Before the main event, here’s Dylan Byers on the latest news emanating from the Mark Thompson
administration at CNN…

On Thursday, about 15 months into his tenure—two months longer than his
predecessor, Chris Licht, lasted—CNN chairman and C.E.O. Mark Thompson unveiled a number of changes intended to advance the network along its tortured progression from 45-year-old cable news channel to its end goal of being a thriving, multiplatform digital enterprise. Most notably, he previewed the launch of a new, subscription-supported streaming service; hinted at unspecified subscription lifestyle products; and stressed the need to transform
the clunky CNN website and app into “a modern and premium video-driven experience.” These efforts, fueled by a $70 million investment from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, marked the first step in the unit’s plan to reach $1 billion in digital revenue by 2030. One can only assume that, by then, $1 billion would more or less cover over the business’s expected losses in linear revenue.

Finally, as
previewed here back in November, Thompson announced that CNN would lay off about 6 percent of its workforce—some 200-plus people, mostly those in off-camera TV production roles and lesser-known editorial services. (One notable exception was the inclusion of Marcus Mabry, senior vice president of digital editorial and programming.) Thompson noted that CNN plans to fill at least 100 new posts on the digital side in the coming months.

On some level, this all feels like Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower. Three years ago—before Jeff Zucker’s dramatic ouster, the WBD takeover, and the Licht era—CNN also announced new investments in digital products and tech talent, shifted resources from linear to digital, and launched a direct-to-consumer streaming service focused on news and lifestyle content. Had history gone
differently, CNN might already have a global D.T.C. service with at least a couple million subscribers. (Yes, the ill-fated and undermined CNN+ is a Rorschach test for media people; some saw it as a harbinger of a larger strategy, while others viewed it as a reincarnation of Quibi.) 

In any event, Thompson is moving things in the right direction again, albeit from a far less
advantageous position. In 2022, CNN was still a formidable player in news media, with cultural market share, a clear editorial mission, and more than $1 billion in annual profits. As last week’s milquetoast Trump inauguration broadcast reminded us, that is decidedly no longer the case. So, too, the fact that CNN’s audience for the event was down more than 80 percent from four years ago.

[Read the whole thing here.]

Ok, now on to the main event…

It hasn’t even been a week, and there’s a sense of euphoria among Republicans on Capitol
Hill that no one has seen in a long time—perhaps since the first months of George W. Bush’s presidency—with MAGA-hatted tourists making their way around the chamber and a half-trillionaire doing the president’s advance work. The G.O.P., of course, controlled Congress and the White House during the first two years of Trump’s first term, but this time it’s different. After years of being bullied and stymied, Republicans are firmly behind their leader, the
Democrats are in a state of near-universal bewilderment, and there’s a very real sense that the rank and file are in line and things are going to happen. 

To wit: Only 10 months ago, Joe Biden mispronounced the name of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was brutally murdered by an illegal Venezuelan immigrant. And he only mentioned her by
name after significant pressure from rabble-rousing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now, Republicans are gloating that they’ll soon send the Laken Riley Act, which would require the detention of illegal immigrants charged with a crime, to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. (They’re even relying on the support of a few Democrats.) Meanwhile, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, neither of whom voted for Trump nor like him very
much, attended a pre-inauguration breakfast with Trump at the Blair House last week—a sign to their colleagues that things are much different than eight years ago, when some Republicans could barely utter his name. 

Trump’s new team also understands the nuances of Washington better than their predecessors, and the president, himself, is evidently more comfortable and secure on account of his significant popular vote
victory. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, his top policy aide, have been in constant contact with lawmakers, both individually and in group briefings, preparing them for the blitzkrieg of agenda topics to come. Notably, even the centrist House Republicans are championing Trump. The Main Street Caucus, made up of ideologically lenient, small-business-focused House Republicans, are 100 percent behind his border crackdown agenda, I’m told by
several of these Republicans. 

Far more so than during Trump’s first term, these lawmakers are largely shaking off the
stuff they don’t like. Most of my top Republican sources confided that they were frustrated at Trump’s pardoning of violent January 6 rioters, but many justified the maneuver by both-sidesing the issue—pointing to Biden’s preemptive pardons of his family, or his commutation of Leonard Peltier, the 80-year-old Native American activist convicted of killing two F.B.I. agents in 1977. Others also privately admitted that they remain uneasy about his plan to alter the meaning of the
14th Amendment on birthright citizenship and his extrajudicial disregard for the TikTok ban, but they are keeping those unpleasant thoughts mostly to themselves. 

Alas, profiles in courage have been replaced by an abundance of opportunism. For so many on the right—seemingly everyone, really—the reality is there’s too much upside to cause an uproar over any of these thorny or highly
controversial topics. Trump’s ability to flood the zone, the hokey bit of D.C. argot for unleashing a flurry of activity to discombobulate his foes and inoculate his various agenda topics from critique, has also rendered their potential fulminations inert. The chaos and freneticism that was seen as unpredictable or unprecedented during his first term—and I’m just cherry-picking some typical media adjectives—is all entirely predictable now, and lawmakers are neither
surprised nor confused. They’re just going with the flow. 

And yet, the other element of flooding the zone is that Republican lawmakers are now underwater, buried under a deluge of work. On top of starting a new Congress and confirming Trump’s cabinet, they’re sorting through the flurry of executive orders and other first-week actions. 

Unity, unity, unity is the mantra among Republicans—often uttered with a knowing eye roll. Privately, Republicans acknowledge that the Trump honeymoon will be short. Senate Republicans are already pointing fingers at House Republicans for making the process of how to pass Trump’s agenda overly complicated—there are a lot of Joe Manchin wannabes in the House, one Senate aide told me, suggesting that attention-hound members
will seek fame by blocking Congress’s work. In other words, despite the public posturing, the House G.O.P.’s disparate ideological factions are setting up their battle stations. 

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York organized a meeting with Trump for himself and the only two other Republicans who represent districts Kamala Harris won—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Don
Bacon. It was short, I was told, and Lawler talked about the need to increase the SALT deduction, while Bacon focused on issues important to Omaha. In any event, the meeting was mainly about getting face time with a president and reminding him that they’re in tough districts that are vastly different from the deep red districts of many of their more vocal and obstinate colleagues. 

During their pre-meeting in the West Wing anteroom, while waiting for their meeting with
Trump, Lawler, Fitzpatrick, and Bacon chatted with Trump’s director of legislative affairs, James Braid. It was a conversation that more clearly illustrates the challenges ahead. The crew spoke about the news dominating Capitol Hill, like whether the priorities of tax cuts, budget cuts, border security, and energy production should be split into two bills, or kept as one. This might be the dumbest never-ending story of the news cycle, but it could have tremendous
consequences for Trump’s agenda if the wrong strategic choice causes a vote to fail. 

Most House Republicans want one bill, but the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, who have long opposed big and comprehensive legislation, want two. (So do most Senate Republicans.) The single-bill advocates argue that one comprehensive piece of legislation, with goodies for everyone, will be hard for any one Republican
to oppose—which is crucial since it will need near unanimous support. Splitting the legislation into two bills, many of them told Braid, would jeopardize Trump’s tax cuts by separating them from the policies everyone can agree on. The hardliners will sink the tax bill, the trio warned Braid, if the House doesn’t acquiesce to their unrealistic budget-reduction demands. For their part, the far-right double-bill advocates say that Trump should use his momentum and first pass the
easy stuff: border security funding, defense spending enhancements, and energy production priorities. And they should lift the nation’s borrowing limit at the same time, the Freedom Caucus argues.

Braid, a brash and blunt former top aide to two Freedom Caucus members, was said to have gotten defensive at the idea that the hardliners would try to sink the president’s tax bill. In any case, it’s hard to see
how Republicans can curb spending enough to pay for an extension and expansion of Trump’s tax cuts while also reducing the deficit. (Committee chairs have submitted to leadership upwards of $5 trillion worth of budget cuts, which Republicans generally acknowledge is likely not possible. Punchbowl reported that the committee chairs ultimately presented to the conference about $3 trillion in cuts.) They will rely, of course, on economic growth attributed to tax cuts, and a
whole lot of projected revenue from tariffs to plug the massive hole in the deficit. But if the fight over strategy is indicative of the upcoming challenge of passing actual legislation, everything is going to be a struggle—despite all the proclamations of unity. 

Meanwhile, Trump just wants to get it done, and has so far stayed out of the process. But I’m told Mike Johnson,
who has said that a single, MAGA-friendly bill could be ready for passage in April, which most people think is incredibly optimistic at best and most likely unrealistic, wants him to weigh in, both to give him cover in the lower chamber and provide Republicans the push to actually unify. Trump hasn’t deployed his political influence yet, which often comes in the form of mean tweets and MAGA groupie threats to primary naysayers. (Although we did see hints of a pressure
campaign when Sen. Joni Ernst, a sexual assault survivor and veteran, was bullied into voting to confirm Pete Hegseth.)

As this all comes together, pay attention to the coming fight over defense spending. Coastal Republicans want Trump to follow through on his promise to lift the cap on the SALT deduction, irking colleagues who don’t want to give blue states tax relief,
especially via a pricey proposition that—depending on how high the cap is raised—could balloon the cost of the tax bill. A larger group of Republicans wants to put some of the money saved from spending cuts toward defense spending, arguing that the military is falling behind. But the hardliners are prepared to push back. “I don’t want any more money for the Pentagon. We need to let them get a little lean,” Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told me. “It’s not cut and spend. It’s cut
and save.”

Of course, the battle over Trump’s “one powerful bill” encompassing tax cuts, the border, and energy notably doesn’t address the fact that the government will also run out of money in March, or the next looming fight over the debt limit—which the president, in defiance of the party’s budget hawks, has proposed eliminating until after the 2026 midterms. As one senior Republican aide told me, “Buckle up.” 

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