A Very Subdued White House Has a Warning For Its Allies

For 48 hours, Stephen Miller did not tweet. His last message — “get to the polls and protect the ones you love” — lingered on top of his timeline, which, on most other days, produces a steady stream of anti-immigrant vitriol.

President Donald Trump since the election has been restrained, almost meek. He has reverted to a kind of pre-presidency state, talking with great affection about construction projects and renovations while occasionally providing color commentary on national politics as if he is not at all involved.

The DOJ, which lobbed a blitz of litigation at blue states, election officials, and individual Democrats in the run-up to and on Election Day, has similarly slowed its roll. When Republicans gave a hint that they would seek a legal fight over the outcome of Mississippi’s Senate election — where Democrat Scott Colom has a real chance of winning — the letter came from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, not the DOJ.

But the White House is not totally defanged. As allies began to break with Trump, debating in scathing public statements whether the election results were because the administration was either too MAGA or not MAGA enough, the White House Office of Public Liaison had an ominous message for the conservative interest groups with which it works: We are watching you.

“As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations,” a memo, sent to more than 3,000 conservative organizations, said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The White House insisted to the Journal that this kind of language was normal in these memos, but the Journal could not find another example of it.

A little after 7 p.m. ET last night, Miller began to find his voice again. He did not acknowledge the events of the preceding 48 hours. The topic that lured him back to X? California Gov. Gavin Newsom commuting the sentences of 548 people on death row. “Newsom gave clemency to these monsters,” he posted, boosting a tweet calling for their execution.

Pete Hegseth is, For Now, Not Senate-Bound

• As he faces an impeachment vote in the House, rumors have swirled that Pete Hegseth might attempt a soft landing in the Senate, where someone will need to fill Marsha Blackburn’s (R-TN) seat when she becomes Tennessee Governor in January. Blackburn will have the chance to appoint her own replacement.
• But Pete Hegseth is not currently being considered for the seat, the AP and the Washington Post report. The Washington Post wrote that Blackburn is not considering Hegseth, citing “a Republican operative in Tennessee with ties to Blackburn.”
• Pete Hegseth posted a defiant statement on social media after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) warned he would begin his impeachment push next week. Massie shot back on X, encouraging the president to boot Hegseth: “If Trump’s going to replace appointees like Hegseth, he should do it while he can still get the replacements confirmed in the Senate. My Hegseth impeachment resolution is a much gentler version of what’s coming when Dem’s control Congress. They’ll have hearings & trials.”
• “There is one contingency in which I won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns,” Massie also said.

Tabs

• Elizabeth Warren will become chair of the Senate Banking Committee, to the dismay of big banks and the crypto industry alike, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Paul LePage, Maine’s volatile former governor who has accurately decribed his politics as “Trump before Trump,” will return to politics as a member of Congress.

Man of the Hour

It’s New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who has some things to get off his chest.

Of Elise Stefanik, he had this to say.

And of the very weird candidate who seems to — but may not yet have — won her district.

Are We at War?

We are not just at war, we are conducting an “occupation.”

Trump: “Somebody else called me, they say, ‘It’s an occupation.’ It is, virtually, an occupation.”