Principals

1. Trump’s new enemies
2. Muted Dem resistance
3. Senate eyes immigration bill
4. US Steel bid
5. Sudan sanctions
6. Tariff tangle
7. Virginia results

PDB: Meta ends fact-checking program

Biden speaks to USA Today ... Fed to release minutes … Residents flee as wildfires spread in Los Angeles County

Trump looks to new enemies

Donald Trump is heading to Capitol Hill today to meet with Senate Republicans about implementing his (at the moment) stalled agenda. Figuring out how to pass his tax and border priorities will be just one of the new challenges Trump and his team will face. The president-elect previewed some of his other fights — like pushing back on the Biden administration’s last-minute move to bar lands from drilling, the possibility of using military force or economic coercion to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, and a warning to Hamas to release Israeli hostages — during a Tuesday press conference at Mar-a-Lago. It all adds up to a new set of enemies for Trump, who enters his second term in a far more dominant position than his first — with a more deferential party, a largely silenced Democratic resistance, and an eroded legacy media.

— Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett

The Democrats’ new un-resistance

Democrats made no objections to the electoral vote count on Jan. 6, a strategy in line with how grassroots activists have mobilized against the coming Trump administration. House Democrats who had objected to previous electoral counts — including Trump’s win eight years ago — said this week they had set an example. “I’d like to be able to say that we’ve restored the normal, peaceful transfer of power,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin told Semafor. “But of course, we won’t know until Trump’s party loses an election whether they’re actually willing to accept the constitutional processes as [they’re] supposed to work.” Democratic activists largely ignored the electoral count; one leader of an Indivisible group in southeast Virginia told Semafor that a Japanese TV crew covered their Jan. 6 remembrance event because it was the only one they could find. Instead, organizers in several states said they were focused on long-term voter outreach and a “day of service.”

— David Weigel and Kadia Goba

Dems lean toward advancing Laken Riley Act

Today, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to set up a Friday vote on the Laken Riley Act, which calls for federal detention of undocumented immigrants accused of theft and related crimes. It will need at least eight Democratic votes to advance — something that appears increasingly likely, after the bill passed the House with ample Democratic support. Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., support the bill, and several other Democrats told Semafor they are considering joining them. If it advances, the GOP would then have to decide whether to allow amendments before final passage. Democrats could always block the bill later, though we’re told it has a decent chance of ultimately passing, too. “This will be the new majority’s first foray into the sausage-making,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who’s planning to at least advance the bill over the initial filibuster.

— Burgess Everett

US Steel too pricey for Cleveland-Cliffs

Cleveland-Cliffs might have kicked off the bidding war for US Steel, but the American-based steel producer is staying on the sidelines for now. Semafor’s Rohan Goswami, who took another look at Cleveland-Cliffs in the wake of President Joe Biden’s decision to block Nippon Steel’s bid for US Steel, reports that the deal may be too pricey now for the Ohio-based firm. Nippon and US Steel have since sued the Biden administration, the Cleveland-Cliffs CEO, and the United Steelworkers union president for their efforts to block the deal. Cleveland-Cliffs has cast its bid as the patriotic choice, given the company’s American roots, but it can’t actually compete with the cash offered by Japan-based Nippon. The company is still interested in acquiring some of US Steel, however.

US accuses Sudan’s RSF of genocide

The US sanctioned the leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on Tuesday, saying the group has committed genocide in the country’s civil war. The Biden White House is making a late effort to ramp up the pressure on the northeast African country’s warring factions. Two former US officials told Semafor that extensive sanctions packages stalled for much of last year as the US launched an unsuccessful push for a ceasefire, creating frustration in parts of the administration. “This attempt to position the administration on the right side of history won’t work,” Sudan expert Cameron Hudson wrote on X. “It’s too late and too many people have died.”

— Mathias Hammer

Congress cools to voting on tariffs

House Republican leaders swatted down the prospect of voting on tariffs as part of their party-line tax plan, instead putting the ball in Trump’s court. “The tariff matter will largely be in the executive branch,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Semafor, adding, “I don’t know how much of it would be codified or expected to be codified.” Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2018, but recently he’s pledged to go much bigger, threatening broader tariffs against Canada, Mexico and, most recently, Denmark if it doesn’t heed his interest in acquiring Greenland for the US. Yet lawmakers who entertained the possibility of tariffs as a revenue-raiser for tax legislation also acknowledged the huge hurdles they’d face; even as taxes and tariffs run on separate tracks, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Congress would “look at how” tariffs might affect a budget reconciliation plan.

— Kadia Goba

GOP underperforms in first post-November test

No seats changed hands in the first special elections of 2025, with Democrats easily holding two Virginia legislative districts and Republicans holding a third. The wins helped Democrats retain razor-thin majorities in Richmond and answered a post-election question: whether liberals were so depressed about their defeat that their Biden-era turnout operation would suffer. Democrat Kannan Srinivasan took the state Senate seat of now-Rep. Suhas Subramanyam by 23 points, a slight improvement over Kamala Harris in the exurban DC district; Democrat JJ Singh won Srinivasan’s state delegate seat by the same margin. Republican Luther Cifers prevailed in the central Virginia seat vacated by now-Rep. John McGuire, but strong Democratic turnout shrunk the GOP advantage; Trump carried the seat by 29 points, and Cifers by 18. “While we celebrate tonight, our focus is already on November,” said Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helped defend the northern Virginia seats.

— David Weigel

Join us for our largest convening at Davos yet, featuring a world-class lineup of live journalism at the World Economic Forum 2025. Semafor editors will engage with industry leaders to discuss key themes, including global finance, blockchain, AI in the Gulf, Africa’s growth trajectory, and much more.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Some Republicans are hoping Donald Trump will get more forceful to break the GOP logjam on the reconciliation strategy to pass his agenda. “President Trump gets MVP status for solving the speaker vote. And we’re going to need him to play MVP on getting these bills done,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

Playbook: Trump’s ambitions regarding Greenland and the Panama Canal are evidence of him steering away from his first term, during which he balked at the neoconservative approach to “nation-building and foreign interventionism with the military.”

WaPo: A senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies says Greenlanders want independence, not just to “swap colonial overlords.”

Axios: The State Department warned Trump’s transition team about a possible humanitarian “catastrophe” in Gaza when an Israeli law blocking the UN Palestinian refugee agency takes effect.

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: The US military launched strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq that killed a non-US coalition soldier.

What the Right isn’t reading: Former Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., filed papers to run for mayor of Oakland.

White House

• Vice President Harris is planning a trip to Singapore, Bahrain, and Germany for her final full week in office.
• The White House announced this morning that 24 million Americans — a record high — signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act during the 2025 open enrollment period.

Congress

• Vice President Harris eulogized the late former President Jimmy Carter, who continues to lie in state in the Capitol, as “ahead of his time.”
• Senate Democrats are trying to stall Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing to be director of national intelligence, which the GOP plans to hold early next week. — Axios

Transition

• Donald Trump announced that Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani will invest $20 billion in building data centers in the US.
• Canada’s outgoing leader Justin Trudeau said there is “not a snowball’s chance in hell” of his country being absorbed by the US; Panama’s Foreign Minister Javier Martinez-Acha said control of the eponymous canal was “non-negotiable.” Meanwhile, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she welcomed US investment in the territory.

Outside the Beltway

• Two dead bodies were found in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue plane that flew from New York to Fort Lauderdale.

Polls

• The share of US adults who say the government should address immigration increased by 12 percentage points in the past year, according to an AP-NORC poll.

Business

• JPMorgan is preparing to tell employees to return to the office full-time. — Bloomberg
• Jensen Huang, founder of the chipmaker Nvidia, announced new hardware at a tech trade show, though investors would’ve liked more details on next-generation AI chips. — Marketwatch

Courts

• Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon temporarily blocked the Justice Department from issuing a report from special counsel Jack Smith about Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
• Two men on death row rejected President Biden’s decision to commute their sentences to life in prison, believing that accepting the action would disadvantage them as they appeal their cases. — NBC

Foreign Policy

• The Biden administration is in talks with the Taliban about exchanging three Americans being held in Afghanistan for an alleged al-Qaida operative being held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison. — WSJ
• Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani traveled to Iran for talks, reportedly also carrying a message from Donald Trump about Iran-backed militias in Iraq. — Asharq Al-Awsat

Technology

• Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a system similar to X’s Community Notes that relies on users to flag misinformation, a move that comes as the company looks to build ties with the incoming Trump administration.
• The Biden administration finalized a program for labeling internet-connected devices with a “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark” in a bid to convince companies to build in more security.

Energy

• Donald Trump is considering signing an executive order that would protect gas-powered appliances. — Reuters

Media

• The Washington Post laid off 4% of its staff, a move that affected employees on the business side.

Principals Team

Editors: Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

Reporters: Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Mark Amodei is a co-founder of the bipartisan American Canadian Economy and Security Caucus.