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With an assist from Jennifer Scholtes, Burgess Everett and Katherine-Tully McManus

DeSANTIS’S TRUE BELIEVERS

This week, former president Donald Trump’s comeback bid was endorsed by all six Republicans in Michigan’s congressional delegation.

For those keeping score, that’s exactly as many endorsements as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has snagged in total since entering the presidential race in May.

That latest tranche of lawmaker nods has served to highlight Trump’s overwhelming lead in the endorsement derby, which prompted us to ask the Hill’s DeSantis Devotees: After months of hype, why is the governor’s bandwagon still so sparsely populated? No member has endorsed him since May 23, when Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) jumped aboard.

Your Huddle host asked five of the six — where you at, Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.)? — in the hallways on Wednesday:

• Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.): “I don’t have any comment on whether somebody else has endorsed him. … If you look at the job that he did in Florida, that’s the model for what we want to be done for the country.”
• Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.): “There’s part of the Republican Party that was moved by the indictments. So I joke, I say we got to figure out some way to get DeSantis indicted.”
• Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.): Ignored your Huddle host
• Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas): “I think most people in this conference support Gov. DeSantis. I think there’s a default in the conference to go with the former president.”
• McCormick: “I think most people are being very careful because obviously it’s no fun to be on Trump’s dark side. And most people who’ve ever experienced that could tell you about that.”

Why this matters: That DeSantis hasn’t found a more willing audience in the House, where he served three terms, is yet another blinking-red sign for his campaign. Of the more than 100 sitting GOP members he served with, only two (Massie and McClintock) are backing him.

DeSantis has long been considered Trump’s top challenger for the 2024 GOP nomination. But his campaign has struggled to gain traction, with his polling trending downwards since his launch while Trump’s have climbed despite two criminal indictments.

All six DeSantis backers came out early, before the governor’s slide drew comparisons to big-name presidential busts like Jeb Bush or Howard Dean. Unless he can reverse his fortunes soon, the DeSantis camp on Capitol Hill promises to become a lonely club.

GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, where your Huddle host sends their huge congrats to the Bad News Babes, who won last night’s Congressional Women’s Softball Game!

NDAA AMENDMENT ARMAGEDDON?

The House will take up 80 more amendments to the annual defense policy bill after the Rules Committee moved overnight to set up debate on hot-button topics including abortion, racial diversity and medical treatment of transgender troops. The new tranche of mostly Republican amendments signals that Speaker Kevin McCarthy has found a path forward after days of wrangling with conservative hardliners.

Thursday action: First, Republicans will need to round up votes today for the new rule, and even then the bill’s passage is no sure thing: Republicans will need Democratic votes, and if the most controversial conservative amendments are adopted, they could lose even defense-minded Democrats and tank the must-pass bill. Still, the overnight developments signal that the House could be back on track to finish up this week.

COCAINE IN THE HOUSE

The Secret Service will be on Capitol Hill at 10 a.m. to brief Congress on the cocaine found at the White House earlier this month. The drugs were found in a highly trafficked area of the West Wing, and one official familiar with the investigation has already cautioned that person who carried the cocaine is unlikely to be uncovered

SPENDING IN THE SENATE

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) are moving three more bills through their panel on Thursday, giving the Senate five total bills ready for floor action. But, with a Sept. 30 shutdown deadline looming, when exactly might that happen?

All of July appears to be already spoken for with nominees and NDAA, leaving four weeks in September. Collins said in an interview with Burgess she’s worried about the time crunch and wants Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to find time this month for votes on two bills, Military Construction-VA and Agriculture-FDA, before the August recess.

Good luck with that: Schumer is going to be loath to devote floor time to spending bills with the House yet to move on to its own appropriations work and plenty of nominees left to process. That is making a September continuing resolution look less like a probability and more like a certainty.

Said Murray, “Bills have to come out of the House, too, which is obviously a concern. All I can do is put one foot forward every single day.”

SOFT-WHIPPING A BUDGET

The chair of the House Budget Committee tells us he’s ready to roll out a Republican budget resolution. Speaker Kevin McCarthy still hasn’t given a green light.

While voting on a budget would check off one of McCarthy’s promises, any budget that satiates conservatives’ appetites for cuts is sure to fuel attack ads targeting the GOP majority ahead of next year’s election. That’s why McCarthy’s moved this spring to backburner the idea — and slight his budget chair — amid debt limit negotiations with President Joe Biden.

“We already have the votes on committee, and I’ve made my rounds in conference,” House Budget Committee Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told Jennifer. “And I feel like we are very close to that critical mass of 218.”

Democrats are ready to pounce: Any path to zeroing out the deficit within a decade would entail rejiggering popular entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“It is not uncommon when these rightwing extremists go on record for it to blow up in their faces,” Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) tells us. “It promises to be a target-rich environment.”

JAN. 6 FOOTAGE

House Republicans are aiming to grant media access to Jan. 6 Capitol security footage by the start of the August recess, Jordain scooped. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) — tasked by McCarthy with handling access to the thousands of hours of video — added that he wants to start allowing access “ASAP” but said using lawmakers’ recess departure date was the “logical time to do it.”

Coming attraction: Loudermilk said he is also working on releasing an update on his investigation into Jan. 6 security failures. The congressman said he has been in touch with former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund as part of that probe.

DEATH PENALTY BILL

First in Huddle: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin reintroduced the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act of 2023, a bill that would prohibit the use of the death penalty at the federal level and require re-sentencing of those currently on death row. “With momentum growing across the country, Congress must follow suit and pass our bill to end the federal death penalty once and for all,” Pressley told Huddle in a statement.

NEWSMAKERS OF THE DAY

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.): The two senators spent Wednesday morning back home in Vermont, working to marshal a response to the flooding that has inundated parts of the state, including the capital, Montpelier.

“We are all in on supporting Vermonters,” Welch told Huddle in a statement, highlighting his office’s efforts to help constituents with casework and secure federal aid for Vermonters.

Sanders noted at a Wednesday news conference that recovery will not be an exclusively public-sector responsibility, adding that the delegation “will do its best to make sure that the private insurance companies respond quickly and effectively to the needs of the people of Vermont.”

Honorable mention: The Bad News Babes, who reasserted their Congressional Women’s Softball Game dominance Wednesday, beating up on the member team, 15-9. The game raised more than $500,000 for the Young Survival Coalition.

QUICK LINKS

EXCLUSIVE: Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to headline third party No Labels event in New Hampshire next week in push to give Americans a candidate other than Biden or Trump, from Emily Goodin at the Daily Mail

GOP Lawmaker Banned From Wikipedia for Self-Editing Spree, from Ursula Perano at the Daily Beast

Hakeem Jeffries Projects Calm as Tests Await in Post-Pelosi Era, from Jonathan Tamari at Bloomberg

TRANSITIONS

Charlotte Bureau is now scheduler for Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.). She most recently was scheduler for Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.).

TODAY IN CONGRESS

The House convenes at 10 a.m. for morning hour and noon for legislative business. First votes are expected at 1:30 p.m. and last votes are expected at 10:00 p.m.

The Senate convenes at 10 a.m., with votes at 11:30 a.m. and at 1:45 p.m.

AROUND THE HILL

10 a.m. House Homeland Security Emergency Management and Technology Subcommittee hearing on the “Future of FEMA: Agency Perspectives with Administrator Criswell.” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell testifies. (310 Cannon)

11:45 a.m. Sen. Amy Klobuchar will have a press conference on prescription drug prices. (Senate Swamp)

1:30 p.m. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) holds a press conference to introduce the HERO Act. (House Triangle)

6 p.m. Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mike Gallagher and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi will hold a press conference with U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel. (H-120A)

WEDNESDAY’S WINNER: Mitch Rabalais correctly guessed that Zachary Taylor was nominated for president despite having never voted.

TODAY’S QUESTION from Mitch: Which two senators, who would one day represent neighboring states in the Senate, were both born in 1942 at the same hospital in Sheffield, Alabama?

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 Daniella on Twitter @DaniellaMicaela