Coalition to Strengthen America's Healthcare

Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, emailing you from Milken at the Beverly Hilton. This year’s theme is “Toward a Flourishing Future,” a somewhat discordant message given the volatility in the economy and the palpable anxiety among many of the major investors and firms in attendance. Milken, of course, is also a one-stop shop for politicians to speed-date business eminences and potential donors, thousands of whom fly into L.A. for the four-day event. I’ve only seen Sen. Ted Cruz here, but I’d bet there were many more lawmakers here yesterday, before they had to jet back to Washington for votes this evening. I’ll have a lot more on the conference below, but if you’re attending, be sure to stop by my panel discussion tomorrow. It’s titled “Future of a Free Press,” and you won’t want to miss it. In tonight’s email, my partner Abby Livingston has the latest on the news that A.O.C. is withdrawing from consideration in the race to lead House Oversight after Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly announced he would step aside as ranking member—opening the door for Jasmine Crockett, Ro Khanna, Stephen Lynch, and a bunch of others. But first…

Bessent pitches Milken crowd on the Trump economy: Several Trump officials have been working the crowd at the Milken conference, trying to assure the big money circulating around the Beverly Hilton that the administration is playing 3D chess, not Russian roulette, with the U.S. economy. In a private cocktail event in Beverly Hills last night with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the chatter naturally turned to Trump’s grand plan for tariffs, and he was reminded of the importance of stability, one of the attendees told me. Bessent said Trump “loves chaos” and “plays the game of Crazy Ivan,” referring to the dangerous submarine maneuver. Bessent often invokes his belief in game theory to describe Trump’s unpredictability, defending it as a strategy for “maximum leverage.”At Bessent’s public remarks on Monday morning, the crowd spilled out of the ballroom and into two large overflow rooms. The Treasury secretary is typically a stilted and uninspiring speaker, but the crowd hung on his every word. “The real idea is to make sure that innovators can innovate and steelworkers can have the same quality of life and opportunity,” Bessent said. He didn’t announce any trade deals, as some hoped, but assured attendees that tariffs, low taxes, and deregulation would lead to major growth—an argument he also made in The Wall Street Journal yesterday.In a subsequent conversation with Michael Milken, Bessent explained that the administration’s goal is to decrease the budget deficit by 1 percent per year until the end of Trump’s term to reallocate public sector spending. “So we’re decreasing the government in the economy. At the same time, we are rightsizing government spending and government employment. And then, on the other side, through financial deregulation, we’re leveraging the private sector,” he said. “And then the excess employment that was shared with the government economy can go to the private sector.” The panelists who spoke after Bessent—including Jenny Johnson, president and C.E.O. of Franklin Templeton; Harvey Schwartz, C.E.O. of Carlyle; and Jane Fraser, C.E.O. of Citigroup—were less optimistic about the state of the economy, investment in the U.S., and how global patterns and economic alliances are shifting. But Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, deputy group C.E.O. of Mubadala Investment Company, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, was enthusiastic about investing in the U.S., saying that it’s still the best place to do business. The Trump family, of course, is intertwined in many investments with the U.A.E., including in crypto. Meanwhile, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called for private investment into C.M.S. to help streamline the systems. “It’s why I came to this conference. The U.S. government, C.M.S., is open for business. We’re going to ask you to help us build a better structure with tools that are better built by you than us, that will allow individuals to get better-quality care,” he said, after reassuring the crowd that Medicare and Medicaid services wouldn’t be cut. We’ll see.

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Medicaid helps keep more than 30 million children healthy, covering regular checkups and more.

Kemp chaos: Senate Republicans received a major blow to their effort to win back a Georgia Senate seat—their top pickup opportunity this election cycle—when the state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, announced today that he would not run for the office. Kemp declined despite an aggressive recruitment campaign from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Sen. Tim Scott, who boasted in January that Kemp was their “number one” recruit. Kemp’s second and final term as governor ends in 2027, and there has been speculation that he is open to a presidential run.Republicans are now scrambling to find a solid candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a midterm election that’s expected to favor Democrats, given that voters often course-correct in the first midterm of a presidential year. Ossoff, who is running for his second term, is a prolific fundraiser—he pulled in $11 million in the first quarter—but Republicans insist he is weak and beatable, and are still optimistic that they can find a competitive candidate. Meanwhile, Republicans are worried that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who could potentially win a primary, could not win a general election in the state.

And now, here’s Abby…

All the Oversight We Cannot See

Gerry Connolly’s looming retirement from Oversight has once again set off a leadership scramble: A.O.C. may be out, for now, but the dam has broken for a House Democratic caucus riven by generational change.

Abby Livingston

On Friday, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett may have set off yet another generational conflict among Democrats when she announced that she’d run to lead her party on the Hill’s most political committee: House Oversight. “If given an opportunity to lead, I am ready to go on day one,” she told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now pouring cold water on the idea of running again, that opportunity seems more open than ever. The Oversight race, which kicked into gear last week after outgoing ranking member Gerry Connolly announced the tragic return of his cancer, is doubly important because Democrats anticipate recapturing the House in 2026. At that point, their leader on Oversight will be invested with real power: the ability to subpoena just about anyone. But the logistics of choosing Connolly’s successor are complicated for a number of sensitive reasons. For one, nobody knows when the race for Oversight ranking will actually take place, or who’s serious about running, beyond Crockett and interim ranking member Stephen Lynch. “It may be next term before that post opens,” Crockett mused on Friday. Connolly, for his part, said he would “step back” from the position “soon,” and that this would be his last term in Congress, but otherwise offered no specifics about timing. Members currently expect that the internal election to succeed Connolly could be punted until after the 2026 midterms. But the health factor here is unpredictable: Should Connolly vacate Congress before the end of this term, it will mean a mid-cycle leadership race.

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Medicaid helps keep more than 30 million children healthy, covering emergency room visits and more.

In any case, Crockett planted her flag early. Her assertiveness has paid dividends before: The decision to challenge Debbie Dingell for a leadership post last year, while unsuccessful, made her ambitions clear. As a trial lawyer, she has an expert handle on Robert’s Rules, the manual of parliamentary procedure that governs the House. Moreover, she’s a prolific donor to both the D.C.C.C. and colleagues, and had outraised many of her fellow members while still a freshman. On the other hand, Crockett is perhaps the most… bombastic Democrat on the Hill, and there are worries that for every viral win, there could also be cringe moments, like when she referred to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a paraplegic, as “Governor Hot Wheels.” (She denied she was referring to his wheelchair.) Among Democratic members and staffers focused on trying to win back the House, she may be too progressive, and she’s made herself a lightning rod for conservative outrage—saying Elon Musk should “fuck off” and suggesting that Ted Cruz “has to be knocked over the head, like, hard.” Democrats will want a fighter in the Oversight role, but they also want to expand their appeal to voters who swung to the right in the past election. They might need to look elsewhere for candidates who fulfill both mandates.

The A.O.C. Factor

As much as Crockett has been open about her plans, A.O.C. seems to be closing the door. Over the past week, I heard several moderate members and staffers warm up to the idea of A.O.C. leading Oversight despite the fact that she left it for Energy and Commerce after losing the ranking gig to Connolly late last year. On Monday, however, she seemed to definitively rule out the possibility of returning, telling NBC News reporter Scott Wong that “the underlying dynamics in the caucus have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as I think would be necessary, and so I believe I’ll be staying put at Energy and Commerce.” Reading between the lines: It sounds like the institutionalist wing is striking back. Ever since Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election, there has been a burning rage within the caucus at the older guard for not passing the torch. Several aging ranking members were forced out of their posts after the election, and more older members are facing what could be viable challenges in their primaries next year. But the seniority issue remained a serious hurdle to A.O.C.’s play for Oversight. As this almost-race gathered steam over the past week, there were fears among some House Dems that the entire seniority system would be obliterated had A.O.C. run as a non-member of the committee. I’ve spoken with several Hill Democrats who weren’t opposed to A.O.C. personally who nonetheless seemed sincerely agitated at the crumbling of certain traditions, beginning last fall, with the ouster of three aging ranking members. Specifically, it bothered them that Angie Craig ascended to the ranking slot on Agriculture despite having only a temporary seat on that committee. Even some of Craig’s biggest fans were uncomfortable with the notion that she skipped the line. An A.O.C. campaign for Oversight would have further eroded precedent.

Presumably, there were other considerations for A.O.C., too. It’s possible that the congresswoman, in advance of her nearly Shermanesque statement, had put out feelers to gauge support for her candidacy, and judged that she wouldn’t have the votes. She would have needed approval from the House Democratic steering committee, and it was not clear she’d get it, given that the steering committee is the space for party institutionalists. It also includes the other ranking members—Democrats who got their leadership posts mostly by waiting their turn. Regardless, there will be disappointed Democrats on the Hill—and not just coming out of the progressive wing. Even among more moderate members, there is a sense that Ocasio-Cortez is one of the few House Democrats who’s meeting the moment, and that this was a generational divide, not an ideological struggle. On the other hand, a rising A.O.C. scares the daylights out of some more-vulnerable Democrats. “We are trying to win back the majority. And some members will be cautious about elevating anyone to chair that could adversely impact those efforts,” a House Democratic member from a red state told me this afternoon. “Now that she is on E&C, which was a big deal, I think it’s unlikely to happen.”

“A Compelling Candidate”

Now that A.O.C. is out, the race is intensifying, and I’m hearing some of the aspirants are already texting colleagues asking for support. The likely contenders include Lynch, who will have the benefit of semi-incumbency as interim ranking member. If the ultimate field ends up crowded by younger members (i.e., Crockett, Robert Garcia, and Maxwell Frost, all three being mere sophomores), Lynch might benefit from the younger guard splitting support within the caucus. Another possibility is California’s Ro Khanna, who is next in line after Lynch in seniority (the more-senior Raja Krishnamoorthi is expected to run for Senate in Illinois). As high-profile of a gig as Oversight would have been, it was always worth considering whether A.O.C. even wanted the job, having already served six years on the committee, where most members spend just a term or two before moving on to more exclusive gigs such as Energy and Commerce. The consensus among members was that while A.O.C. thrived as an Oversight hearing interrogator, she always wanted to land a slot on E&C, which she’d probably have to relinquish if she succeeded Connolly. If she doesn’t ditch the House for a run at the Senate, or even the White House, A.O.C. could someday end up as a very young, very powerful E&C chair, which is a far more coveted job than Oversight leader. One intriguing moment amid the week of speculation: When asked specifically at a news conference earlier today about an A.O.C. run for the committee leadership, Hakeem Jeffries nodded to the uncertainty of the timing, saying, “We’ll see what decisions Gerry Connolly makes moving forward.” He added that, “If there’s a vacancy at some point, which we know there will be based on the fact that Rep. Connolly has said he’s not seeking reelection, then there’ll be a number of strong candidates who will move forward.” A.O.C., he said, “will of course be a very compelling candidate should she make that decision to run.”

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