have to take him seriously because he was serious about it during his first administration,” referring to Trump’s July 2020 order to pull 12,000 U.S. troops out of Germany that was never implemented.

While previous threats from Trump have not come to fruition, he’s ratcheted up his anti-European rhetoric in his second term, from threatening to pull out of NATO due to allies’ failure to join the Iran war to warning he might seize Greenland.

Trump’s latest threat to the transatlantic alliance comes just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iran at the negotiating table. Trump continued to launch broadsides against the German leader on Thursday, calling for Merz to “spend more time” on ending Russia’s war with Ukraine and solving European energy and immigration problems “and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat.”

Trump’s initial post came hours after he spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to reduce the number of NATO troops in Europe. And it occurred as Germany’s Chief of Defence, Gen. Carsten Breuer, wrapped up a day of meetings with U.S. officials in Washington to discuss Berlin’s new defense strategy.

German officials reacted with surprise to the president’s posts after having had productive talks with their U.S. counterparts, said a senior German official, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to talk about sensitive military planning.

“As Europe’s largest economy, Germany has the ambition to take on a greater leadership role within NATO,” Breuer told reporters after those meetings. “It’s clear for Germany to take over more responsibility” of its own defense.

Trump’s comments also came as Army Secretary Dan Driscoll wrapped up a two-day trip to German training ranges to underscore the U.S. presence in the country.

The president on Thursday floated the idea of pulling troops out of Spain and Italy as well. “Why shouldn’t I?’” he told reporters. “Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.”

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department “plans for every scenario, and we are fully prepared to execute the orders of the commander-in-chief at the time and place of his choosing.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Taking out American forces could remove a major military deterrent against a rearming Russia, which European officials believe is preparing to attack NATO soil in the coming years. And Trump’s threats have made European officials, who are already making plans to try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without Trump, even more sick of America playing hostage diplomacy with allies.

Even a review of U.S. troops in Germany could further ignite tensions in the alliance after several NATO members denied the Pentagon access to their bases for the Iran war.

“Trump’s policy of crude threats has reached its limits,” said a German official. “His rhetoric has worn thin. Withdrawing U.S. troops from Germany would severely weaken the U.S. itself, and we wonder when the adults in D.C. plan to step back into the spotlight.”

Executing a snap withdrawal of American forces from Germany would be difficult for a Pentagon already embroiled in an ongoing war in Iran.

Germany hosts between 35,000 and 40,000 U.S. troops, and provides land for basing for free as well as a local workforce to support American troops. The Pentagon also runs two of its main military hubs out of Germany — U.S. European and U.S. Africa Command — along with the largest Pentagon hospital outside American soil.

“There’s a moving cost, and then depending on where you’re moving them to, there could be construction costs that are substantial,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at American Enterprise Institute. “We’re not going to have facilities to house them in Poland, so that would be a very long-term construction cost” to move them.

It would also be expensive to move those troops, their families and equipment back to the U.S., given there likely isn’t available housing for them.

U.S. forces based in Germany are critical to Washington’s global military posture and nuclear deterrence. American air bases can route troops through the Middle East and Africa, U.S. military hospitals, and massive training ranges that host exercises for U.S. and NATO forces.

Previous threats to withdraw forces from Europe drew fire from congressional Republicans. But senior GOP lawmakers on Thursday were still cautious about Trump’s latest broadsides.

“We need to hear more about the strategy behind this,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Ramstein is a strategic, important base, so I’d have to hear more about pulling troops out of there. Maybe we need to redistribute some personnel.”

Defense legislation that became law in December bars the Pentagon from reducing total troop levels on the continent below 76,000 until it assesses the risks and certifies doing so is in U.S. security interests. Germany had appeared “pretty safe” from Trump’s threats to punish NATO nations “because it’s stepping up on a bunch of things” related to European defense, said a second congressional aide.

As recently as last week, Pentagon officials praised Germany’s efforts to boost its defense, including plans to increase defense spending to 3.7 percent of GDP by 2030. Germany will also host the first European manufacturing plants for the Patriot air defense systems, and plans to boost production of Stinger missiles and 155mm artillery. The country has even embedded a senior U.S. military official deep in its own command structures.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he didn’t think U.S. policy in Europe had shifted.

The president “was responding back to some comments made, I suspect, by some German officials,” said Rounds, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’m looking more at his actual actions, as opposed to the comments he’s making in the public.”