Principals

1. Biden mum on E. Jean Carroll
2. Johnson blasts border deal
3. SALT caucus rebels
4. Israel’s Hamas exile plan
5. Big tech hearing
6. Trouble for The Squad

PDB: House committee stays late to mark up, pass Mayorkas impeachment articles

Fed wraps up meeting … WaPo: Zelenskyy expected to oust top commander … Iran vows response to any U.S. attack on its soil, interests

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Why Biden isn’t using E. Jean Carroll against Trump

E. Jean Carroll wants to do “anything” she can to help President Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump, but don’t expect Biden to take her up on the offer, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott writes. Despite Trump being found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and subsequently forced to pay her over $83 million for defamatory statements, top Democratic strategists tell Semafor that the Biden campaign should take a different route. Voters know who Trump is, they say, and team Biden is better off focusing on issues like abortion and the economy. To the extent they use topics like the Carroll ruling, it should be to argue generally that Trump isn’t concerned about issues that interest voters, rather than a focused attack on his character, they argue. As former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod put it: “People are concerned about their own lives, so while this is a piece of an argument it can’t be the essence of it.”

Lawmakers are already looking beyond a border deal

The Senate’s unreleased border deal is looking more imperiled by the day. On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted at a news conference that it was a “nonstarter” in the House based on reported details of the package. The speaker also privately told a trio of lawmakers from Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia that the national security supplemental — which would combine border security reforms with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and countering China — would likely be split up, though he didn’t expand on what that would look like. Some senators are already starting to look beyond the border deal, which was initially supposed to unlock a vote on Ukraine funding particularly for skeptical GOP members. “I support the aid to Ukraine and Israel and the Indo-Pacific. It’d be nice to change the status quo on the border. But if there’s not the political support to do that, then I think we should proceed with the rest of the supplemental,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas told reporters.

— Morgan Chalfant and Joseph Zeballos-Roig

The odd alliance tripping up the House’s tax bill

An unlikely coalition of moderate New York Republicans and hardline conservatives is banding together in the House to demand major changes to the Wyden-Smith tax bill. Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good, R-Va. told Bloomberg Tuesday afternoon he wants to bar undocumented parents from collecting the Child Tax Credit, as they can under current law. At the same time, a faction of New Yorkers made up of Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, and Andrew Garbarino want to raise the current $10,000 cap on the State and Local Tax Deduction. That group fired a warning shot of sorts Tuesday by nearly tanking a rule vote on an unrelated measure, before eventually relenting. Their short-lived rebellion yielded an afternoon meeting between members of the Freedom Caucus, the Ways and Means panel, and the SALT caucus about a path forward. “He’s trying to look for an accommodation and a balance in the conference,” LaLota told Semafor, referring to Speaker Johnson as a “good-faith partner.” LaLota is pushing to include Lawler’s bill to double SALT deductibility to $20,000 for married couples. But there are also plenty of GOP SALT skeptics. “I don’t think you can make the argument like you can all the other provisions that this is going to benefit everyone,” Ways and Means member Jodey Arrington, R-Texas told Semafor.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Kadia Goba

Israel eyes longshot plan to exile some Hamas leaders

The Israeli government has mulled allowing some of Hamas’ senior military leaders to take refuge in a third Middle East country — potentially Algeria, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia — as a step to accelerate an end to the Gaza war and forge a new political leadership in the Palestinian territories, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reports. The plan, discussed internally by the Israeli government, is a long shot: it faces deep skepticism among Mideast governments who doubt the Hamas leadership would ever leave Gaza. The news comes as the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt try to broker a deal that would see Hamas release the remaining hostages held since the Oct. 7 attack, talks that have yet to yield a breakthrough. Hamas said Tuesday it was studying a proposal that would impose a six-week ceasefire on Gaza while hostages and Palestinian prisoners are released.

Congress to grill tech CEOs on kid safety

The chief executives from five major tech companies — Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord — will face questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing this morning focused on children’s safety online. The hearing comes as Congress weighs legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act, to impose requirements on tech firms to prevent sexual abuse and harassment of children online. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to defend what the company has done to keep kids safe online while acknowledging it poses challenges. He’ll also endorse legislation on age verification and parental control for children under 16 using apps. “No matter how much we invest or how effective our tools are, this is an adversarial space,” Zuckerberg will say, according to a copy of his testimony shared with Semafor. There won’t be any representatives from Google or YouTube, but a Judiciary committee spokesman said that isn’t a sign that they are “off the hook.”

— Morgan Chalfant

The squad’s rough stretch

The “Squad” is having a week. The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. over allegedly using campaign cash to pay for private security services. The DOJ has not released details, but Bush confirmed the inquiry and denied the accusations on Tuesday. “In recent months, right-wing organizations have lodged baseless complaints against me, peddling notions that I have misused campaign funds to pay for personal security services,” she said in a statement. “That is simply not true.” The story surfaced the same day The Daily Beast reported that Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories on his personal blog more than a decade ago (which he later said he “regrets”) and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was condemned by Somaliland Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Rhoda Elmi for a speech she gave at an event in her hometown Minneapolis. Speaking in her native Somali, she backed Somalia in a territorial dispute with Somaliland, and appeared to describe herself as “Somali first” and “Muslim second.” That line has led to calls for her resignation from Republicans, though Omar said the subtitles in the video were “completely off.”

— Kadia Goba

In an exclusive interview with Semafor on Feb. 5, 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: Speaker Mike Johnson is putting the bipartisan tax bill on the floor today and it will likely be unamended, despite the pressure he’s facing from New York Republicans for changes.

Playbook: The White House is still optimistic about the prospects of a border and Ukraine deal passing, despite it being in doubt even in the Senate. “And, yes, we’d love some of what they’re smoking,” Playbook comments.

Axios: Nikki Haley is planning a “Hail Mary strategy” to win the GOP nomination, betting on support from Democrats and independents in 13 states with open primaries.

White House

• President Biden and Vice President Harris are having lunch together this afternoon.
• Biden said he has decided on how to respond to the Iran-backed militia attack that killed three U.S. service members overseas, without revealing the plans. “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “That’s not what I’m looking for.”
• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, to discuss the Gaza war and efforts to release hostages still being held by Hamas.
• Sullivan said during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations that he and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi agreed over the weekend that Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping should hold a phone call “sooner rather than later.”
• Xi told Biden at their meeting in November that China wouldn’t interfere in the 2024 election. — CNN

Congress

• Today at noon, Speaker Mike Johnson will give his first speech on the House floor since becoming speaker.
• Eric Schwerin, a longtime business associate of Hunter Biden, told the House Oversight Committee behind closed doors that he was not aware of any “financial transactions or compensation” that Joe Biden received as vice president related to business deals of his family members. — ABC
• Senate Democrats — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — want the Biden administration to entirely deschedule marijuana via executive action.
• West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s wife, Gayle Manchin, was hospitalized after a car crash in Alabama, but he said she’s in “stable condition.”
• A bipartisan group of senators led by Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock asked the Biden administration to increase tariffs on solar panel products from China.
• The House Homeland Security Committee worked well into the early hours of the morning marking up and eventually passing along party lines articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Two members, Reps. Tom McClintock, R-Calif. and Ken Buck, R-Colo. are still leaning no on the final passage when it comes to the floor.
• Which Congressional leader found time for self-care at a D.C. nail salon this week? Maybe the one whose caucus isn’t melting down?

Dogs

Economy

• As the Federal Reserve wraps up its January meeting today, there’s one question on everyone’s mind: How soon can we expect rate cuts? Investors have lowered their expectations for cuts by March, thanks to cautious words by some of the central bank’s policymakers, who are still wary of easing up too soon and allowing inflation to return. But with inflation on the wane, a chorus of economists has been calling on the Fed to act sooner rather than later, lest it accidentally allow the economy to slip into a recession.
• Yet more evidence of a vibe shift: The Conference Board’s consumer confidence measure hit a two-year high Tuesday.

Courts

• A Delaware judge voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package from Tesla, which was approved in 2018 and helped make him one of the world’s richest people.
• Nathan Wade, the Georgia prosecutor at the center of controversy in Donald Trump’s election interference case, settled his divorce dispute.

Polls

Six in 10 swing state voters say President Biden is at least partially responsible for the surge of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a new Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll out this morning. Those surveyed across seven battleground states — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — say they trust Donald Trump over Biden on immigration issues by a margin of 52% to 30%.

On the Trail

• Allies of Donald Trump have been musing about how to go after Taylor Swift should she decide to endorse President Biden for reelection. — Rolling Stone
• A week after the United Auto Workers union threw its support behind President Biden, he’s headed to Michigan for a political event on Thursday. It’s his first trip to the key swing state this year, Politico notes.
• Illinois’ bipartisan State Board of Elections voted unanimously to keep Trump on the state’s election ballot and dismiss a 14th Amendment challenge.
• The next spate of Republican primaries will be held in states where the rules deeply favor Donald Trump, Semafor’s Dave Weigel writes. (Nikki Haley isn’t even on the ballot in the coming Nevada caucus.)
• Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. met with Biden in December and urged him to change his messaging to better attract Black voters. “It’s one thing to hear what you’ve done, it’s something else to see what you’ve done. But in politics, the most important thing is for one to feel what you have done,” Clyburn told NOTUS. “Inflation Reduction Act? Nobody’s gonna feel that. Capping insulin at $35 a month. People will feel that.”

National Security

Federal law enforcement “remotely disabled” parts of a vast Chinese hacking operation that successfully targeted thousands of internet-connected devices in the U.S. — Reuters

Foreign Policy

• The U.S. and Saudi Arabia resumed conversations about deepening defense ties. — Bloomberg
• U.S. officials uncovered evidence that drug traffickers funneled millions of dollars to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first, unsuccessful, presidential campaign, a ProPublica investigation found.

Big Read

In an expansive piece in Foreign Affairs, CIA Director Bill Burns argues that pulling back U.S. aid to Ukraine would be a “mistake of historic proportions” and also offers some details on how the agency is changing to leverage artificial intelligence, better recruit, and focus more on the long-term challenge of China. The CIA isn’t just hiring more Mandarin speakers and devoting more resources to China-related collection efforts; it’s also “quietly strengthening intelligence channels to our counterparts in Beijing, an important means of helping policymakers avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and inadvertent collisions between the United States and China,” Burns writes.

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: Fair Fight, the advocacy organization started by former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, laid off about three quarters of its staff.

What the Right isn’t reading: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law regulating bathroom access for transgender people, making Utah one of at least 11 states with such laws on the books.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Meet Flagship Asia Morning, a new edition of our Flagship newsletter. Timed for the Asian morning and North American afternoon, the new edition’s mission remains the same — to keep readers informed without overwhelming them, ensuring they are aware of the world yet still able to go about their day — while offering a deeper look at the changes underway in the world’s most populous continent.

Grover Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform.