GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Thursday, May 25, where a long weekend launches in the House… unless you’re a negotiator. ONE FISH, TWO FISH, NEW FISH, BLUE FISH —Your Huddle hosts spoke exclusively and extensively with the three co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition — Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine.), Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) — about what they’re hoping to achieve as the group who tends to vote independently of the Democratic leadership. First things first: “Blue Dogs aren't centrists. If we could banish the term ‘centrist’ from the political vocabulary, we absolutely would,” Golden said. Golden was previously a co-chair of the group alongside Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who left the role. Petola and Gluesenkamp Perez are now co-chairs with Golden, with Gluesenkamp Perez officially joining the group Wednesday. Try, edgy? “Some people might even describe it as edgy sometimes,” Golden said, because of the rare frankness that the trio brings to Washington. “But I think it's really important to be genuine and real and honest, and that’s something I think all three of us have as a strength in this place.” The cure: “We believe that Blue Dogs are really the antidote to the poison of fascism and and extremism — like, we are not just about taking out the easy,” Gluesenkamp Perez told your Huddle hosts. “We all ran and won in Trump districts. Some of us took out some pretty gnarly opponents.” She added: “The antidote to that extremism is people that know and care deeply about their community. It's not more partisanship.” On the debt limit: Golden said that despite the fact that the group sent a letter to Biden to negotiate on the debt limit in February — months ago — he added, “it's not helpful or constructive to sit here and pick the negotiators about what they could have or should have done.” But he said the group wants to see a deal with Republicans before announcing whether they’d support it. While they aren’t positioning themselves to be critical dealmakers on this issue, Golden says the group wants to be “positive contributors to the outcome here,” noting that, “By the way, a lot of people I think, aren’t playing that role.” Golden said he’s in touch with most of the folks in the room and at the table for negotiations, both on the White House side and Republicans. Fish caucus within a caucus: Peltola noted an important constituency that the three co-chairs share: fishermen. “It's important for Blue Dogs to be including fishermen as part of the blue collar real world economy in America and real world households, and I'm just excited to be part of, like, a fish caucus within the Blue Dog caucus,” Petola said. On the upcoming farm bill: Gluesenkamp Perez has been hosting Farm Bill listening sessions and has a key takeaway: “What I'm hearing from my farmers and producers in those meetings is … these folks are not clamoring to cut food benefits. What they are talking about are fundamentally antitrust issues.” They want to be able to fix their own equipment and get their milk to market. “The Republicans can't stop talking about banning books. Like, fix something. It's enraging to me that the things that are crushing our farms and our producers have become — they're just crumbs, the amount of attention they get,” she said. On leadership: Golden said voters and lawmakers should be more skeptical of what the establishment says is good for them. “When you have the president of United States, no matter who it is, and the entire political establishment, the leader of every party, standing together on stage and saying, this is going to be good for you, it should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little bit, and you want to maybe look into the details,” Golden said. Just for fun: “I think we are the only people in Congress that can run and fix a chainsaw,” Gluesenkamp Perez mused before Peltola jumped in: “Chainsaws are not my friend.” FIRST IN HUDDLE: STATE OF SLOTKIN — Rep. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) bid to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is picking up endorsements from a slate of fourteen unions, including the Michigan Building Trades Council, the Michigan Pipe Trades Association, the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) and the Michigan State Conference of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The union support, confirmed by Slotkin’s campaign, could help bolster Slotkin’s odds in Michigan, which has long been a labor bastion. “We’re proud to stand with Elissa and look forward to working with her when she’s Michigan’s next U.S. Senator,” said Price Dobernick of the Michigan Pipe Trades Association. COMER CONTEMPT WATCH — Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) is upping his pressure campaign to get FBI Director Christopher Wray to hand over a document Republicans have linked to an “alleged criminal scheme” involving then Vice President Joe Biden. Comer, in a letter to Wray, warned that he has until May 30 to respond to the subpoena. If the FBI doesn’t produce the document by then, the Kentucky Republican is threatening contempt of Congress proceedings. (Comer said on Fox News last night that he is meeting with Wray next week, but keeping the contempt deadline.) Comer issued a subpoena earlier this month for a FD-1023 form — the formal term for records that describe conversations with a confidential human source — from June 2020 that included the word “Biden.” In his letter Wednesday, Comer provided an additional search term, “five million.” He also narrowed the date to June 30, 2020.
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