Trio of incumbents, toppled

Presented by The American Petroleum Institute (API)

With an assist from Andrew Desiderio in Madrid, Spain

THAT'S ALL, FOLKSRepublican Reps. Steven Palazzo (Miss.) and Rodney Davis (Ill.) lost, as did Democratic Rep. Marie Newman (Ill.). 

Mississippi 4: Palazzo lost his seat Tuesday in a primary runoff against Jackson County sheriff Mike Ezell after facing scrutiny from the House Ethics Committee for allegedly spending campaign money on personal expenses, having staff do personal errands and perform campaign-related tasks and misusing his elected role to boost his brother’s Naval career. More from Myah Ward.

Member-on-member madness: Davis and Newman were both ousted by House colleagues, matchups made due to redistricting after the 2020 census.

Illinois 15: Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), a freshman firebrand, beat five-term Rep. Rodney Davis in Illinois’ 15th District. Miller started her career in the House apologizing for praising Adolf Hitler and voting against certifying election results for Joe Biden. Davis was hoping to clinch another term, and the House Administration gavel in order to launch investigations into the Jan. 6 committee’s conduct. (Nickelback may have just lost their biggest fan on Capitol Hill – Davis was a vocal defender of the oft-mocked Canadian rock band.) More from Joseph Gideon.

Of note: Davis voted in favor of establishing a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission to investigate the insurrection at the Capitol. Four out of five Republicans who backed that effort and were on the ballot Tuesday survived, with the exception of Davis. Reps. Blake Moore (R-Utah), John Curtis (R-Utah), Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Michael Guest (R-Miss.) all got renominated.

Illinois 6: Illinois Two-term Democrat Rep. Sean Casten defeated fellow incumbent Rep. Marie Newman for their party’s nomination in the 6th District. Casten flipped a battleground seat from red to blue in 2018, which helped build his profile (and fundraising chops.) Newman is facing a House ethics probe looking into whether she promised to hire a political rival in exchange for his support. More from Myah Ward.

Catch up on results:Trump made 17 endorsements in recent primaries. Here are the winners, from Marissa Martinez; 3 House incumbents lose as primary challenges flood the map, from Zach Montellaro

LEE v MCMULLIN: Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) primary race Tuesday was omitted from our preview, but the incumbent beat out former state lawmaker Becky Edwards and political operative Ally Isom. He will face independent Evan McMullin in the general election in November.

GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Wednesday, June 29, where recess is hardly feeling like recess at all.


SURPRISE HEARING DELIVERS SHOCKS — When the Jan. 6 select committee hurriedly scheduled a new hearing, with a witness whose name was broadly unknown by most of the public, it took a bit of a gamble. But Cassidy Hutchinson, the 25-year-old former right hand of ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows delivered. She provided stunning testimony of what President Donald Trump’s inner circle was up to in the days and hours leading up to the attack on the Capitol and key conversations about the known potential for violence.

Kyle and Nicholas dissect how her testimony ““stitched together every element of the panel’s case against Donald Trump” How the Jan. 6 panel’s star witness drew a roadmap for Trump’s culpability

Armed and dangerous: Hutchinson told the panel that Trump was concerned with empty space on the Ellipse during the Stop The Steal rally and that he wanted the crowd outside the secure perimeter to be let in, despite being armed with handguns and AR-15s.

“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons; they’re not here to hurt me ,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson. “Take the fucking [magnetometers] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here, let the people in and take the mags away.”

Mike deserves it: She also told the panel about a conversation between White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Meadows about the rioters’ chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence. Cipollone urged Meadows that the White House needed to “do something more” to stop the mayhem. Meadows responded: “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it.” per Hutchinson. “He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

Hill Connections: Huchinson personally appealed to Meadows to act, urging him to call his close friend Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), as the rioters approached the Capitol. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called her to vent about Trump’s rally speech on Jan. 6.

NATO TENSION — Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) has been pushing for years to create a Center for Democratic Resilience within NATO that would help advise countries on best practices for maintaining and building a democracy. And Connolly, as president of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, has made lots of headway: 29 out of the current 30 NATO members support his effort. The lone holdout? Hungary, he tells Andrew at the NATO Summit in Madrid. NATO is kind of like the Senate in that unanimous consent is often crucial. As long as Hungary continues to block the creation of a Center for Democratic Resilience, it won’t get done.

Connolly pleaded with Hungarian officials to harken back to their own roots, in particular the 1956 revolution in which there were mass protests over Soviet influence. Hungary’s resistance isn’t surprising, though, and its anti-democratic slide under Viktor Orbán has been well-documented. “With the horror we’re witnessing in Ukraine, how could you not want to build democratic architecture within NATO to counter what we are experiencing in Ukraine?” Connolly told Andrew at the summit. “You can’t argue the two aren’t related. Of course they’re related. What do you think Putin is fighting against?”

MORE FROM MADRID: Ukraine wants to win today, the West is looking at 2023

NO PRISON FOR FORTENBERRYFormer Nebraska Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry will not face prison time for his three felony convictions. He was sentenced Tuesday to two years’ probation for two counts of lying to the FBI and one count of trying to mislead investigators who were looking into tens of thousands of dollars in illegal foreign contributions to his 2016 campaign. The prosecution had asked that Fortenberry serve six months in federal prison. The former lawmaker is required to pay a $25,000 fine, plus a mandatory special assessment fee of $300 and complete 320 hours of community service. Fortenberry said he will appeal.

APPROPS UPDATE — House Appropriators are chugging along through this committee work week. Yesterday they voted 32-24 to approve the 2023 Energy-Water bill in full committee and 31-24 to advance the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. Today the committee takes up the Interior-Environment and State-Foreign Operations bills and tomorrow Transportation-HUD and Labor-HHS-Education are on the agenda.

George Cahlink at E&E News has a roundup of earmarks in the Energy-Water bill. Peter Cohn and Herb Jackson from CQ Roll Call found that Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) racked up $287.5 million in earmarks across all the House-drafted spending bills this cycle.


QUICK LINKS 

Pelosi receives Communion in Vatican amid abortion debate, from The Associated Press

The Supreme Court has delayed creating a majority Black voting district in Louisiana, from Hansi Lo Wang at NPR

Pelosi names Sesha Joi Moon to head House diversity office, from Michael Paul Williams at the Richmond Times Dispatch

Current, former Hill staffers say centralized authority needed to modernize Congress, from Amelia Brust at Federal News Network

The top House security official has his sights on a safer Capitol. It’s a big task, from Chris Cioffi at CQ Roll Call

TRANSITIONS 

Lauren Brown is now scheduling assistant/assistant to the chief of staff for Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). She most recently was a congressional intern for Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) and is a graduate of UC San Diego.


TODAY IN CONGRESS

The House and Senate are both out.

AROUND THE HILL

Noon The House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing on “Inequality, Homeownership, and the Long-Term Impacts of the Hot Housing Market” (virtual).

2 p.m. House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship holds a hearing on immigrant military members and veterans (virtual).

TRIVIA


TUESDAY’S WINNER: Bernie Sanders’ 1987 album of covers included Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” and classic freedom songs including “Oh, Freedom” and “We Shall Overcome.”

TODAY’S QUESTION: This barbershop quartet of which four Republican senators was formed in 1995 and disbanded five years later when one lost reelection and another switched parties?

The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Huddle. Send your answers to [email protected]

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Follow Katherine on Twitter @ktullymcmanus