Principals

1. Congress avoids shutdown
2. Johnson’s way with words
3. Future Israel aid
4. Trump attacks border deal
5. Trump veepstakes
6. No Labels pushes back
7. New bipartisan nonprofit
8. Browder vs. the WEF

PDB: Semafor interviews Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova at Davos

Biden meets bipartisan mayors … Houthis fire at another American ship … World Economic Forum shifts away from the left at Davos

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Washington keeps its lights on

As expected, Congress passed another short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown Thursday. The deal will fund Washington until a pair of deadlines in March, giving lawmakers time to finally work out a full-year budget agreement. But while the continuing resolution easily passed the Senate, it met opposition from House conservatives, and ultimately cleared the chamber with mostly Democratic votes. The tally underscored the challenge Speaker Mike Johnson will face managing his conference as he heads into more complicated talks over the final spending plan as well as a potential deal on border security and Ukraine aid. “While there may be a Republican majority on paper, more than 200 Democrats will be needed to keep the government’s lights on,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said.

Mike Johnson talks like a lawyer. That might be a problem.

While we’re talking about Mike Johnson, have you noticed how members of Congress keep leaving meetings with the speaker thinking he agrees with their position, only to find out later that, no, he doesn’t? Last week, conservatives suggested Johnson was about to tear up his budget agreement with Senate Democrats, until he publicly shot the idea down. This week, they said he might bring up a vote on whether to attach border security measures to Congress’s short-term spending bill (he killed that idea less than an hour later). Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann pins the blame on Johnson’s penchant for ambiguous lawyer speak, which lets him avoid committing to firm positions on issues but leaves his comments open to interpretation. Kadia Goba says hard-right members may just be mistaking their famously polite leader’s willingness to hear them out for agreement. But Joseph Zeballos-Roig thinks Johnson might just be telling members what they want to hear because he’s in day-to-day “survival mode.” Could his lawyerly elocutions end up alienating his conference? We’ll see.

Path forward for Israel aid grows more complicated

It’s not just Ukraine: The path forward for Israel aid is also getting more complicated in Congress. An increasing number of Democrats are discussing tacking conditions onto future aid to the Jewish state, as President Biden’s requested package mixing Ukraine and Israel assistance languishes and tensions rise between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza. Senate Democrats are signaling there is currently no plan to separate out and vote on Israel aid if the discussions around Biden’s broader national security package fail to achieve a law, Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant writes. “[Senate Majority] Leader Schumer doesn’t want that. President Biden doesn’t want that. We’re not doing Israel only,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii told Semafor. “We’re not doing Ukraine only. These things are tied together whether anyone likes it or not.” While Senate negotiators say they’re close to an agreement, any deal faces a steep uphill battle in the House. It’s possible Democrats are just posturing for negotiating leverage, but Netanyahu may not have helped his case on Thursday when he rejected calls for the future creation of a Palestinian state.

GOP senators are brushing off Trump’s attacks on the border deal

Donald Trump has come out hard against the Senate unfinished border compromise — but so far, the chamber’s Republicans are mostly shrugging off his comments. “I don’t think that should prevent the Senate from trying to do the best we can,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas told reporters Thursday. “And I don’t accept the idea that we got to wait another year to do something when we have more than 10,000 people a day coming across the border.” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. told Semafor that he was a “little disappointed” by Trump’s opposition, and not to reserve a crisis for later when we can solve it sooner. Top Senate Republicans have spent the last few days pushing back against suggestions that the party should wait to pass a border deal until it also controls the White House, an idea reportedly floated by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Some influential House Republicans seem to agree. Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern told Semafor, for instance, that he didn’t believe the GOP should hold off. “I want to get the border secure so we can save Americans,” he said.

What’s driving the Trump VP talk

As Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. heads to New Hampshire to rally with Trump, speculation is soaring that she may become his running mate. Then again, speculation has soared about a lot of people this week — current rival Nikki Haley, fallen rival Vivek Ramaswamy, even Tucker Carlson. Expect plenty more, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott writes: In addition to Trump’s love for reality-style competition, he’s a promiscuous advice-seeker, which provides leaks for nonstop stories on his potential options. A buzzy NBC News piece on Stefanik yesterday opened with Trump surveying Mar-a-Lago members about running mates over a candlelit dinner and hearing good things about the congresswoman. “He asks questions about everyone, like everyone under the sun,” one Trump aide said. Interested candidates also know Trump monitors their cable coverage closely — Stefanik attracted attention when she mirrored him in calling Jan. 6 defendants “hostages” on “Meet The Press” — and will figure out how to muscle their way back into the conversation if they feel threatened by a new name. “One day you see stories about Doug Burgum being up on stage in Iowa with Trump, and then people get sensitive about that,” the aide said. “It’s a bunch of people just being sensitive about everything.”

No Labels blasts ‘unlawful conspiracy’ against its ballot access plans

No Labels accused its enemies of an “unlawful conspiracy” against its ballot access drive on Thursday, urging the Justice Department to defend its staff and allies from “intimidation, harassment, and extortion.” At the National Press Club, No Labels leaders quoted from Semafor’s reporting on the effort to hobble their campaign to get ballot access for a to-be-determined presidential cabinet. “Every threat leveled at No Labels as an organization is a threat leveled at citizens and voters across the country,” said Benjamin Chavis, a No Labels co-chair. Democrats laughed that off, skeptical that the group could make a case out of Democratic operatives telling No Labels strategists that they’d never work in party politics again if they put a third-party candidate on the ballot. “It doesn’t bode well for No Labels’ national campaign effort that they can’t tell the difference between political campaigning and mafia tactics,” American Bridge president Pat Dennis said in a statement. “Even Ron DeSantis could handle more than this.” One Democrat who disagreed: Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who was campaigning in New Hampshire on Thursday and promoted the No Labels complaint. “I’ve seen it firsthand,” said Phillips, explaining that Democratic consultants had been told not to work with him if they wanted their careers to continue.

— David Weigel

Tom Reed’s next act: A bipartisan nonprofit

Tom Reed, the former Republican congressman who crossed the House chamber aisle on Jan. 6, 2021, to stand with his Democratic colleagues in a show of unity, wants to continue the same bipartisanship in life after Congress. Reed, who previously represented upstate New York, is launching a nonprofit meant to “organize the silent majority.” Reed will serve as president of the partially self-funded Committee of the American Majority (CAM), with former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former Rep. Max Rose as senior advisors. “As I said in my farewell speech on the House floor, I will do whatever I can to unite our country by inspiring people rather than scaring them,” Reed said in a statement. Reed was co-chair of the House Problem Solvers Caucus alongside Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and envisions this new venture as an unaffiliated extension of the group in support of pragmatic solutions and bipartisan action plans based on a “center-right ideological makeup of fiscal conservatism and social freedom.”

— Kadia Goba

Bill Browder’s Davos fight

Last year, financier and full time anti-Putin activist Bill Browder said he’d boycott the World Economic Forum — though he’s ubiquitous on the Davos sidelines — when the organization jacked up his price of entry to $250,000 from $70,000. Browder has long been an unusual Davos figure, paying for the privilege of going into any session that had a key Russian government apparatchik and questioning them about the hypocrisy of saying Russia was a safe and sound place to invest when they had murdered Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in prison and then covered up the crime. He told me that last year, WEF senior leadership had informed him there were essentially two categories of attendance: business people who paid their way in, and NGOs and non-profit activists who paid a different price, usually zero dollars or Swiss francs (according to Browder’s account). While for many years, he had pursued his activism informally, successfully securing passage of human rights-focused “Magnitsky Acts” in the United States and other nations around the world, this past year he said he formalized his work and role by establishing a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, the Magnitsky Justice Foundation. So, he applied for entry at WEF in 2024 in his role as a formal and full-time NGO head. According to Browder, the note he got back said, “Dear Mr. Browder, I’m sorry to say we are unable to honor your request. Thank you very much.”

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Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn. is meeting individually with “less than a handful” of Republicans skeptical of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to convince them to vote in favor of it.

Playbook: Some House Democrats are considering trading a deal on border security with a promise to save Speaker Mike Johnson if conservatives move to oust him. “Our job is not to save Johnson, but I think it would be a mighty pity, if he did the right thing … for us not to support him,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “Up to this point, he’s been a fairly honest broker.”

Axios: Nikki Haley is playing it safe in New Hampshire.

White House

• President Biden indicated he isn’t concerned about losing Arab American voters over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. “The former president wants to put a ban on Arabs coming into the country. We’ll make sure he — we understand who cares about the Arab population, number one,” he told reporters.
• Biden announced more student loan cancellations this morning that will impact 74,000 borrowers.
• Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is focusing on antisemitism and gender equity on his trip to Davos.

Congress

• There’s a new bipartisan push in Congress: proxy voting for new mothers.
• Hunter Biden will be deposed by the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on Feb. 28, the respective Republican chairmen announced.
• House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala. wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanding he testify on Feb. 14 about the circumstances surrounding his secret hospitalization earlier this month.

Courts

• Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a 59-page filing to the Supreme Court that the justices should “put a swift and decisive end” to efforts to disqualify him from various ballots.
• In a Truth Social post, Trump argued presidents should be afforded complete immunity from prosecution even for events that “cross the line.” CNN called the argument “absurd.”
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, hardly a fan of Trump, joined 178 other Republican lawmakers who signed into a Supreme Court brief supporting the former president’s efforts to stay on the 2024 ballot.
• Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is trying to quash a subpoena for her testimony in divorce proceedings involving a special prosecutor helping on the Georgia election subversion case. — NYT

On the Trail

• The Biden campaign has big plans for the Roe v. Wade anniversary as it seeks to keep abortion at the top of the list of voting issues in 2024, including ad buys, campaign rallies, and a joint appearance by President Biden and Vice President Harris next Tuesday in northern Virginia.
• Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. is officially endorsing Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who is competing against the state’s first lady Tammy Murphy to unseat the indicted Sen. Bob Menendez in the Democratic primary. Of course, you’d have known that weeks ago if you subscribed to David Weigel’s Americana newsletter, where Fetterman praised Kim as a “solid, dependable Democratic vote” and dismissed Murphy as a “nepo candidate.” Sign up here.
• Ken Langone, one of Nikki Haley’s billionaire supporters, said he may withhold further support if she doesn’t perform well in the New Hampshire GOP primary. — FT
• Haley said at a CNN town hall that Donald Trump is spreading birther conspiracies about her because he is “threatened” and “insecure.”
• Former congressman Justin Amash is considering running for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat.

Airport Encounters

National Security

A scathing Justice Department report found “cascading failures” in the law enforcement response to the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and determined that lives could have been saved if the officers had responded to the shooting quicker.

Foreign Policy

• In an interview with Semafor’s Steve Clemons in Davos, Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova warned of the consequences of the U.S. not passing further support for Ukraine. “Poland is not safe. Baltic states are not safe. Actually, no one in Europe is safe, and not only Europe. Let’s remember this is the guy who was doing murders in Syria,” she said. “This is the guy whose Wagner troops are doing atrocities in Africa.”
• NATO is holding its largest military exercises since the Cold War, with roughly 90,000 troops taking part.

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, according to data from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: A California family sued their son’s school after he was accused of wearing “blackface” at a football game. The family says he was wearing warrior paint.

What the Right isn’t reading: Two leading transgender rights organizations in the U.S., the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, are merging.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

Reporters: Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Dusty Johnson is a Republican congressman from South Dakota.