Principals

☞ White House: Biden will head to another battleground today, visiting Minnesota to highlight a new $1 billion plus investment from the engine maker Cummins to improve facilities in Indiana, North Carolina and New York so they can make low and zero carbon engines, a White House official said. Meanwhile, the president is still ironing out the details of his nascent reelection bid.

☞ Senate: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. celebrated Sen. John Fetterman’s, D-Pa. release from the hospital after treatment for clinical depression. Fetterman talked about his struggles in an interview with CBS.

☞ House: Will House Republicans subpoena Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over the Trump indictment? “Everything is on the table,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio told Fox News over the weekend.

Be sure to read Kadia Goba’s new profile of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who got the 60 Minutes treatment last night. Greene talked to Semafor about her thawing relationship with the press (“I don’t call you guys ‘fake news.’ I used to”), which she credits partly to Julian Assange and her new romantic relationship with a conservative journalist. They also discussed her plans for protests in Manhattan over Trump’s indictment, her online radicalization (“JFK, Jr. is not alive. Can we just be real?”), her plan for “national divorce” (not inspired by her personal life, she says) and her break with early conservative allies over McCarthy (she says she “was a victim of manipulation”). Plus, a look at her critics, who worry that her new press push is cover to further entrench extremism in the party.

OPEC+ shocked energy markets by announcing plans to cut oil output by more than 1 million barrels per day, despite the global oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia previously saying it would keep production steady. The news is bringing predictions of $100 barrels of crude and is likely to add to friction between the White House and Saudi Arabia.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va. made the rounds on the Sunday shows and repeatedly declined to rule out a 2024 White House bid. He dodged questions on CNN about whether he would run on a ticket fielded by the group No Labels, saying only that people are “sick and tired of the division.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken phoned his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov over the weekend to press for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as well as Paul Whelan, a former Marine who has been detained in Russia for more than four years.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson joined the GOP presidential race on Sunday, in an exclusive ABC News interview that dealt extensively with Donald Trump’s coming arraignment. “This is one of the most unpredictable political environments that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Hutchinson, 72, told Jonathan Karl, acknowledging polls that put his support at 1% in a GOP primary. He argued Trump should abandon own White House bid as he faces criminal charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but conceded that the former president was not going to take his advice.

— Morgan Chalfant and Dave Weigel

Punchbowl News: The publication assesses the standing of House and Senate leaders after the first three months of the year. Their conclusions: Kevin McCarthy’s record is mixed, Hakeem Jeffries has done the expected, Chuck Schumer loves to taunt Republicans in the debt ceiling fight, and Mitch McConnell’s absence has been felt particularly in the foreign policy realm.

Playbook: 2024 GOP hopeful Nikki Haley is headed to the U.S. southern border with Mexico today, where she’ll participate in a ride-along with Border Patrol agents and hold a press conference to discuss her immigration proposals.

The Early 202: Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that controls the Supreme Court’s budget, told the Washington Post he wants to use the next funding bill to force the court to adopt a code of ethics.

The latest on Donald Trump’s indictment

THE NEWS

The country is about to learn a lot more about the case against Donald Trump in Manhattan.

Trump plans to leave for New York later today, and will stay overnight at Trump Tower before heading in court for his arraignment. The appearance will be historic, the focus of intense media coverage, security, and likely protest. It will also be short: Trump’s attorneys said he would enter a plea of not guilty, before heading back to Florida.

“What I hope is we get in and out of there as quickly as possible,” Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said on ABC yesterday. He described Trump as “gearing up for a battle.”

Trump, unsurprisingly, isn’t going to be quiet about his arrest. He is already scheduled to speak at his Mar-a-Lago estate Tuesday evening — hours after the arraignment — an event that is open to the press.

KNOW MORE

Trump’s vocal criticism of the case is already creating some challenges for his legal team. After the former president assailed the judge overseeing the case, Juan Marchan, on Friday, his lawyers were quick to attempt some distance.

“The president’s a big believer in free speech, as you know. He’s got strong opinions,” Trump attorney James Trusty said on Fox News. “But, look, I’ve never had a case in front of this judge, I certainly reserve judgment.”

The specifics of the charges Trump faces will be detailed this week. Trump’s attorneys are also signaling strongly that they plan to move to dismiss the charges. “What we’re guessing the indictment will look like is it will have legal frailties that will be subjected to a very legitimate motion to dismiss early on,” Trusty said.

While the charges have left Trump “extremely angry” and his family members “rattled,” according to the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the former president has at least one thing to be happy about: the chorus of Republicans who have emerged to defend him, including some who have been critics in the past.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who voted to convict Trump on an impeachment charge related to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, said on Fox News that the case “seems to be more about the person than the crime.” Former attorney general Bill Barr, who clashed with Trump after resigning in 2020, dismissed the Manhattan case as lacking “any legal basis.”

But Barr said on Fox that he believes that Trump faces a “serious” legal threat from the Justice Department’s probe of his handling of classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago after he left office.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va. did not directly criticize the Manhattan D.A., but reserved judgment as to whether the case had been politicized. “No one is above the law, but no one should be targeted by the law,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

NOTABLE

• The other investigations into Trump are still unfolding. Federal investigators involved in the documents investigation have discovered new evidence that could be used to build a case against Trump for obstruction of justice, according to new reporting from the Washington Post.
  

— Morgan Chalfant

During Kamala Harris’s Africa trip, one thing was on everybody’s mind

The White House would probably have been satisfied with Kamala Harris’ nine-day, three-country tour of Africa if it had passed without any notable missteps.

Instead, Harris looked perhaps her most comfortable as vice president during the tour. It helped that all three destinations — Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia — have political success stories to tell, decreasing the potential for awkwardness. Ghana has long been a beacon of steady democracy, Tanzania has Africa’s only current democratically-elected female president, and Zambia’s president was elected in 2021 after his predecessor had him imprisoned a few years earlier.

U.S. coverage of the trip noted that it might help her with voters back home. But the substance of the visit was inextricably linked to China, whose high-profile inroads America is eager to counter.

The White House is aware that African leaders don’t appreciate being treated as a pawn in a geopolitical rivalry, and has sent a parade of top officials to the continent this year to build diplomatic ties, officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

But despite the many attempts by the Biden administration and the Vice President’s own rousing speeches to very friendly African crowds, it has been difficult to frame the conversation around the tour as being about the U.S. and Africa, rather than China and Africa.

“There may be an obsession in America about Chinese activities on the continent but there’s no such obsession here,” said Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo in response to a journalist’s question at a press conference in Ghana this week with Harris alongside him, gamefully trying to smile through the awkwardness of the moment.

Even when China wasn’t mentioned it was still being talked about. Take Harris’ visit to Zambia, which in 2020 became the first African country to default on its debt during the pandemic era. The southern African country is currently negotiating a debt restructuring program with international creditors. There’s just one problem: China, whose state institutions and private companies hold a combined $4 billion of Zambia’s debt, is refusing to take a haircut unless multilaterals like the World Bank do so too — something they have traditionally never done.

In a joint press conference with Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema last week, Harris didn’t call out China by name but her reference wasn’t subtle either: “I will reiterate a call we’ve made many times, for all official bilateral creditors to provide a meaningful debt reduction for Zambia,” the Vice President said.

— Yinka Adegoke

For more reporting and analysis from Yinka, sign up for his Semafor Africa newsletter.

House China panel members to meet with Disney CEO, tech execs

Members of the House select committee on China plan to meet with Disney CEO Bob Iger and top tech executives during a trip to California later this week, according to a source close to the committee.

The private meetings are part of an effort by committee chair Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. to reach out to the private sector for ideas about U.S.-China policy and American competitiveness.

The lawmakers are also scheduled to meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose company relies heavily on China for its supply chain, as well as executives from Google, Scale AI, Palantir, Microsoft, and a group of venture capitalists.

Iger has been in Gallagher’s crosshairs for some time. The Wisconsin Republican told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier this year that he planned to call the Disney honcho as well as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to testify before his committee. Gallagher was also among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who pressed Disney for answers back in 2020 after revelations that the company filmed portions of the movie “Mulan” in the Xinjiang province, where the U.S. says the Chinese government is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghur population.

“This is not about naming and shaming,” the committee source said of the upcoming meetings. “The intent is to engage constructively and find a way forward.” They added Iger and the other CEOs could still be called to testify.

The group will also talk about China’s use of a central bank digital currency with Darrell Duffie, an economist and Stanford University professor who warned in a Foreign Affairs piece last year that China could use it in surveillance and to evade U.S. sanctions.

— Morgan Chalfant

Dan Kildee is a Democratic congressman representing Michigan’s 8th congressional district. He has served in Congress since 2013.

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: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. grilled top Pentagon officials about drag events hosted on military bases during a recent hearing.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: A federal judge ordered officials to return books to public libraries in Texas after they were removed for containing LGBTQ and racial content local officials deemed offensive.

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— Steve Clemons