MORNING REPORT

Wednesday, September 30 | By Jared Gans and Sarah Fortinsky

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In today's issue:

▪ MAHA shines spotlight on Vance

▪ Hegseth’s State of the Force address

▪ AI leaders’ control pledge

▪ Schmitt’s basketball team flub

Vance cozies up to MAHA movement

For the second year running, Vice President Vance headlined the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement’s annual summit in Washington, D.C.

At the end of a fireside chat on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked Vance why Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio gets all the “good memes.”

“We get tremendous support for the MAHA agenda from the White House, but from nowhere as much as the vice president’s office, and I want to thank you for that, for your commitment to our country and to our children,” Kennedy said to applause.

The exchange was a not-so-veiled allusion to the jockeying for the 2028 presidential race playing out between President Trump’s top aides, even as neither Vance or Rubio have made their White House aspirations officials.

And it highlights the key role that Kennedy’s MAHA movement will play in efforts to consolidate the coalition that helped Trump win in 2024.

During their conversation, Vance referenced his decision to take up a “carnivore” diet recommended by Kennedy that consists of meat and fermented foods such as sauerkraut while avoiding alcohol and many sugary foods. He’s one of several members of the administration who adopted the diet.

“I called Bobby and... [say], ‘Hey man, I’m thinking of giving up sugar for Lent. What are the health benefits of giving up sugar?’ And he’s like ‘No, no, no. Have I got the thing for you,’” Vance said. “And that was Fat Tuesday, and thanks to Bobby Kennedy, Fat Wednesday never came.”

The MAHA movement only embraced Trump after Kennedy dropped his Democratic presidential run against Joe Biden, launched an independent campaign then eventually dropped that and became a key GOP surrogate.

Trump ultimately credited the MAHA movement with giving a boost to his own MAGA movement and helping him win the election, rewarding Kennedy with the HHS post despite his outspoken history of vaccine skepticism.

Kennedy has pressed ahead with some priorities, such as rolling back vaccine recommendations for children.

But the alliance has been rocky at times, particularly after the Trump administration moved to expand production of a dangerous pesticide.

MAHA advocates have warned the GOP could lose its strength within the movement unless it shores up support for its voters, and there’s some signs that Democrats are looking to seize on the tensions.

Democrats who are also critical of the chemical industry have leaned into what they view as a possible alliance with MAHA. Earlier this year, they jumped at the opportunity to grill Kennedy during congressional hearings following the president’s executive order prioritizing the domestic production of glyphosate, a key ingredient in the controversial herbicide Roundup.

On Tuesday, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed launched a new health platform called “Building a Healthier America Policy Agenda,” which seeks accountability for polluters and backs legislation allowing people to sue pesticide manufacturers over harms caused by their products, CBS News reported.

More than one third of the American public identifies as MAHA supporters, and roughly two thirds of them lean Republican, according to polling from the spring. But some Democrats think it's not a foregone conclusion that MAHA backers will vote GOP.

“I think we have an opportunity to remind folks that we've always been the people who want people to be healthier, rather than the folks who capitulate to the food, ag and pharmaceutical corporations that are too often on the wrong side of things,” El-Sayed told CBS.

Vance and Kennedy played up areas in which the administration can be aligned with MAHA, such as with the use of AI to push back on advice given by medical experts, and the fight against fraud within health and social support system — another Vance priority.

Back at the White House, Rubio joined other Trump officials in rolling out America.gov.

Just last month, Rubio was asked about his own eating habits on Katie Miller’s podcast. He admitted to straying from Kennedy’s carnivore and ferments diet.

“The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in history,” Rubio said.

“I’m not gonna travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut,” he added.

▪ The Hill: Four takeaways from the MAHA Summit.

▪ Axios: Insurers make their case before MAHA.

3 Things to Know Today

The Supreme Court declined to stop the execution of a Tennessee woman who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection this morning at 10 a.m. Christa Pike is set to be the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in 200 years.
The Senate is scheduled to vote today on two key bills addressing the growth of AI-driven data centers and stock trading by members of Congress, both of which Democrats are planning to defeat as they see them as “watered-down” reforms. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports on how the votes could serve as a lifeline for three embattled Senate Republican incumbents.
The Treasury Department will automatically enroll millions of children in the administration’s Trump Accounts under new rules, eliminating the need for parents to sign up for the program. About 7 million have been registered so far, and more than 60 million accounts will be created for other children under 18.

LEADING THE DAY

HEGSETH’S OVERHAUL: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to announce a 20 percent cut to positions at the Pentagon for admirals and generals in his latest push to overhaul the Department of Defense (DOD), two Pentagon officials confirmed to The Hill’s Filip Timotija.

The cuts will affect senior leadership positions across the Army, Navy and Air Force, Timotija reported.

Hegseth will discuss the workforce reductions, along with his other priorities in the coming months, during his State of the Force address today at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where he will speak before junior officers and enlisted leaders.

In another move to shake up the status quo at DOD, Hegseth yesterday directed departments to halt appointments of civilian staff to tenured positions at U.S. military service academies (MSAs) and develop hiring plans that prioritize “institutional flexibility and faculty contribution to the warfighting mission.”

In a one-page memo titled “Refocusing the Military Service Academies on Warfighter Education,” Hegseth said the institutions’ chief purpose is to prepare young officers to eventually lead the U.S. military, and he said granting tenure undermines that goal.

“To ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.

Granting tenure to civilian faculty, he added, “contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics.”

It was not immediately clear what would happen to faculty currently tenured.

Hegseth said last year his goal was to replace “woke” civilian professors with military personnel.

▪ The Hill: Tom Cotton presses Hegseth for review after F-35 parts end up in China.

▪ Semafor: Republicans fuming at Hegseth as war costs build.

IN THE HOTSEAT: Former special counsel Jack Smith parried questions and insults from GOP lawmakers as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday about his decisionmaking overseeing investigations into the president.

Smith strongly defended his work in the cases investigating Trump’s retention of classified and sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago and his conduct related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, saying they were a result of the president’s own actions.

But the panel’s Republicans tore into Smith, accusing him of pursuing partisan prosecutions against Trump.

“You will go down as a total dirtbag,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).

One of the most contentious issues was Smith’s obtaining of the call logs of a dozen Republican senators as part of his Jan. 6 investigation. Tuesday was the first time that they had a chance to challenge him directly on the subpoenas.

Smith defended the subpoenas as necessary to map out communication, while Republicans accused him of violating their privacy and the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution, which protects lawmakers from legal scrutiny for official legislative acts.

The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch reports on the takeaways from the testy hearing. Read more here.

▪ The Hill: Smith emphasizes strength of Trump cases.

‘MORALLY BINDING’: Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced that key artificial intelligence industry leaders signed on to a pledge to build “robust” internal controls and layers of auditing in an effort to appease the public’s concerns about AI development.

The agreement lays out a series of voluntary commitments for AI developers, according to Johnson, but Trump described “The White House Accord on Super Intelligence Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities,” as “morally binding” and “almost like a constitution.”

“There’s going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect,” Trump said in a rare White House North Lawn appearance, joined by tech executives including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk.

Zuckerberg described the commitments as “good steps forward” and “a start” for the industry, saying, “The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend.”

While the agreement marks a point of collaboration between Trump and several AI leaders, as The Hill's Miranda Nazzaro and Julia Shapero report for Insider, Huang is one of the few standing behind the president's full-steam-ahead approach to AI.

Earlier in the day, Trump launched a website, America.gov, that uses AI to help Americans navigate federal government websites and find information and services they need.

▪ The Hill: Trump renames AI ‘super intelligence’: ‘It is the biggest thing there is.’

▪ The Hill: Trump’s AI website confirms he lost 2020 election.

▪ The Hill Insider: Trump, GOP leaders look to reclaim narrative over AI.

GO AHEAD, FOR NOW: The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration can resume its policy of deporting migrants to countries that they have no ties to for the time being as the court considers the policy’s legality.

The emergency ruling Tuesday lifts the restrictions imposed by a district court judge, who found the individuals affected don’t have a sufficient opportunity to raise claims that they would face torture if deported to a third country. The high court announced it would hear arguments in the case in December before issuing a final decision.

The court’s three liberal justices said they would’ve kept the limits in place while they consider the case. None of the justices explained their reasoning.

Third-country removals have been a key part of Trump’s strict crackdown on illegal immigration. His administration has signed many agreements with countries around the world to accept deportees, many of them in Africa.

▪ The Hill: Court blocks Trump bid to withhold counterterrorism funds from some states.

▪ The Hill: News outlets ask judge to extend block on White House ban.

WHEN & WHERE

The president will host a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration at 1 p.m. He will make an announcement with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at 3:30 p.m.
The Senate will meet at 10:15 a.m.
The House is out.

ZOOM IN

HEALTHCARE SPENDING CLIFF: Billions of dollars appropriated for health programs are at risk of expiring today — the final day of the fiscal year — because the Trump administration has refused to spend the funds.

The administration’s refusal to use the money presents a major test for Congress, The Hill’s Nathaniel Weixel reports. Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers say refusing to spend the appropriated funds is illegal.

Weixel takes a look at some of the funding at risk of expiring if the country reaches the end of the fiscal year without a resolution.

Congressional leaders have been warning for more than a month that the Trump administration is sitting on more than $1 billion for global health initiatives.

Congress appropriated $9.4 billion for global health programs for the fiscal year that ends today. The Trump administration has spent all but the $1.3 billion intended to go toward protecting maternal and child health, and countering infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Of the $101 million appropriated for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program, the Department of Health and Human Services has only spent roughly $500,000. The program funds organizations that educate young people about how to make healthy choices to reduce risky sexual behavior and prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended teen pregnancy.

TPP has long been targeted by conservatives, and the administration has said it wanted to reshape TPP to embrace an abstinence-only curriculum. Trump’s 2027 budget request calls for cutting the program, but the 2026 budget preserved the program and its funding.

▪ The Hill: GOP lawmakers challenge Trump’s nearly billion-dollar clawback.

▪ The Hill: GAO calls ‘pocket rescissions’ illegal after Trump tries to cancel nearly $1B.

ELSEWHERE

NOO CANADA: The president’s ban on $1 billion of Canadian goods went into effect Tuesday, the latest escalation in the trade war with the U.S. and its northern neighbor.

The restrictions apply to Canadian dairy products, motor vehicles and many alcoholic beverages. Trump signed executive orders to implement the bans earlier this month, the same day that retaliatory Canadian tariffs on $27.6 billion of American goods took effect.

Trump cited Canadian “discrimination” against U.S. dairy, motor vehicles and alcohol as his rationale for the bans.

The U.S. and Canada have been locked in an increasingly tense trade war for weeks, kicked off by Trump’s move to implement 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government vowed to match those tariffs “dollar for dollar.”

Trump and Carney have traded barbs amid the conflict, with the president calling Canada “one of the worst countries in the entire world” in comments to reporters Monday.

Carney has responded to the tensions by increasing his country’s ties to Europe, even expressing some openness to the idea of becoming the European Union’s first associate member. He told the European Parliament earlier this month that his country and Europe are “stronger together.”

Trump’s tariffs will be under the spotlight today in the U.S. Court of International Trade as the judges consider whether the president has the authority to levy them under the Trade Act of 1974.

▪ Bloomberg: How the U.S.-Canada trade war is intensifying.

▪ The Guardian: Anger in Maine over Trump’s trade war with neighboring Canada.

OPINION

What Congress can do about AI safety — with China — now, Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) writes in The Hill.
Four final midterm strategies for Republicans, opinion writers discuss in The Washington Post.

THE CLOSER

And finally … As stated earlier, Schmitt was among the Senate Republicans who grilled Smith on his Trump investigations, but the senator came away with egg on his face for an apparent mix-up.

The Missouri Republican pressed Smith on whether he traveled to Atlanta in 2024 to attend an Atlanta Hawks basketball game, hinting that he could have used the trip to meet with Fani Willis, the Georgia-based prosecutor who also brought charges against Trump. Schmitt said he had text messages showing Smith was at the game, leading to confusion on Smith’s part.

The senator briefly showed a board displaying the text messages and ended his time with calling Smith a “villain” and “dirtbag.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who was next in line for questioning, raised that Schmitt may have confused the Hawks with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Smith said he had attended a college basketball game in Maryland featuring the Hawkeyes, not the Hawks.

“That might be the confusion over the names of the team. But perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” Klobuchar said to Schmitt.

Read more about the fallout from the incident here.