Principals

1. Biden hosts shutdown talks
2. What Zelenskyy told senators
3. Thune bends the knee
4. Reviving ‘Remain in Mexico’
5. Arrington’s fiscal commission
6. RFK Jr. talks running mates
7. Haley loses Koch

PDB: Trump, RFK Jr. compete for the support of California influencer Jessica Reed Kraus

Senate returns ahead of Friday government shutdown deadline … Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Shtayyeh offers resignation … NYT: Can Whitmer deliver Michigan for Biden?

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

President Biden looks to break a shutdown impasse

As Washington moves closer to a shutdown, President Biden is set to meet with the “Big Four” House and Senate leaders to discuss government funding and a stalled aid package to Ukraine and Israel. Congressional negotiators are racing to avoid a partial funding lapse on March 2, and had hoped to release legislative text of a temporary spending agreement Sunday night. But a slipped deadline turned into public sniping. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was “clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out.” House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted in his own statement that “House Republicans will continue to work in good faith” but claimed that Democrats complicated talks with last-minute demands. Discussions continue to hammer out the finer details of a $1.7 trillion appropriations package funding discretionary spending programs through fiscal year 2024. But Johnson is facing pressure from his restive right flank to secure steep spending cuts and other conservative goals like zeroing out the salary of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and defunding Planned Parenthood.

What Zelenskyy told the Senate delegation

Russian President Vladimir Putin will “roll over Ukraine in the coming months” if the U.S. Congress does not quickly pass more assistance to support Kyiv’s war effort, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. told Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant following his trip to Ukraine. Bennet, who visited Lviv with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, is among the Democrats issuing increasingly dire warnings about Ukraine’s position. “If we pull the rug out from under them … it will be the most shameful thing that we’ll have done, I think, in my lifetime,” Bennet said. The impact is already being felt on the battlefield, Ukrainian officials told lawmakers: They said their military wouldn’t have withdrawn troops from Avdiivka, which fell to Russia earlier this month, if they had certainty about incoming U.S. assistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said Sunday that aid is needed within a month to stave off further deterioration, told the senators his country can win the war against Russia with more U.S. aid, a more optimistic take than officials and analysts who view major near-term gains by Ukraine as increasingly unlikely.

John Thune endorses Donald Trump

The last of the “Three Johns” has fallen into line. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. endorsed Donald Trump on Sunday, joining Johns Barrasso, R-Wyo. and Cornyn, R-Texas, who each did the same last month. The three senators have long been the frontrunners to succeed the aging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has not endorsed the former president. Thune previously endorsed Tim Scott’s failed run and has long been critical of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump, in turn, labeled him “RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy’” in 2022 and unsuccessfully encouraged a primary challenge against him. Last year, Trump reportedly took credit for tanking Rep. Tom Emmer’s, R-Minn. speakership bid after determining Emmer was insufficiently loyal. While the Senate has been more resistant to Trump’s influence than the House, there’s a growing MAGA-aligned faction clashing with McConnell and it’s getting harder to imagine an avowedly anti-Trump candidate making it through.

Republicans want to bring back Remain in Mexico. But what if Mexico says no?

House Republicans have a clear No. 1 demand these days when it comes to the border: President Biden, they say, should bring back “Remain in Mexico.” The Trump-era program required some asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while awaiting their immigration court dates, instead of allowing them to enter the U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a letter last week that the administration could prove it was “serious” about tackling the migrant crisis by reviving the policy, which he had previously called the “best” legal tool available to slow arrivals at the border. But even if Biden wanted to resurrect the program, it’s not clear Mexico’s government would play along, Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig writes. Last year, for instance, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would reject any effort to revive the policy. Mexico’s leaders are reluctant to reestablish the program because they don’t believe its first iteration effectively reduced migration and worry that a new version could spark fresh legal battles with human rights groups, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. But conservatives argue Biden should borrow a page from Trump’s own hardball tactics, and potentially threaten tariffs or taxes on remittances if Mexico doesn’t cooperate.

It’s time to talk about tax hikes, says Republican budget chair

The chair of the House Budget Committee has a message for his fellow Republicans: If they ever want to fix Washington’s finances, they’ll have to talk about raising taxes. “It’s only fair to have both revenue and expenditures on the table,” Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas recently told Semafor’s Kadia Goba as he discussed his push for a bipartisan fiscal commission to deal with the country’s red ink. The idea appears to have some momentum, at least in the House, where the Budget Committee approved legislation to create the commission on a bipartisan vote last month and Speaker Mike Johnson has lent his support. But there’s plenty of skepticism that this effort will succeed at convincing both sides to make painful concessions when attempts like the 2010 Bowles-Simpson Commission failed. “I just know the Republican Party in 2024 is not about to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, whether a commission says they should do it or not,” Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., a Democrat on the Budget Committee.

RFK Jr. gets a skeptical look from the Libertarian Party

COSTA MESA, Calif. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. won just one vote, out of 95 cast, in Sunday’s straw poll at the California Libertarian Party convention, where support could be a path to ballot access. “We’re keeping all options open,” he told Semafor in an interview, between an hourlong speech to California LP delegates and a 90-minute forum with two current LP presidential candidates. He was on the verge of picking a running mate, he said, one who didn’t “have to be aligned with me on every issue” but needed “courage in their convictions.” At the convention, he emphasized where he agreed with libertarians and MAGA voters, condemning “what they’re doing to President Trump” and saying his legal problems were “what they do in banana republics” to political opponents. Angela McArdle, the Libertarian Party chair, warned that an independent Kennedy campaign could depress the vote for a Libertarian nominee, but delegates at the Orange County hotel hosting the event were deeply skeptical of the former Democrat who’s created a new We the People party to help him get onto every state’s ballot.

— David Weigel

Nikki Haley loses a top outside backer

Americans For Prosperity Action is out on Nikki Haley. The Koch-backed group lent its support to her candidacy, but is packing it in after she lost her home state primary by 20 points. “Given the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory,” AFP CEO Emily Seidel said in an email to staff, per Politico. (Stand Together, the group founded by Charles Koch, is an investor in Semafor.) Haley’s campaign has reported raising $1 million since Saturday, she’s still drawing a crowd in Michigan, and she likely has enough anti-Trump energy to keep a bare-bones campaign running through at least Super Tuesday. The big question: To what end? Is it a principled protest across all 50 states on behalf of anti-Trump dissidents? A lottery ticket in case a legal development or deus ex machina takes out the frontrunner? The setup for an “I told you so” 2028 run? The answer could determine a lot about the character (and length) of the primary’s final stretch.

— Benjy Sarlin

February 29 | Washington D.C.

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Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The House is unlikely to send over the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate until after Congress resolves the government funding impasse.

Playbook: Rep. David Trone, D-Md. told a group of Maryland Democrats last week that he wished President Biden was “10 years younger.”

The Early 202: House members have proposed two separate discharge petitions to circumvent Speaker Mike Johnson and push a vote on Ukraine aid — a strategy that faces “immense challenges” but “if frustration boils over, it might work.”

Axios: Hunter Biden is trying to stay sober as he confronts federal prosecutions and attacks from House Republicans, seeing his sobriety as key to making sure his father doesn’t lose in 2024. “Most importantly, you have to believe that you’re worth the work, or you’ll never be able to get sober. But I often do think of the profound consequences of failure here,” he said in a rare interview.

White House

• The White House is trying to keep the heat on House Republicans who backed the Life at Conception Act, which defines “human being” to “include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life” and does not include protections for IVF. In a memo this morning, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre calls the measure a “dangerous bill that would eliminate reproductive freedom for all women in every state” and accuses Republicans of attempting to “obfuscate their way out of their support for these extreme policies.” The bill’s cosponsors include Speaker Mike Johnson, who came out in support of IVF treatment after Donald Trump did the same.
• President Biden is headed to New York City today for a campaign meeting.
• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that officials hoped there would be a “firm and final agreement” to release hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in the “coming days.”

Congress

• The Senate returns today, with a procedural vote on a judicial nomination scheduled for this evening. The House is out until Wednesday.
• Taiwanese officials expressed concerns about the U.S. walking away from Ukraine during meetings with a bipartisan group of lawmakers last week. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. also penned a letter to Elon Musk raising concerns about SpaceX “possibly withholding broadband internet services in and around Taiwan — possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” Forbes reported.
• A senior Senate staffer on the Helsinki Commission is under congressional investigation for traveling often to Ukraine and providing thousands of dollars in sniper gear to the country’s military. A confidential commission report suggested the staffer could be acting as an unregistered foreign agent or may be the target of “a foreign intelligence service.” — NYT

Inside the Beltway

• An active duty airman lit himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and is in critical condition.
• The Miami-based investor that took over Donald Trump’s Washington hotel property defaulted on a $285 million loan this month. — WSJ

On the Trail

• Donald Trump and newly-elected Argentinian President Javier Milei met at CPAC.
• RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel plans to step down from her post on March 8. — NYT
• Michigan’s Democratic primary is on Tuesday and it will be a case study in how much President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza will affect his support among key Democratic constituencies. Activists want voters to cast ballots “uncommitted” instead of for Biden in the state, which has a large population of Muslim and Arab Americans. “I’m not sure what we’re going to see on Tuesday, to tell you the truth,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on CNN.
• Vivek Ramaswamy and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tied when CPAC polled attendees on who should be Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick over the weekend.

Courts

The Supreme Court will hear two cases today over efforts by red states to curb the power that social media companies have to moderate users’ posts.

National Security

• Two Mississippi Guardsmen were killed in a helicopter crash during a training mission.
• The U.S. and U.K. struck 18 Houthi targets in Yemen over the weekend.

Foreign Policy

• Hungary is expected to — finally — approve Sweden’s membership in NATO today.
• Israel’s military has presented the war cabinet with an evacuation plan for Gaza, the latest sign Israel plans to launch an offensive in Rafah. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also warned that the country would continue to target Hezbollah in Lebanon even if a ceasefire is agreed with Hamas in Gaza.
• U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power is headed to the Middle East this week for meetings in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan about addressing the humanitarian situation in Gaza. — CNN
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the two years since Russia invaded the country.
• The CIA is helping finance and equip an underground bunker where Ukrainian military intelligence tracks Russian drones and spies on Russian soldiers’ conversations, a product of a decade of U.S.-Ukraine spy cooperation. — NYT
• The body of deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was turned over to his mother.

Media

Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are both vying for Jessica Reed Kraus’ influence, Semafor’s Max Tani reports. The Orange County-based influencer, who has over 1 million Instagram followers and 300,000 Substack subscribers, has recently spent time schmoozing with Trump’s inner circle in Iowa and whale-watching with Kennedy and surfer Kelly Slater.

Big Read

The presidential election likely hinges on the group that has the lowest profile in the political conversation: Non-voters. In the New York Times Magazine, Marcela Valdes looks at the research and polling behind the marginal voters who sometimes turn up for outsider presidential candidates or in response to major shocks to the system, but frequently sit out elections entirely. Contrary to the popular stereotype, they’re often not low-information voters, but “spectators who keep one eye on the score but choose not to join the game.” And while Democrats have historically tended to benefit from higher participation in elections, the Biden coalition is challenging that assumption: The party is doing well in special elections, but some polling suggests Trump has a major edge with lower-turnout voters.

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: Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp wrote to President Biden demanding more information about the immigration status of Jose Antonio Ibarra, who was arrested for murdering a nursing student at the University of Georgia Athens when she was out running.

What the Right isn’t reading: The Wisconsin Ethics Commission called for criminal charges against a Donald Trump fundraising committee for alleged violations of state campaign finance law.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Vivek Ramaswamy is a former Republican presidential candidate.