Principals

1. Trump agenda
2. More executive orders expected
3. Energy expansionism
4. AI influences
5. Iran threat
6. Fetterman denies party switch
7. Resistance to DOGE

PDB: Biden’s final pardons

Senate panel to vote on Bessent nomination … Taliban releases two Americans in prisoner swap ... Trump eyes Feb. 1 for tariffs on Canada, Mexico

Trump ambition meets slow Congress

House and Senate Republican leaders will meet with President Donald Trump this afternoon as the two chambers try to reconcile divergent approaches to his border and tax agenda, in addition to shutdown and debt ceiling deadlines that pose their own challenges. There’s likely to be more on their schedule, as Trump has urged Senate Republicans to quickly confirm his Cabinet. Bottom line: Congress moves slow, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. There was a bright start for Trump Monday night after Marco Rubio was confirmed to lead the State Department in a 99-0 vote, but it will get harder from here. Senate Republicans want to schedule votes ASAP on John Ratcliffe to be CIA director and Kristi Noem to lead DHS, but they’re likely to get no help on Pete Hegseth’s bid to lead the Pentagon. Negotiations on all those votes will play out all week — and maybe even the weekend.

Trump 2.0’s first full day agenda

Trump’s first full day in office will be a busy one: In addition to hosting a meeting with Republican leaders this afternoon, he’ll attend a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral as is customary and is expected to sign more executive orders. The new US president quickly got to work signing a slew of directives, including ones that commuted the sentences of 14 individuals convicted in the Jan. 6 riot of the US Capitol and pardoned “all other individuals convicted of offenses” relating to that event. Others included a legally dubious order to delay the US ban on TikTok for 75 days, end birthright citizenship, suspend refugee admissions, freeze hiring of federal workers, withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord (again), and pull out of the World Health Organization. The Washington Post has a full list.

— Shelby Talcott and Morgan Chalfant

Trump rejects Biden-era energy policy

Trump’s suite of executive orders also looked to boost fossil fuel production and exports, and restrict the development of clean energy. Trump’s emergency declaration on energy could unlock new powers to bypass bureaucratic obstacles in approving the construction of power plants and grid infrastructure. He re-opened Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling, withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, and pulled back California’s authority to restrict sales of gas-engine cars. He also lifted a freeze on LNG export permits, replacing it with a freeze on offshore wind leasing. For other countries, purchases of US oil and gas, especially LNG, will likely be a condition for favorable trade and political relations with Trump. But his plans for higher production will likely be at odds with promises to lower consumer energy prices.

— Tim McDonnell

An AI executive’s message to Trump

Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang has a message for Trump: the US “must win the AI war.” Wang is taking out a full-page ad in The Washington Post today to press that case and told Semafor’s Reed Albergotti that he was motivated to make his recommendations by a new White House that is planning to aggressively support new technology and courting input from the industry. “They’re listening,” he said. “This incoming administration wants to move fast and take a lot of action and really be quite ambitious about a lot of these issues.” Scale, now worth $14 billion, has helped make Wang an influential figure in the industry, with the ear of US officials and tech titans alike. Wang attended Trump’s inauguration, alongside other tech executives like Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Biden team stressed Iran threats to Trump team

The outgoing Biden White House homeland security team urged Trump’s team to focus on seven major threats, including Iran’s plots against dissidents and current and former US officials, Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant reported. Liz Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s top homeland security adviser, briefed the incoming Trump team, headed by Stephen Miller, on the other top priorities, including global and domestic counterterrorism; biological threats, such as those arising from advancements in artificial intelligence and biotechnology; natural disasters; cyber and physical threats to critical infrastructure; the fentanyl crisis; and the challenge posed by drones. US officials have warned about Iran’s threats against current and former officials; the US obtained intelligence last year related to an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump (one that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently denied).

Fetterman: ‘I would make a pretty bad Republican’

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has seen the rumors on social media that he’s going to switch caucuses. He told Burgess Everett that’s all “amateur hour shit.” Despite stirring plenty of intrigue in the Capitol for his visit with Trump, work with Republicans on the now-passed Laken Riley Act and breaks from his party, he said he’s not going anywhere … in his own colorful way. “If they think, oh, it’s going to be like a Manchin or a Sinema play, that’s just not true, and that’s not going to happen,” Fetterman said Monday evening. “It’s not gonna happen. And even if I wanted to do that, that is a rocket sled to Palookaville to try to switch. I would make a pretty bad Republican.”

DOGE inspires legal challenges

Trump’s agenda is already running into resistance in the form of lawsuits, a handful of which target the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and other Democratic-aligned groups like the American Federation of Teachers sued DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget; they accuse the new administration of violating rules for federal advisory committees, including public records requirements. DOGE is “a shadow operation led by unelected billionaires who stand to reap huge financial rewards from this influence and access,” the lawsuit claims. In other legal news, the ACLU sued over Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship. It’s an early taste of pushback to the new Trump administration, though Democratic boycotts of Trump’s inauguration were more muted this time around, Semafor’s David Weigel noted.

Blindspot:

What the Left isn’t reading: President Trump moved to suspend the security clearances of dozens of intelligence experts who signed a letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

What the Right isn’t reading: Hillary Clinton laughed when Trump said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Speaker Mike Johnson said he wants to use today’s meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the legislative outlook for the president’s first 100 days and to “align the Senate and House together” on a reconciliation strategy. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said reconciliation and government funding would be the focuses.

Playbook: Politico’s global editor-in-chief John Harris says Trump is “holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.”

WaPo: President Biden’s last-minute pardons shield its recipients from federal charges, but “I predict there will be congressional investigations, and the pardon doesn’t spare them from that,” said Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of law and political science at Yale Law School.

Axios: Trump’s freewheeling speech at the Capitol yesterday following his inaugural address shows he won’t be reigned in by staff. “We struggled with this the entire time in the first administration. But Trump gonna Trump,” one former adviser said. “The difference between now and then is this crew doesn’t sweat it.”

White House

• On his way out of office, Joe Biden preemptively pardoned members of his family and critics of President Trump, including Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, members of the House Jan. 6 committee, his brothers, James and Frank, and his sister, Valerie. Former Trump special counsel Jack Smith was notably not among them.
• One of Trump’s first executive orders established the Department of Government Efficiency, whose work will include updating federal software systems to “private-sector standards,” Semafor’s Shelby Talcott scooped.

Congress

• The Senate passed the Laken Riley Act in a 64-35 on the bill; a dozen Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of it.
• The Senate Armed Services Committee approved Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary in a party-line vote, while the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced John Ratcliffe’s nomination to be CIA director in a bipartisan vote.

Transition

• New York City Mayor Eric Adams attended the inauguration after receiving a very last-minute invitation. And a number of prominent foreign dignitaries made it, including fellow conservative heads of state Javier Milei of Argentina and Giorgia Meloni of Italy.
• Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a Dearborn cleric who was criticized by pro-Israel groups as being sympathetic towards Hezbollah, was booted from the event.

Outside the Beltway

• Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richard died after being diagnosed with an incurable brain cancer.
• Vivek Ramaswamy won’t be part of DOGE because he is running for Ohio governor (as Semafor scooped last week).

Economy

• President Trump didn’t immediately levy tariffs on foreign goods but instead directed federal agencies to begin studying them, an indication he may take a “more measured approach” to the duties. — NYT

National Security

• The Pentagon removed a portrait of Gen. Mark Milley put up just days ago.
• Donald Trump returned Cuba to the US’ list of countries that sponsor terrorism a week after Joe Biden removed it.

Foreign Policy

• Hundreds of Afghans cleared to resettle in the US had their flights cancelled as the Trump administration moved to halt refugee admissions. — Reuters
• The mother of Austin Tice, the American journalist who went missing in Syria more than a decade ago, made a trip to the country.

Media

• The Washington Post and George Mason University tracked Americans’ reactions to Donald Trump’s inaugural address in real time.
• The straight-armed salute Elon Musk made at the end of his inauguration celebration remarks looked like a Nazi greeting to many observers, especially the foreign press.

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

John Dean served as White House counsel under President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

The key Washington lobbying group for news organizations and publishers is gearing up for legal action against a major artificial intelligence company that it believes has been egregiously copying publisher content to power its large language model, Semafor’s Max Tani scooped.

Proponents of the move said that the current ambiguity of laws around copyright infringement by AI necessitates legal action by news publishers who feel that many LLMs have been trained on their work without any (or adequate) compensation.