A Democrat locked in one of the swingiest House races in Michigan isn’t afraid to appear with the president, even as President Joe Biden faces tough approval numbers in the state.

“If the president comes to my district, just like if any president came to my district and invited me, I’ll be there. I think that’s important,” former Michigan state Sen. Curtis Hertel told Inside Congress Wednesday. “And I want to talk to him about the values and what’s important to our district. Obviously I would be happy to.”

Hertel is running to succeed Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in a district that Biden narrowly won in 2020, but with Slotkin’s decision to run for Senate, Republicans see the Lansing-area district as one of their top pickup opportunities this year. Hertel said he is confident he can keep the seat blue, acknowledging voter frustration with both parties but pledging to be “somebody who will listen to them.”

Biden has some ground to make up in the Mitten State, with a Wall Street Journal poll out last night showing him trailing Donald Trump by 3 points. He won the state in 2020, rebuilding Democrats’ so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin after Trump won all three in 2016.

Hertel indicated he wanted to focus on his own race, declining to give any advice to Biden’s campaign on turning around their poll numbers: “I’ve got to focus on my own race here. I know what’s working for us and [it’s] having conversations with voters. … And so I assume it’d work for anybody else.”

Although Democrats won’t have an abortion measure on the ballot to boost turnout like it did in 2022, Hertel believed it will still be a potent issue this election cycle. He said voters could recognize the “potential for Republicans to take control of all branches of government and [pass] a national abortion ban.”

Hertel is aggressively raising money, raking in over $1.3 million last quarter, according to fundraising numbers shared exclusively with Inside Congress, giving him more than $2 million to spend in the coming months. He’s preparing for a matchup with fellow former state Sen. Tom Barrett, a Republican who ran against Slotkin in 2022 in what was one of the nation’s most expensive races that cycle. Barrett had about $650,000 on hand at the beginning of the year.

Trump has put Michigan in the spotlight, traveling to the state Tuesday evening for a campaign appearance in Grand Rapids where he focused on immigration and the recent murder of Ruby Garcia, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant. He falsely claimed to have spoken with her family, drawing pushback from them and Democrats.

“I think in politics, we get so selfish these days, we forget that these people are people. And I just — I just find that to be wrong,” Hertel said. Asked about Trump’s immigration rhetoric, he knocked both parties for not doing more on the border and criticized Trump for helping scuttle a bipartisan border deal earlier this year.

Biden also faces the challenge of winning back Michiganders who opted to cast a protest vote in the state’s primary over his handling of the war in Gaza. More than 100,000 voters opted to vote “uncommitted” in February.

Hertel again emphasized the importance of “conversations” with voters to bring them back into the Biden fold for the general election.

“There’s a lot of pain,” he said. “I think we need to keep having conversations, and I think that conversation is the only thing that actually will solve any of this.”

Rep. Robert Aderholt still isn’t declaring whether he wants to run for the powerful Appropriations Committee chair. Instead, he’s asking his colleagues to delay the election altogether.

The GOP Steering Committee is slated to vote Tuesday on a recommendation to lead the panel. That’s expected to be Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the only person currently running for the post. Aderholt has been weighing a bid to succeed Granger, but hasn’t formally jumped into the race.

The Alabama Republican is the most senior GOP member of the committee, next to outgoing House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas), who announced last month that she’s giving up her gavel early, ahead of a planned retirement at the end of this term.

In a letter to House Republicans on Wednesday, Aderholt pushed his colleagues to focus on reforming a “fundamentally flawed” government funding process before choosing Granger’s successor. Aderholt, who leads the prominent Labor-HHS-Education spending panel, voted against the $1.2 trillion funding package that he helped negotiate last month. He argued that earmarks inserted by Senate Democrats would flow to illegal immigrants and facilities that provide abortion services.

“A change in the appropriations committee leadership … presents a perfect opportunity to change the process,” Aderholt wrote. “Instead of hastily selecting a new Appropriations chair, I believe that now is the time to focus on correcting the process and developing our theory of government on how we will manage our responsibilities.”

After the GOP Steering Committee meets Tuesday to recommend Granger’s successor, the pick then heads to the full Republican conference for a vote.

Cole, who serves as vice chair of the Appropriations Committee and leader of the Transportation-HUD spending panel, already has the endorsement of nearly every other senior Republican appropriator, known as the cardinals. The Oklahoma Republican will likely easily win support from Steering, which tends to favor more establishment candidates for leadership posts.

House Republicans have already sought to make significant changes to the annual appropriations process, with little success. To secure the speakership last year, Kevin McCarthy made a number of promises to his right flank on spending, and conservatives ultimately booted him from the top leadership spot, saying he had failed to uphold his end of the bargain.

A particular point of contention, both for Aderholt now and other conservatives during McCarthy’s speakership race, was congressional leaders’ tendency to pass massive government funding bundles with little to no time to review legislative text. Instead, those lawmakers demanded that both chambers pass each individual spending bill — a total of 12 pieces of legislation.

But both McCarthy’s and Speaker Mike Johnson‘s attempts to do so last year repeatedly hit walls with the right flank, resulting in multiple embarrassing defeats on the House floor due to GOP infighting.

Ultimately, Johnson successfully fought to break up the dozen annual spending bills into two packages, instead of one massive bundle, which cleared Congress late last month before lawmakers broke for a two-week recess.

But all of the bills were essentially negotiated at the same time, often behind closed doors. Conservatives still complained that text was released at the last minute, containing few Republican wins or real spending reductions, leaving little time for review before members were forced to vote. And the right flank still largely voted against both packages.

The campaign of GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert said the Colorado lawmaker went to the hospital after experiencing “severe swelling in her upper left leg” and underwent emergency surgery to remove a blood clot.

Doctors indicated the lawmaker is expected to make a full recovery following the procedure and diagnosed her with May-Thurner syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood flow.

“I’m looking forward to making a full recovery and getting back to Congress to continue fighting for Colorado,” Boebert said in a statement released by her campaign.

Boebert is in the midst of a competitive bid to win a new seat in Colorado after opting to run in the newly open eastern Colorado-based seat once held by former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.).

Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t backing away from her threat to hold a referendum on Mike Johnson that could boot him from the speakership. Nor have the two had much of a conservation about it — yet.

“I haven’t talked to him on the phone one time,” Greene told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon.

“He reached out to me Thursday night before Good Friday and left me a strange voicemail about how he’s traveling all over and he’s exhausted. And no matter how tired he was, he wanted to try to get on the phone with me,” the Georgia Republican said, adding that “I’m like, ‘Why do I want to talk to someone that’s so exhausted?’ That’s not good.”

Greene said Johnson texted her again earlier Tuesday explaining he had a busy schedule and that he wanted to chat Wednesday. Greene, citing her schedule, said she proposed Friday instead. The timing of their conversation still appears unclear.

It’s a chat with extremely high stakes for the House GOP majority. Greene has vowed to force a vote on ending Johnson’s speakership by seeking “privilege” for the resolution she filed on the matter last month. Once she does that, the speaker will have 48 legislative hours in which to act.

And if Greene makes her move after April 19, when Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is set to leave office early, Johnson may be able to only lose one GOP vote if he wants to hang on to his job — assuming full attendance and no Democratic support.

A Johnson spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment on Greene’s summary of their interactions.

One House Republican seemed to hint earlier Tuesday that he shares Greene’s frustrations with Johnson. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) posted on X asking the speaker: “What’s your mission sir?” It was a direct response to Johnson’s suggestion to Fox News on Sunday that Greene’s ouster threat was a “distraction from our mission.”

Despite Massie’s seeming public alignment with Greene, no House Republicans have publicly committed to backing her on a vote to remove Johnson. Greene, for her part, has predicted that pressure on fellow conservatives could build depending on how Johnson handles major votes that are coming up — a potential foreign aid debate, in particular.

Senior Biden health officials on Tuesday briefed congressional committees and leadership, telling them that the risk to the general public from the avian flu remains low.

The call, confirmed by two congressional aides granted anonymity to discuss the confidential briefing, comes a day after the CDC confirmed a dairy worker in Texas tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza. Officials from the FDA, CDC, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and U.S. Department of Agriculture largely repeated publicly available information, according to one of the congressional aides who relayed details of the briefing.

Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on the call that while the health risk to the public is low, people with long exposure to infected birds or livestock may be at greater risk of infection.

It is not clear whether Congress requested the briefing or if the health agencies scheduled the session, but an official said on the call that USDA is setting up a series of standing meetings on Fridays moving forward for congressional agriculture staffers.

Genetic sequencing appears to suggest that wild birds in the Texas panhandle region infected cows, a USDA official said on the call. No human-to-human transmission of the virus has been detected.

The FDA did not comment when asked about the briefing. House and Senate leadership offices, USDA, CDC and ASPR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“The Committee has been closely monitoring this ongoing issue, and there isn’t a single member of the committee who hasn’t expressed concerns about this outbreak,” said Ben Goldey, majority communications director for the House Agriculture Committee. “We appreciate USDA’s ongoing coordination and regular updates and remain confident in USDA and CDC’s assertion that there is no current threat to the food supply.”

Dairy safety, prices: The USDA said on the call that high loads of the virus are being detected in milk and that it is suspected that cow-to-cow transmission may be occurring in milking facilities.

Don Prater, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, confirmed the agency does not have concerns about the safety and availability of pasteurized milk products nationwide because the pasteurization process inactivates bacteria and viruses.

“We do not expect a significant impact on the price of milk and other dairy products,” Prater said on the call.

Marcia Brown and Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.

Northern Virginia Democrats slammed a new House GOP proposal to rename the Washington-area Dulles International Airport after former President Donald Trump.

At issue is a brief two-page proposal, introduced by Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) on March 29 with half a dozen additional GOP co-sponsors, that would rename the facility the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.”

“Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison,” Fairfax-area Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

He wasn’t alone in the criticism. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) recalled the day Trump enacted his executive order barring entry to individuals from certain majority-Muslim countries in 2017 — and that lawmakers went to Dulles to press for legal representation for detainees.

“I also remember Republicans like those who just introduced legislation to rename that airport after Trump hiding and giving mealy mouthed responses when asked about the chaos and suffering Trump’s bigotry caused,” he said in a statement. “They know our airport will never be named after Trump, but that’s not the point — the point is to suck up to their Dear Leader.”

Asked if he had any response to the legislation, an aide to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) replied: “lol.”

The airport, the closest with international flights to the Capitol, is currently named for influential former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, but is routinely derided by area travelers over its customer experience.

Rep. Adrian Smith became the latest House Republican to entertain federally funding the rebuilding of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, but he was not yet willing to commit to the idea.

“I’m willing to take a look at that but there should also be some resources privately — that should be an option as well,” the veteran Nebraska Republican said following a brief pro forma session Tuesday in Washington. “Let’s not just jump to the conclusion of that it has to be a federal answer.”

Smith is just the latest Republican to express hesitation or outright resistance toward using federal dollars to rebuild the bridge and reopen the Port of Baltimore. Maryland officials argue reopening the port, one of the nation’s busiest, and bridge will have stave off rippling economic consequences throughout the country — especially on the East Coast.

The Nebraska Republican acknowledged the potential for supply chain disruptions while the port remains shuttered.

“I also know that when it comes to our ports, we do have some redundancy that I think can be helpful,” he said. “I don’t want to take anything for granted. But I think it’s a reminder that we want to make sure things like this don’t happen again.”

Mitch McConnell plans to keep fighting his party’s “isolationist movement” — even after he steps down as GOP leader.

The Kentucky Republican, who is leading the hawkish wing’s drive to fund Ukraine, said in an interview with WHAS’s Terry Meiners that continuing to push for a brawny national security approach will be a major priority over the rest of his time in the Senate. McConnell’s term ends at the end of 2026, two years after he plans to give up his leadership post, and he said he’ll serve it out in full.

“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party. And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: Are we going to help Ukraine or not?” McConnell said. “I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”

Asked about his divergent view with fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who opposes foreign aid and sending more money to Ukraine to fend off Russia, McConnell said they’ve never agreed on foreign policy and that Paul “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist.” The bigger problem, McConnell added, is that more of his conference is agreeing with Paul’s view; roughly half the Senate Republicans voted for the foreign aid bill and its $60 billion in Ukraine funding.

That means many of his own members are now opting against sending Ukraine money.

“What’s made it more troublesome is, it seems to me, others are heading in that direction, making arguments that are easily refuted. We’re not losing any of our troops, the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting,” McConnell said. “If the Russians take Ukraine, some NATO country would be next and then we will be right in the middle of it.”

The Senate’s Ukraine bill faces an uncertain path in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson said he supports additional funding but may devise his own approach. It doesn’t help that former President Donald Trump is no cheerleader for Ukraine aid, either.

McConnell offered a somewhat tepid endorsement of Trump in March but has generally steered clear of talking about the former president. He did not deviate from that approach on Monday. Asked if he’s spoken to Trump, McConnell said: “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the Senate.”

“Biden’s got problems too. Both these candidates don’t score very well with the public. One of them’s going to win. What am I going to do? I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn my job over to the next majority leader,” McConnell said.

And, of course, make sure Ukraine doesn’t go empty-handed in its defense against Russia.

Speaker Mike Johnson has hit on a new ingredient in his search for a winning formula to muscle long-stalled foreign aid through the House — a task that will require winning over enough fellow Republicans who are skeptical or even against more help for Ukraine.

Johnson’s latest idea: Linking any foreign aid deal to rolling back President Joe Biden’s pause on natural gas exports. If Republicans could claim they’d extracted a concession that undercuts Biden’s climate agenda, the thinking goes, they’d have a rare unifying message heading into the election. Boosting U.S. natural gas exports would also allow the GOP to argue it had achieved direct progress on countering Russia.

Even so, it’s already looking like Johnson won’t make much headway with the loudest corners of his right flank with the gas exports pitch. GOP sources we chatted with acknowledged that getting a win on natural gas would help sweeten the pot — after all, House Republicans passed legislation in February that would have ended Biden’s export pause. But Johnson’s hard-line conservatives are likely to look for more from him to quell their anger over a possible Ukraine vote.

To be clear, no policy details are locked in yet for the House GOP’s Ukraine plan, as Johnson tries to figure out what can gel. But we’ve heard about three problems with the LNG idea so far: 

Gas exports are not a big enough prize to offset having to vote for Ukraine aid for those who are deeply opposed or view it as toxic to the base. A certain level of opposition will be baked into the chaos-driven House GOP conference, but it’s possible that any energy rollback would fail to get traction.
That’s because border security remains the must-tackle issue for many on Johnson’s right, despite their distaste for the Senate’s bipartisan attempt to do just that earlier this year.
To some Republicans, choosing gas exports as a concession looks too much like a personal win for Johnson even though it’s got a direct link to combating Russia, given the boost to energy producers in his home state of Louisiana, versus a genuine win for House Republicans. (Louisiana would definitely benefit; so would other states like Texas and Georgia, among others.) 

“The $1.9-trillion deficit that just passed wasn’t nearly big enough. To spend more, maybe we could secure some other borders instead of our own? Billions for Ukraine, billions for Israel, billions for Taiwan. When Congress gets back next week maybe try harder to bankrupt America faster,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) quipped on X Monday.

It’s not just LNG, of course. Johnson is eyeing other items to make Ukraine aid somewhat more palatable to his members — though, we reiterate, none of this is locked in. They include potentially making part of any new Ukraine aid a “loan” — details are still being worked out, but Republicans have discussed conditions on how additional humanitarian aid is structured, in particular.

Unfortunately, there’s already GOP pushback on that front, too. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), for one, suggested that Johnson’s discussions about restructuring Ukraine money doesn’t address the underlying reticence on his right flank.

“No matter the smoke and mirrors for Ukraine funding — it will perpetuate war with no defined mission and will abandon leverage to secure the border of the United States, unless it doesn’t,” Roy said.

Johnson doesn’t need unity among House Republicans to get Ukraine aid passed, as long as he gets a healthy amount of Democratic buy-in. Trying to unravel elements of Biden’s energy plan puts that Democratic support at risk.

But so far, Democratic leaders aren’t killing the idea. A spokesperson for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Johnson’s broader proposal.

Only nine House Democrats voted for a bill in February that would have overridden Biden and un-paused natural gas exports. Even if Johnson goes narrower with language he tries to add to the foreign aid package, he’ll definitely lose climate hawks who would ordinarily be staunch supporters of Ukraine, think Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who’ve made addressing climate change a focus of their tenures in Washington.

Huffman called the potential inclusion of LNG provisions “absurd” in an interview with POLITICO.

“The only thing it really shows is that Mike Johnson cares a lot more about LNG than he does Ukraine,” the California Democrat said, adding of Johnson: “He’s been flailing for some time now. … It’s certainly not something that takes us closer to a solution.”

That’s how Casten sees the situation as well. Though members from both parties wondered Monday if Johnson’s idea was fully baked or if he was just testing the waters.

“Why would you even put this in there? You’re not doing it to gain Democrats. Maybe you’re doing it because you’re afraid of Marjorie Taylor Greene and, if that’s the case, get the hell out of the leadership role,” Casten said in a Monday interview.

Indeed, the volume of GOP complaints he gets on Ukraine aid could have ramifications for another fight Johnson is navigating — the threatened ouster vote that the Georgia firebrand Greene teed up last month.

Johnson’s allies are largely downplaying Greene, but he can’t afford to dismiss her gambit given his shrinking majority. While the two have exchanged texts over the break and are expected to speak early next week, Greene blasted Johnson’s latest Ukraine aid comments on Monday.

Importantly, Johnson flirted with the natural gas exports idea during a Fox News interview on Sunday, but he’s been light enough on the specifics of his Ukraine strategy that he may yet look at another aspect of Biden’s energy agenda. The same goes for any conditions on the Ukraine funds.

Asked for additional details on Monday, Johnson’s office referred back to his Fox News interview.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who represents the area where Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge stood, said he spoke over the weekend with Speaker Mike Johnson and senior House appropriator Tom Cole as he seeks to rally support for federal funding to rebuild the bridge and reopen the Port of Baltimore.

“This is not, nor should it be, a partisan issue,” Mfume (D-Md.) said at a press conference alongside Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. Mfume added that, in talking to Cole (R-Okla.) — a frontrunner to lead the Appropriations Committee — he got a sense of “how dedicated he is and will be to making sure that this is taken care of.”

On Republicans who expressed skepticism toward congressional funding for rebuilding the bridge, Mfume said: “Petty minds have petty thoughts. The larger base of Americans realize how valuable this port is to the national economy and to supply chains.”

All Maryland officials stressed the reconstruction phase for the bridge would be lengthy, and that they’re still in the opening stages of removing debris following the collapse of the bridge.

The White House said earlier Monday that President Joe Biden would visit the scene of the collapse later this week.