A tough time to be a Hill Republican

0:00Now, with the Home Depot, receive 12 months special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with life proof, life proof with petproof technology, home decorators collection, and traffic master carpets. Bring a new look to your floors, or give them a durable surface that stands up to life's tough messes. Get 12 months special financing on installed carpet projects, right now, at the Home Depot. Offer Bell at March 12th, or March 29th, 2026, exclusions and additional charges may apply for licenses, see Home Depot.com slash license numbers. Good morning, I'm Anna Palmer, and I'm Jake Sherman. And welcome to the Daily Punch, brought to you by Punchful News. It's Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. Let's get in the midst here are your headlines of the day from Washington. Number one, tough times to be a Hill Republican number two takeaways from the conference. And number three, a quick catch up on what's happening in Durral and the latest primary news.

1:00All right, Jake, we have a jam packed AM edition after a jam packed day long conference yesterday. I'm impressed. I'm up. Honestly, I got again, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for that one. I'm not impressed. I'm up. I'm impressed. I woke up in my throat. I was like, maybe it's because I we did like 10 conversations each yesterday. It was like goodness gracious. And I will say he got to give Mark Cuban credit in our conversation at the top. I rewatched it a little bit last night. He said he thinks the trade for Anthony Davis was good and he, you know, and he knows from what he speaks as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. But anyway, all right, all right. Let's get to it here. We write the lead is it's a tough time to be a Hill Republican dragged by President Donald Trump into another war in the Middle East, the GOP's problems are growing worse every day. And there's no sign things have hit bottom yet. No, it is rough times for House Republicans and Senate Republicans. The Iran War administration has struggled to come up with a clear rationale, a timeline

2:00rubric for victory, financial markets are rattled, oil prices have spiked and that impacts everything when it comes to politics, the election, et cetera. And DHS has been shut down for 26 days. The Save America Act has become a huge internal Republican fight. Trump has seized on the bill, which would require proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote. He has said he wants mail-in ballots to be severely curtailed, Mike Lee and conservative activists have wanted to end the filibuster or significantly change the filibuster force Democrats to be on the floor to filibuster the Save America Act, which would change the nature of the Senate. I'll just say on that issue and this is going to be a major flat. This is going to be the fight on the filibuster that many Republicans have wanted to have for a long time. It's not going to go away. This is not going away anytime soon and came up a couple times in our conversations yesterday. I think most notably with Josh Hawley who said maybe we'd actually legislate if the filibuster was God. So interesting time to be a Hill Republican, Anna.

3:03Yeah, I mean, listen, I think on that note, you know, this is going to be a test for Senator John Thune. How does he handle it? Clearly, there's growing unrest among some conservatives. And this is also going to be an issue for Speaker Mike Johnson, right? That fight in the Senate is going to also happen in the House in the coming weeks, right? We talked to Representative Anna Polina Luna on fly out day a few weeks ago, the Republican from Florida. And she's saying she's going to try to force the Save America Act on to FISA reauthorization. FISA is just one of those several must pass bills that needs to be taken up this year. When you look at that, that FISA is already really fraught. That could be very hard to have that be added there. I, you know, it's not like it's all rosy for Democrats, either Jake, but I mean, this is just when you have all control of Washington, the headwinds of a midterm election. It is something that a lot of Republicans are facing as they look towards the midterms. Yep, absolutely. And you're getting into a time and we can leave it at this. There are some must pass bills that Congress has to deal with, including FISA, the farm

4:05bill, highway bill, some provisions of warna, the Water Resources Development Act. And, you know, there's talk about reconciliation 2.0. So we'll see, we'll see on all of these things, you know, obviously we've been skeptical on reconciliation, but we're covering the hell out of it to make sure that our readers and you listeners don't miss anything. All right, stick with us after the break. We're talking the conference lots of fascinating conversations. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on rag and bone, made well, vince, all saints, and more of your favorites. I didn't allow no rack as the deed is. Why do we rack for the hottest still? There's so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. All right, Jake, let's go on to the number two story of the morning.

5:10We held a Punchful News 2nd annual conference at Union Station all day yesterday. We brought to life our AM midday and PM additions, talking to executives from across the spectrum as well as leading lawmakers of Republicans and Democrats and got into a lot of kind of what's going to happen between now and election day as well as some election talk, where the AI superpaps are going to be spending just a pretty incredible day for us. Really incredible day for us. We had more conversations. My son said to me last night, tell me everyone that you interviewed, because I told them that I interviewed Mark Cuban, and we talked about the trade, and he said, who else? Tell me all the people, and I was like, all right, let me try. I couldn't even get through it all. I will say this, there were some amazing conversations, and I'll tell you about one, a couple that were interesting to me, Josh Hawley, who was really came to mix it up on a whole bunch of topics, including the future of the Republican Party, et cetera.

6:13My personal favorite, CEO of United, Scott Kirby, who says, listen, the Donald Trump seems, and this is going to be something that we're all going to keep an eye on as people who, many of us who live in Washington, many listeners, and clearly me and you, the renovation of Dallas, which is, you know, you know how Trump gets involved in these things and the details of what Dallas is going to look like afterwards, and that's something that United is very involved in. And in addition to that Adam Schiff, we talked about his desire to kind of hang the Senate floor up on war power's resolution votes, something that he has talked about over the last couple of days, and his opposition to the war in Iran. So those are three things that really stuck out to me. I think the other thing I would just say, I mean, CEOs from Northrop Grumman, we had Carlyle's CEO, we had Hilton's CEO, we also spoke to Kinsey's CEO, really interesting conversations, just about how leaders are thinking about geopolitics right now, the influence of Washington, how they are approaching dysfunction here at times, also because I'm, you know, so kind

7:17to you. We also had a lot involving sports in addition to Mark Cuban. We also had the CEO of fanatics betting and gaming, really, I mean, one of the big issue right now, right, when you think about the predictive markets, as well as three leaders in the sports space in Washington, Mark I, we had Zach Leonesis and the new president of the Nats talking about sports in Washington and the investment and how they have to handle and deal with kind of the federal and local leaders to get things done. We have a ton of this on YouTube and a lot of coverage happen yesterday and it will continue to happen throughout today. So it encourage you all to check those conversations out. A big thanks to a lot of people showed up and stayed throughout the day. Was a really tremendous day. So really appreciative also of the full punch will news team it that it was a massive message to everybody. I don't want to even name anybody because our entire team put this together in a way that was just absolutely unbelievable, completely unbelievable.

8:20So I'm so proud to work a punch bull news and to work with all these great people. All right. Let's one of the number three story of the morning. Let's talk to Raul and the latest in primaries. Our very own Max Cohen has been down in Florida. A tough assignment to have a assignment for Max. Yeah. He's in the heat, although 80 degrees here yesterday, so like, you know, interesting reporting though, an RCC chair, Richard Hudson said house Republicans will benefit from the smallest house map and recent memory to hold their razor thin majority in 2026. I mean, that has been a constant theme of this retreat is Republicans trying to rally the troops to say, despite the headwinds of a midterm election, they believe that they can challenge history. This is the counter argument. The map is not big enough to have a big democratic night. It's a fair point. It's a fair point. Rich Hudson, the chair of the NRCC says, if you look at history, the president's first midterms usually go the other way, but I think it's because presidents usually sweep in a bunch of house seats that you shouldn't have one that didn't happen this time because

9:21a gerrymandering. Well, there are a bunch of seats that Republicans are in that I don't know if you want to say shouldn't. That's a judgment on the member and on their effectiveness. I do think that there are a bunch of those, but there are not a lot like you don't have a bunch of Republicans in in like a deep blue D plus seven district. So I get that. I understand the point that he's making that Richard Hudson is making. I think listen, you don't need a bunch of seats. If you're Democrats, that's the other argument. You don't need three seats. You need to build a decent majority. You need 10 seats for Democrats and Democrats think that's possible. I don't know. I'm not a, you know, I don't have ESP either, but I can't tell the user. No, no, that'd be nice though. All right. Let's also talk quickly, Ali Muttenek, keeping us informed on the latest in the primary race. Representative Benny Thompson, handling beat back a primary challenger who accused the incumbent of being too old and ineffective. That, of course, has been one of the claims as you've seen this generational divide of Democrats. But Benny Thompson did not work for him.

10:23He led attorney Evan turnage Jake 86% to 13% with 92% of the vote in. That is a big night for Benny Thompson. But also this Georgia special kind of interesting stuff happening there. Yeah, Benny Thompson beat back the argument that the older generation of Democrats can't win. Benny Thompson 78. Evan turnage a Yale law graduate is 34. I'm that is quite the age delta there. Clay Fuller, a national air national guardsman endorsed by Trump, Donald Trump, advanced to a runoff with Sean Harris, a Democrat, the April 7th runoff will fill the MTG seat. This is a deep Republican seat. So I think we will be seeing Clay Fuller in Congress. I mean, nothing is for sure, but that's sure what it seems like. Great. We're going to leave it there. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in the next video. See you later. Bye.