Principals

1. TikTok’s last-minute lobbying
2. Trump vs. entitlements
3. Magic budget math
4. Marcia Fudge out at HUD
5. America’s world-historic oil production
6. Threats to US world order

PDB: Behind nonwhite voters’ drift away from Democrats

Robert Hur appearing before Congress … New inflation data out this morning … NYT: Haiti PM plans to resign as gang war spreads

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

TikTok mounts a last-minute lobbying blitz

The battle over TikTok is now in overdrive. CEO Shou Chew is expected to hit Capitol Hill ahead of Wednesday’s House vote on legislation that could ban the social media giant unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it. But one lawmaker told Semafor they heard the executive was having trouble lining up meetings. Meanwhile, TikTok’s lobbyists are scrambling to round up support — they’ve been appealing to Democrats by circulating memos, obtained by Semafor, that tout the app’s support among women and minority business owners. The American Civil Liberties Union and internet freedom groups also signed a joint letter arguing that a ban on the platform would violate the First Amendment. On the other side, the conservative activists at Heritage Action asked lawmakers to back the bill, calling TikTok “a dangerous tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on, exploit, and mislead the American people.”

While some are predicting a landslide “yes” vote in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson declined to tell Semafor whether he would whip in favor of the bill. “That’s a good question,” he said. “I better not answer because I’m not sure yet.” The legislation’s future is seen as murkier in the Senate, where some key lawmakers have raised concerns. But in a potentially positive sign, GOP Whip John Thune said he didn’t “have a problem” with the House legislation. And the view from Mar-a-Lago? Donald Trump appeared to waffle slightly on the issue Monday, admitting on CNBC he still sees the company as a national security threat despite coming out hard against the House bill last week. “There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok,” he said.

— Kadia Goba

Donald Trump stumbles into fight over Social Security and Medicare

Donald Trump made Democratic admakers’ dreams come true on Monday when he said he was open to cutting retirement programs. “First of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of, also, the theft and bad management of entitlements,” Trump said on CNBC as part of a long, rambling answer that veered into exaggerated inflation statistics. Trump’s campaign clarified that the former president meant “cutting waste,” but by then the White House was off to the races. “Not on my watch,” said President Biden, who had just promised to defend Social Security and Medicare from cuts at his State of the Union. Democrats have already spent four years touting a similarly vague Trump answer on the topic from 2020 — now those attacks can get a fresh coat of paint. The episode raised questions about Trump’s political instincts after he coasted through a barely-competitive primary. “Trump cutting entitlements and boosting TikTok, what is the world coming to?” one Republican strategist told Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig.

The gaps in Biden’s budget

White House budgets usually require a few asterisks to make their math work, and President Biden’s latest is no different. The new White House fiscal blueprint would officially cut the deficit by about $3 trillion over a decade, in part thanks to proposals like a new 25% minimum tax on billionaires’ incomes and higher corporate rates. But there are some catches. Biden proposes bringing back his giant expansion of the Child Tax Credit, but only fully budgets it for two years, likely shaving more than $1 trillion off the cost. The president also promises to extend the Trump administration’s tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000, without including the at least $1.4 trillion that would cost in its math or pointing to specific pay-fors. There might be reasonable justifications for these moves — the child credit is set to expire with much of the Trump cuts, so they can all be renegotiated together, for instance. But it’s probably best to take Biden’s budget as a signal that Democrats think it will be politically popular to pair big new social spending with deficit reduction rather than a precise guide for how to do it.

— Jordan Weissmann

The U.S. is pumping more oil than any country ever

The boom in American oil production might be the most consequential economic story nobody in Washington really wants to talk about. The U.S. is currently pumping more oil than any country in history, and its record is “unlikely to be broken” in the near term, according to the Energy Information Administration, because no other country has built the capacity to produce 13 million barrels a day. On X, the joke is that it’s now time to call the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of oil.” Yet Biden has been shy about touting the surge for fear of angering climate activists. Among Republicans, meanwhile, it’s still de rigeur to argue that the president is “waging a war on energy.” If so, he’s obviously losing the battle.

— Jordan Weissmann

Marcia Fudge leaving the Biden administration

Marcia Fudge is stepping down as Housing and Urban Development Secretary later this month. It’s a rare departure from Biden’s mostly stable cabinet — former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is the only other secretary to leave so far. The 71-year old Fudge told USA Today she planned to retire from public life. “It’s time to go home,’’ she said. “I do believe strongly that I have done just about everything I could do at HUD for this administration as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election.” Fudge took pride in her work combatting homelessness, but acknowledged in the interview that her policy ambitions were constrained by Congress. The House passed a $170 billion housing investment as part of its Build Back Better bill, only to see it cut out of the slimmed-down Inflation Reduction Act. “We’re doing everything we can with the resources we’ve got,” she said.

US world order under threat

The U.S. faces an “increasingly fragile world order” in which its adversaries — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — are working together more and more, top intelligence officials said. The annual assessment noted an array of challenges, including sprawling regional conflicts and weakening nuclear non-proliferation efforts, but focused on the issues posed to Washington by growing Beijing-Moscow economic and security cooperation. The report said the challenge to Israel from Hamas would persist for years, that Iran did not play a role in orchestrating the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and that Yemeni Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping routes could escalate. It also predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “may be in jeopardy.”

— Prashant Rao

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo; Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; John Waldron, President & COO, Goldman Sachs; Tom Lue, General Counsel, Google DeepMind; Nicolas Kazado, Finance Minister, DR Congo and Jeetu Patel, EVP and General Manager, Security & Collaboration, Cisco have joined the world class line-up of global economic leaders for the 2024 World Economy Summit, taking place in Washington, D.C. on April 17-18. See all speakers, sessions & RSVP here.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: As Speaker Johnson dithers on Ukraine aid, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s, R-Pa. effort to force a vote on a bill via a discharge petition is gaining momentum. Notably, his plan includes items designed to attract support from the right (a “Remain in Mexico” provision), center (more border funding), and left (humanitarian aid to Gaza).

Playbook: Politico obtained a draft of Robert Hur’s prepared opening statement to Congress in which he is expected to say he “needed to show my work” in his special counsel report, and that he “had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state” as part of that process.

The Early 202: Democrats are focusing on Republican candidates’ out-of-state ties in key Senate races like Wisconsin, Montana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada, portraying the GOP hopefuls as carpetbaggers.

Axios: Democrat-led cities are increasingly adopting tough-on-crime policies, a stark reversal from previous positions focused more on criminal justice reform, responding to voter fears about violent crime.

White House

• President Biden told reporters he has no current plans to talk to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they argue over his “red line” in Rafah through the press, or to address the Knesset to speak to Israelis directly.
• The White House is bracing for special counsel Robert Hur to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today, his first public appearance since releasing a report that cleared Biden of criminal liability over classified documents, but questioned his age and memory. — Washington Post

Congress

• The ongoing game of Senate leadership musical chairs continues: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. is running for chair of the Republican Policy Committee, the conference’s fourth-ranked position. She won an immediate endorsement from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who currently holds the slot and announced her own run for the party’s No. 3 post. (She’ll be facing Tom Cotton, R-Ark.)
• House Republicans released testimony from a Secret Service agent who contradicted Cassidy Hutchison’s secondhand claim that an irate Trump tried to grab the wheel to drive to the Capitol on Jan. 6. — New York Times
• Nearly 50 faith leaders from New York City are headed to D.C. today to meet with Republicans and Democrats to advocate for more funding, expedited work visas, and comprehensive immigration reform that includes protections for Dreamers, Pastor Richard-Edwards Hinds of Rugby Deliverance Tabernacle tells Semafor.

Outside the Beltway

You can say “gay” in Florida classrooms — so long as it’s not part of instruction. Those are some of the terms of a new legal settlement over the Parental Rights in Education Act, derided by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. — AP

Economy

The latest Consumer Price Index report is due out this morning. Markets are watching closely after last month’s hot result.

Courts

• Brian Butler, until now known as “Trump Employee 5” in Jack Smith’s federal classified documents case, revealed himself in a CNN interview and described what he witnessed while working at Mar-a-Lago.
• Trump keeps publicly attacking E. Jean Carroll, potentially risking yet another defamation lawsuit along the way. — New York Times
• Trump’s lawyers asked a judge to delay his upcoming March trial in Manhattan over hush money payments until the Supreme Court weighs in on presidential immunity.
• Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. and his wife Nadine Menendez pleaded “not guilty” to obstruction charges.

Polls

The FT’s John Burn-Murdoch highlights polling showing nonwhite voters identifying less with Democrats over time and breaks down some possible explanations. Vanderbilt University political scientist John Sides and the Washington Post’s Philip Bump each point out some big potential weak spots in the analysis.

On the Trail

• The RNC is expected to let go of more than 60 staffers as Trump’s team takes over. — Politico
• Democrats are sounding more upbeat about Biden’s chances in North Carolina than in Georgia. — New York Times
• Donald Trump endorsed Mike Rogers’ Senate bid in Michigan, which was no sure thing after Rogers previously said Trump’s “time has passed.”
• “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump said on Truth Social.

National Security

After meeting with Trump, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán told state media that the former president would “not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war” if he returned to the White House. — Politico Europe

Foreign Policy

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Jamaica with Prime Minister Andrew Holness to discuss the crisis in Haiti. He pledged an additional $100 million to help efforts to fight gangs that have seized control of territory across Port-au-Prince.

Media

Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, apologized for causing “confusion” after releasing an altered family photograph. She has been out of the public eye since having abdominal surgery months ago.

Big Read

At Politico Magazine, Sasha Issenberg dives into how the Biden campaign handled the age issue in his 2020 run in an excerpt of his forthcoming book The Lie Detectives. Not wanting to amplify online discussions that portrayed President Biden as incompetent or Kamala Harris as a radical, they quietly tried to direct Google users to ads based on searches like “Biden + senile.” And they found “voters responded positively to clips of Biden speaking clearly and authoritatively about his values, directly at the camera without obvious edits, and to unlikely validators attesting to his robustness.”

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 White House said President Biden “absolutely did not apologize” for using the term “an illegal” during his State of the Union speech, a phrase for which he’s faced blowback from progressives.

What the Right isn’t reading: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld a town’s ban on the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in the 21st century.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Ritchie Torres is a Democratic congressman from New York.

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• Ramadan in Gaza is characterized by mounting starvation.