Good afternoon, Press Pass readers. Congress is back in session after a week out of town. Keep your eye on the machine as it gets back up to speed by upgrading your subscription to Bulwark+. You’ll immediately get access to everything we publish plus ad-free podcasts and the occasional extra, secret content. Sign up at the link below. Today’s edition opens with a quick status check on a key promise that Pete Hegseth made to get a skeptical GOP Senator’s confirmation vote. We'll then take a look at the Republican budget now making its way through the Senate after passing the House last month. A lot of components are up in the air, and cutting Medicaid remains the foremost issue—just not in the way you might think. Finally, it’s TACO Tuesday, so we have a tariff story. It’s about one of Melania Trump’s old nemeses visiting the White House to make the case that tariffs are hurting the fashion industry. All that and more, below. It Sure Looks Like Pete Hegseth Misled Joni ErnstPlus: What’s the Vogue editor doing in the White House?
The Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense in January after a rocky nomination process. The former Fox host’s long list of alleged wrongdoings and improprieties, including accusations of sexual abuse and heavy drinking, didn’t seem to bother too many Republicans. But there were a few who did show concern. In the end, Hegseth managed to win them over, and one of his tactics for doing so was to promise one particularly concerned Republican—Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)—that after assuming his new role, he would appoint a “senior official dedicated to sexual assault prevention.” You can see the moment he made the promise right here. Ernst, clearly reading prepared remarks, asks him if he will make such an appointment. Hegseth responds by relaying that the two had discussed the matter privately and that, indeed, he will. But nearly six months into the job, it appears that Hegseth has made no such appointment. Staffers for Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have yet to hear any update about this promised appointment. And the Department of Defense’s website makes no mention of it, at least on the page where it puts out its public announcements. We reviewed the 143 press releases issued by DOD since Hegseth was confirmed on January 24, 2025. Two of them mention sexual assault: One announced the release of the DOD “Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies,” and the other put out the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) annual report last month. That report showed a slight decrease in reported assaults from FY2023 to 2024, with the caveat that DOD “cannot fully interpret the above decrease because no prevalence survey was administered during Fiscal Year 2024.” The next prevalence survey is slated for FY2025. “As Secretary Hegseth has observed, ‘the strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose,’” said Tim Dill, a DOD employee performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, upon the report’s release. “The Department owes our Service members a workplace with high standards and an environment that fosters trust, collaboration, and results. This report underscores the Department’s continuing commitment to reducing harmful behaviors and countering sexual assault to help shape the ready, lethal fighting force required to achieve peace through strength.” We similarly sifted through nearly 230 posts that the Department of Defense put up under the “News Stories” banner on its website since Hegseth’s confirmation. Just one mentioned sexual assault (again to spotlight the SAPRO report). A DOD spokesperson did not return a request for comment. But the department has been engaging on some other, primarily cultural, fronts even as it appears to be taking its time fulfilling that promise to Ernst. The Pentagon has launched a review of “the Department’s Military Educational Institution Library Collections.” It has provided remedial steps for “service members and veterans negatively impacted by the Department’s previous coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine mandate.” It has warned against gender dysphoria, instructed employees to participate in Elon Musk’s “five things you did at work” email program, warned against illegal immigration in Ireland, and announced it had scrapped its social science research portfolio. Ernst, who is in a bit of a self-created media firestorm at the moment, was not readily available for comment. Her spokesperson did not return a request for comment. The Senate cutting floorSen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is the lawmaker to watch for those wondering whether Medicaid will end up getting cut in the final version of the Republican budget. While the version that passed the House would slash Medicaid coverage from millions of Americans, it is now in the Senate’s hands, where it will be modified. And Hawley, more than any Republican, has been adamant that benefits can’t be cut. “Just had a great talk with President Trump about the Big, Beautiful Bill,” Hawley posted on X Monday. “He said again, NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS.” And yet, there remains confusion. After all, Hawley’s statement is similar to comments Trump made to House Republicans just before they brought the budget to the floor. The president reportedly told them, “Don’t fuck with Medicaid.” But Republicans interpreted his words to mean that they should indeed continue fucking with Medicaid, provided they’re smart about what sort of fucking-with they can do. “No Medicaid benefit cuts,” Hawley told reporters. “He was unequivocal. No Medicaid benefit cuts.” Hawley continued in a more speculative register, musing that “if rural hospitals close [because of the budget’s health care changes], I mean, what’s the difference between that and a benefit cut?” What, indeed. But Hawley didn’t keep the question open for long: He added that he is “fine with the work requirements” for Medicaid eligibility, but he is trying to make sure that individuals who cannot work because of disability, or perhaps who are working and still cannot afford insurance (and do not receive it from their employer), are not excluded from the program. In short, cutting Medicaid eligibility is not the same as cutting Medicaid benefits. It’s probably best to avoid using the word “cut” at all. (Try to move along quickly if it accidentally slips out.) Throughout the budget process, the intra-Republican debate over cutting Medicaid has been about what the party can get away with rhetorically and politically. Work requirements that will result in millions losing coverage—a group that will include employed Americans slipping through the cracks—have been given the stamp of approval through aggressive GOP messaging and polling operations. What others would call “cuts” are instead framed as “integrity” and “accountability” measures to keep undeserving people (undocumented immigrants, fraudsters, etc.) off the country’s shrinking dole. As the budget debate unfolds in the Senate, it’s important to keep this decoder key in hand to know what’s really being discussed when Medicaid is being debated. Taco TuesdayThe seemingly never-ending tariff rollercoaster is showing no signs of slowing down. It’s even prompting some unlikely guests to visit the White House. Last week, Vogue editor Anna Wintour and fashion industry leaders met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to plead for lenience on tariffs and express concern about the administration's constant policy changes, which have set the half-a-trillion-dollar fashion and clothing industry reeling. Wintour’s visit is notable because the powerful (Democrat-backing) editor has famously not offered First Lady Melania Trump a Vogue cover feature, a snub that has irked both the Trumps and their conservative media allies. But Trump is less interested in reshoring fashion to the U.S. than other industries. Aboard Air Force One last week, he said, “I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships.” This prompts the question: why is Trump so determined to place tariffs on all goods, including clothing, if he doesn’t want to bring all of those industries back to the United States? But as Trump continues his nineteenth-century trade policy conquest, nearly every industry is in a state of panic, leading to massive spending sprees at Washington’s top lobbying firms, hiring and expansion slowdowns, and rising prices. When a trade court blocked most of the administration’s tariffs last week, Trump lashed out, including at his longtime judicial farm team, the Federalist Society.¹ The tariffs have since been blocked a second time by a district judge (but only from affecting two companies that brought a lawsuit against the administration), and restored pending the administration’s appeal of the more general trade court decision. Reflecting on the chaos, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Monday that keeping trade policy in Congress’s hands would add a level of “permanence.” However, Tillis stopped short of calling the rulings right or wrong, noting that he’s not a lawyer. “There’s been the discussion of Congress being involved in trade that I think is pretty important, because we’ve gotta be able to send a message of permanence,” he said. “That’s important, what the president is trying to do, but it’s gotta fit constitutional and legal [parameters].” 1 I have yet to find a Republican senator willing to discuss Trump’s statement that the Federalist Society–aligned judges who were involved in this ruling and others against the administration “were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.” I’ll keep asking. Someone has to answer eventually, right? 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