🍻 In This Week's Hill Spill Newsletter: The DNC's Week From Hell, Fauci's Leaked Diary Dump and Trump's Senate Standoff

🍹 Welcome to this week’s Hill Spill, your favorite Thirsty Thursday political newsletter! The House is on recess, but the Senate brought us plenty of drama!

This week we’ve got Anthony Fauci taking the Fifth more than a hundred times while his pandemic diary casually name-drops half of Hollywood, the DNC having a full-blown week from hell (debt, leaks, a phone-throwing chairman!), Gen Z influencer CJ Pearson swinging by the pod to talk “partying with a purpose” with Waka Flocka, and two outgoing Republican senators holding up Trump’s AG nominee, prompting the president to publicly threaten to just wait them out. Grab your drink of choice and let's get to it!

Dr. Anthony Fauci — love him or hate him — unintentionally taught America a very practical lesson this week: do not keep your diary on a work server.

The lesson arrived courtesy of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s private pandemic-era diaries after HHS Secretary RFK Jr. announced that his team had spent months tracking them down across government servers before handing them over to Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The entries cover the expected territory — lab-leak theories, COVID origins, internal health policy fights — along with Fauci’s media schedule and occasional notes about his interactions with public figures. Government servers, it turns out, are not the ideal place for personal reflections.

When Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.

In a brief opening statement he said Paul had an “unhinged obsession” with sending him to prison and argued that the threat of prosecution justified his silence. Republicans countered that Biden’s preemptive pardon (complete with the usual autopen theories) should have eliminated that protection.

The temperature shot up further when Paul directed Capitol Police to remove Fauci’s defense attorney from the room. A contempt vote is expected to take place next week.

“You wanted to be on TV, you wanted to be the Sun God of Science. You could sit for InStyle magazine but you can’t answer questions for the American people,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) was a tad more direct: “Who the f*** do you think you are doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.”

Democrats were equally pointed in the other direction. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) told Fauci the hearing was “designed to entrap you.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it the culmination of a “years-long crusade against facts.”

And TMZ founder Harvey Levin weighed in personally, comparing the proceedings to a McCarthy-style witch hunt.

According to NOTUS, one of the more unexpected details in the diaries involved Katie Miller. Despite later becoming one of Fauci’s most vocal public critics, she was in frequent contact with him in 2020 while pregnant and sick with COVID.

Fauci wrote about calling her multiple times a day to calm her anxiety and offering guidance through her husband’s diagnosis and a newborn health scare. “katie Miller and I laugh at each other in the Sit Room,” he noted.

Miller responded on X that the relationship was strictly professional and strategic: “Every man who has a journal is a narcissist. Dr. Fauci was neither my friend nor my doctor but a work colleague who weaponized my pregnancy and child for his gain to aggrandize himself.” NOTUS also found that references to Miller were quietly edited down from 56 mentions in the original dump to 37 in a later version.

We aren’t here to judge — Lord knows the pandemic turned everyone’s personal lives a little sideways. But whether you’re venting about your coworkers or noting your celebrity interactions, our main takeaway is this: keep it in a paper notebook.

To say it has been a rough news week for the Democratic National Committee would be an understatement.

The New York Times dropped a wild Sunday piece on DNC Chair Ken Martin, with more than two dozen current and former party officials airing grievances about the state of things. The committee is carrying a $2 million net deficit while the RNC is sitting on close to $130 million. The DNC took out a $15 million loan — its biggest ever for an off-year cycle — and put up its own D.C. headquarters as collateral, though the committee noted the building has been used as collateral in previous cycles as well.

Congressional leaders are being told quietly not to expect checks, and vendors are apparently being asked to hold their invoices until after the midterms, which the DNC’s executive director called standard contract negotiations.

Martin pushed back on the financial picture in a Substack post, pointing to $207 million in receipts and calling it the strongest out-of-power fundraising performance in party history. Whether that framing lands depends on who you ask.

Then there is the vibe inside the building. Martin threw his phone in the direction of a junior aide’s desk during an argument and ended up with a formal HR complaint, though accounts differed on how aggressively it was thrown.

He had previously gathered staff to demand they stop leaking, but is now, per the Times, surrounded by leaks and worried about his own job. The 2024 autopsy he oversaw landed with a thud — widely panned as typo-filled and short on actual answers.

NOTUS also reported that in February 2025, just days into Martin’s tenure, a staffer wired nearly $29,000 to an email scammer pretending to be him. The DNC only managed to claw back about $7,000. Fraud scams targeting political organizations are not uncommon, but the timing and the dollar amount raised eyebrows given everything else going on.

Democrats were not exactly rallying around their chairman after the reports dropped. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) called for Martin to resign, former DNC vice chair David Hogg piled on, and Joe Scarborough posted on X that the situation was “not sustainable.” Martin’s allies, meanwhile, have argued that the coverage is overblown and that the party is well positioned heading into November.

Republicans are naturally loving it.

“The DNC is broke, leaderless, and imploding before America’s eyes. From states defying the national party to Ken Martin throwing his phone at staffers, it is undeniable that the inmates are running the asylum,” RNC Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre told us. “While the Democrat Party collapses, Republicans are united, on offense, and focused on electing our candidates up and down the ballot this November.”

Despite the rough news cycle, every Democrat we have talked to this week is still feeling very good about the midterms.

Martin once described his job to The Bulwark as "the political equivalent of being a fire hydrant. You get pissed on by everyone." Based on this week, that def seems to track.

CJ Pearson first emerged on the political scene at 12 years old, now he is one of the most prominent conservative influencers in the country and throwing parties with Waka Flocka Flame. He joined us on the pod this week for a fun conversation on how to get young people excited about politics, what Gen Z actually cares about, how the midterms may play out and an array of other topics.

Pearson founded the Next 250 PAC to elect the next generation of Republican leaders, but what has really gotten people talking lately is his party circuit. Rick Ross, Soulja Boy, Kodak Black and Moneybagg Yo, not exactly the Jason Aldean crowd, and he says that is entirely the point. His midterm plan is to take that energy to swing states with big Greek life presences and do what he calls "party with a purpose."

He also had some thoughts on who is actually good at politics right now. On the right, Rep. Brandon Gill (Texas). On the left, and he said this hurt to admit as a Georgian, Sen. Jon Ossoff.

"He is him. He is exactly who he thinks he is. He's going to be a tough one to beat for us,” he told us. Tune in!

Trump's decision to take aim at two sitting senators while still needing their votes has made the path for his AG pick a little dicier.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote Thursday on advancing Todd Blanche's nomination to be the nation's permanent attorney general, but punted late Wednesday after it became clear the votes weren't there. The holdouts: Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), both on their way out of the Senate at the end of the year, who say they won't support Blanche until the Justice Department formally kills the so-called anti-weaponization fund and narrows the scope of the IRS audit immunity in Trump's personal settlement agreement.

"We want to make sure that it remains dead, and that the president isn't given any immunity from future audits that the ordinary taxpayer would not enjoy," Cornyn told CBS News.

Trump took to Truth Social calling Blanche "a STAR" and then threatened to pull his own nominee until Cornyn and Tillis are gone. "I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office," he wrote, also noting that both senators' "political careers have been ended by my action."

Cornyn shrugged it off almost immediately, calling Trump's strategy a "gamble" and noting his concerns were not unique to him and Tillis.

Cornyn, Tillis and Blanche met Thursday afternoon as the White House looks to get things over the finish line. We are told the senators are in active talks with the DOJ and the administration is feeling cautiously optimistic about a resolution.

Blanche can continue serving as acting attorney general in the meantime. But the whole episode does have people questioning whether the president overplayed his hand…

If you thought this week was quiet, think again. We’re currently dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s and having our legal team look over a couple of absolute banger stories dropping very soon. 👀

To set the stage for what’s ahead, we’re having The Atonement this week —shoutout to one of our favorite reporters on the Hill (thanks, Erik!) for handing us this idea over!

Simply stir all the ingredients with ice in a mixing glass, strain the drink into an Old-Fashioned glass over a large ice cube, and express a lemon twist over the top for garnish.