Principals

1. The border deal is barely alive
2. Ye-Jeff Roe connection
3. Trump kills draft RNC resolution
4. 2023’s surprise boom
5. Trump’s brief stand
6. U.S. pauses LNG export permits
7. Biden’s approval rating improves

PDB: Inside the Gen Z polling gender gap

Jake Sullivan to meet China’s Wang Yi… World Court to issue initial ruling in Gaza genocide case … WSJ editorial: Republicans, pass a border security deal

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

McConnell says he still backs the border deal

The Senate’s border deal is still alive, for now at least. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told his fellow Republicans Thursday that he still fully backed the bipartisan attempt to craft a package combining border security reforms and Ukraine aid, waving off reports from the night before that he was pulling back his support. But it’s still an open question whether the effort can survive the continued public onslaught by Donald Trump, who’s urging Republicans to reject any kind of compromise deal as he looks to make chaos at the border a focal point of his presidential campaign. Lawmakers are essentially done hammering out the proposal, according to Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the chief Democratic negotiator. “We’re at the finish line,” he said. “This is down to a political decision for Republicans as to whether they want to solve this problem or whether they want to keep it available for Trump to use it as a wedge.” Even if a bill can clear the Senate, however, its prospects remain murky in the House. A top aide to Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Senate staffers on Thursday that the deal would be DOA in the lower chamber if it includes some features that have been reported to the public, such as faster work permits for migrants, according to The Hill. Sen. John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, acknowledged the deal was facing a “critical moment,” adding that, “we’ve got to drive hard to get this done and if we can’t get there we’ll go to plan B.”

Ye tried to hire Jeff Roe to run his presidential campaign

Republican consultant Jeff Roe is well known for his work on Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign and the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC this election cycle. But between the two, Roe considered taking on another candidate for president: the artist formerly known as Kanye West, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports. In the summer of 2020, Roe held talks with Ye, as the rapper and off-the-rails political figure is now known, to run his presidential campaign under the so-called Birthday Party, three sources familiar with their interactions confirmed to Semafor. Roe, who ultimately never signed on as a consultant, declined to comment. But while Ye’s campaign was never more than a stunt, it had a tactical appeal at the time to some supporters of Donald Trump, who believed a Black celebrity might be able to siphon off African American votes from Biden. He ultimately won just 70,000 votes cast, while Biden carried 92% of the Black vote.

Trump doesn’t want the RNC to declare him the ‘presumptive’ nominee

Donald Trump halted an effort to declare him the “presumptive 2024 nominee” at next week’s Republican National Committee meeting in Las Vegas. “While they have far more votes than necessary to do it, I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan,” he posted on his Truth Social account. “They should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way, and finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.” RNC member David Bossie’s resolution, first reported by David Drucker at The Dispatch, was quickly condemned by Nikki Haley’s campaign, and by several Republicans on the 168-member committee. “Who cares what the RNC says?” a Haley spokeswoman told Semafor before Trump weighed in. “We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders.” One day earlier, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel had told Fox News that she didn’t see a “path” for Haley after the first two contests, suggesting that the primary should wrap up quickly in the name of “unity.” On Thursday night, Bossie withdrew the resolution.

— David Weigel and Shelby Talcott

The economy closed out strong in 2023

There are all sorts of interesting stories you can tell about Thursday’s blockbuster GDP report. There’s the soft landing angle: The U.S. economy closed out 2023 on an unexpectedly strong note, growing at a 3.3.% annual rate in the fourth quarter even as inflation mellowed, and defying the expectations of professional forecasters who overwhelmingly expected a recession by last year. There’s the Bidenomics angle: Growth in 2023 was bolstered by a U.S. factory construction boom unlike any other on record, which the president will surely tout up and down the campaign trail. For the simple wide-angle view, however, you can just look at this chart from the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal: Adjusted for inflation, GDP is now beating the Congressional Budget Office’s pre-pandemic projections, after trailing them for most of post-COVID era. In other words, judged by the sheer size of the economy, the U.S. is now officially overperforming.

— Jordan Weissmann

Trump says little on the stand in defamation trial

Donald Trump took the stand to defend himself in his defamation trial on Thursday, but his testimony lasted under five minutes and the judge significantly limited what he could say. A jury will decide as soon as today (after closing arguments) how much Trump owes columnist E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of sexually assaulting her. Judge Lewis Kaplan barred Trump from denying he sexually assaulted Carroll (another jury already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll last year). A “visibly angry” Trump told the nine-member jury that he defended himself against “something I considered a false accusation,” an answer that, like others, was cut off by Carroll’s attorney and ultimately the judge. “This is not America,” Trump said as he was exiting the courtroom.

Biden pauses permits for new LNG projects

The U.S. will temporarily stop issuing new permits for liquified natural gas export terminals, a move hailed by climate activists as a victory but which industry groups worry may have huge impacts on Western energy security. U.S. LNG exports — currently the world’s highest — have provided a critical backstop to Europe’s heating and electricity systems following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the terminals would have delayed the full decarbonizing of those systems. The decision, and the furor over it, points to what Semafor’s Climate & Energy Editor Tim McDonnell describes today as “one of the hardest needles to thread in the global energy transition”: Matching the fossil-fuel needs of today with the clean power needs of tomorrow.

Biden’s historically rough approval ratings

Here’s the good news for Joe Biden in Gallup’s latest polling: The president’s approval rating did in fact rise a couple of ticks at the start of this month. The bad news? It’s still just 41%, and on average his numbers were the second-worst of any president during their third year in office since Dwight Eisenhower (he’s sandwiched between Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter, both of whom lost reelection bids, though Trump might just be poised to pull a Grover Cleveland). Pew has its own good news/bad news story for the White House, too: The share of Americans who think the economy is in excellent or good shape is up 9% since April, thanks mostly to growing enthusiasm among Democrats and independents who lean toward the party. But it finds Biden’s approval rating has actually fallen to 33% during that time. (He’s currently at 27% with 18- to 29-year-olds.)

In an exclusive interview with Semafor, Rep. Krishnamoorthi will explore the House Select Committee on China’s achievements and answer questions about key priorities such as addressing forced labor, protecting U.S. intellectual property, and examining the future of TikTok in the United States. Sign up here.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Democrats are ready to go on offense on the economy with prices declining and GDP on the rise. “The challenge of being president is, you own the bad stuff whether you caused them or not,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. “You gotta own the good stuff as well.”

Playbook: Mark Penn thinks Donald Trump should choose Nikki Haley as his running mate. “She would get that women’s Republican vote in the suburbs overwhelmingly. And that would be the end of the election,” he said.

Axios: President Biden’s team is increasingly worried the Israel-Hamas conflict will impact his chances for reelection in November, particularly among young voters.

White House

• President Biden plans to host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for an official visit — complete with a state dinner — on April 10.
• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Thailand today and tomorrow. The two are expected to talk about the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
• Biden’s top Africa adviser, Judd Devermont, will leave his White House job by mid-February to join an Africa-focused private equity firm, Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke reported.
• Biden visited Wisconsin on Thursday to talk about infrastructure investments — and grabbed a beer with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Congress

• Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. announced that his wife, Bobbi, passed away following a battle with cancer. She was 70 years old.
• Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, brought up the idea of protecting Speaker Mike Johnson if conservatives try to remove him from power during a private meeting at the White House last week. — NBC
• Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. told colleagues that his effort to topple former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was in fact retribution for an ethics inquiry into the Florida congressman, according to messages viewed by the Daily Beast, which would basically confirm what McCarthy himself said multiple times in public.
• Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. said Thursday that he supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but on the condition that Hamas be “fully destroyed” first. (Earlier this week he declined to sign onto a Democratic measure reaffirming U.S. support for the two-state solution.)
• Members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will hold a field hearing on IP issues next Friday in L.A. and some will stay to attend the Grammy Awards in the evening.

Outside the Beltway

• Republicans across the country are backing up Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in his dispute with the federal government over the border. — Texas Tribune.
• Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner using nitrogen gas on Thursday night. Reporters on the scene said the condemned convict, 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, appeared to suffer a physically violent reaction to the gas, even though lawyers for the state had suggested it would lead to “unconsciousness in seconds.” — New York Times
• Florida’s House of Representatives approved legislation that would restrict social media access for children under the age of 16.

Courts

• Donald Trump’s lawyers signed onto a push to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election subversion case, alleging a conflict of interest in her hiring of Nathan Wade and also claiming she “stoked racial animus” by saying racism was motivating the effort to oust her.
• Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro received a four-month jail sentence for evading a congressional subpoena in the House investigation of Jan. 6.

On the Trail

• A super PAC supporting Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy deployed an online survey that lists three genders participants can choose from: “male,” “working woman,” and “homemaker.” — The 19th
• Rep. Garret Graves, R-La. got the short end of the stick with Louisiana’s new congressional map, which forces him to run in a race he would lose, challenge a colleague, or bow out of Congress. He insisted the map would be struck down in court and says he’s not going to be running against fellow GOP Rep. Julia Letlow. — Politico

Foreign Policy

• The U.S. shared intelligence with Iran that the Islamic State was preparing a terrorist attack that ultimately killed scores of people at a memorial for the late Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani. — WSJ
• CIA Director Bill Burns will travel to Europe to help land a deal between Israel and Hamas, which would see the terror group release the remaining hostages in exchange for a ceasefire. — Washington Post
• A Russian court extended Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention by two months.
• Global deaths from war are surging to levels unseen since the 1980’s and Vox’s Joshua Keating plays whodunit on a list of potential culprits, from U.S. disengagement, to fading norms against interstate conflict, to weaponized drones becoming cheap and widely accessible.

Technology

The Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing investments that leading tech companies Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have made in two artificial intelligence startups.

Big Read

Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, digs into one of the most striking trends in recent polling: The massive gender gap in Gen Z’s politics. In survey data and follow-up interviews, he finds women rapidly trending left, with the 2017 #MeToo movement popping out as the biggest catalyst. Men, by contrast, are less happy, more unsure of their place in society, and interested in right-leaning role models offering guidance. They also seem less sure how to translate these feelings into a concrete national agenda, Cox writes: “As women’s political priorities have solidified, young men’s priorities have melted into mush. Surveys consistently show that young men are far less likely than women to say any particular issue is personally important to them.”

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: The Department of Education launched an investigation into Northwestern’s handling of antisemitism allegations on campus.

What the Right isn’t reading: A record half of U.S. renters are struggling to pay housing costs, according to a new study.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Mark DeSaulnier is a Democratic representative from California.