Principals

1. Biden pressures Netanyahu
2. Dems debate Ukraine aid
3. No Labels gives up
4. Deficit fears return
5. America’s immigration dividend
6. China’s influence efforts

PDB: White House writes to Congress on bridge funding

Biden to Baltimore … Yellen in China criticizes ‘coercive actions against American companies’… WSJ: Biden will take another swing at major student-debt forgiveness

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Biden threatens to change policy on Israel

President Biden is getting tougher with Benjamin Netanyahu. On a call with the Israeli prime minister, Biden warned that U.S. policy on Gaza would change if Israel didn’t take steps to protect civilians and increase humanitarian aid, the White House said. The message seemed to have an immediate effect: About three hours later, Israel agreed to open new paths for humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza. The White House welcomed the moves and said they “must now be fully and rapidly implemented.” Biden’s pivot followed sustained pressure from Democratic lawmakers and voters, as well as a wave of articles in major outlets questioning whether he was willing to do more than express outrage after Israel’s recent bombing of aid workers. “In diplomatic terms, this is the equivalent of the nuclear option,” former Obama State Department official Brett Bruen told Semafor. It’s unclear exactly what the administration would do were Netanyahu not to heed the warnings. The White House could sanction Israeli officials or Netanyahu himself, Bruen suggested, create diplomatic distance from top officials, or add conditions to assistance.

— Morgan Chalfant

Gaza divide threatens Ukraine aid

As Democratic outrage with Israel’s war on Gaza grows, some are privately encouraging their leaders to back a standalone Ukraine aid bill, Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba report. Currently, the Senate-passed foreign aid bill — including aid for Ukraine, Israel, and allies in Asia — is subject to a discharge petition in the House that many House Democrats have signed onto. But the petition has fallen short of the 218 signatures necessary to force a vote on the House floor, in part because House progressives are opposed to the Israel aid in the bill. Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, who has resisted bringing the Senate bill up for a vote, is preparing an alternative Ukraine package that could be unveiled as soon as next week. He’s expected to speak with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, newly his chief antagonist who has threatened his job over Ukraine funding, later today, according to CNN. Punchbowl News reports this morning that “the prevailing thinking among Democrats is that Johnson will eventually fold” and put the Senate-passed bill on the floor.

No Labels gives up on third party run

No Labels abandoned its plan to run a bipartisan presidential ticket this year, announcing yesterday that it had found no candidate with a “credible path to winning the White House.” It canceled a proposed “insurance plan” against a second Biden or Trump term that had stretched over more than a year and cost millions of dollars; the group had said in 2023 that it had raised $60 million to get ballot access and field a ticket. Democrats, whose pressure campaign to stop potential candidates from running inspired a DOJ complaint from No Labels, were jubilant. “Attacking Biden from the center was irresponsible and damaging,” said Third Way executive vice president Matt Bennett, “but the damage would have been vastly greater if they had a candidate.” Similar efforts to capitalize on voter angst about the major parties had failed in 2008 (Unity ‘08) and 2012 (Americans Elect), and for similar reasons, with well-known candidates opting out after they feared becoming spoilers. On Thursday night, No Labels scheduled a Friday press call to discuss the decision and its new focus, to “promote dialogue around major policy challenges.”

– David Weigel and Shelby Talcott

Deficit fears are back, Dem group warns

Voter concern over deficits is rising, a new polling memo from Democratic strategy group Blueprint argues, and it’s a jump ball between the parties to seize the issue. “We’ve seen the deficit stand out in our polling in a way that’s often left us wondering if we’ve entered a time warp,” reads the report, shared exclusively with Semafor. In an online survey, respondents trust Biden and Trump roughly equally on the issue. But there are messaging opportunities for Democrats: The most popular answer for why deficits are up are Trump’s tax cuts, including with Haley voters, and Black and Latino voters under 45, who are all seen as swing voting blocs. The next most popular response: Ukraine aid, which is vastly smaller in scope, but central to Congressional debates all year. When asked to pick what’s driving their concerns, 33% of voters say they fear deficits will increase inflation, 30% say Congress should balance budgets like families do, and 28% say they fear future tax increases. The memo recommends that Democrats emphasize Biden is working to close the budget gap by taxing the rich and corporations and extracting savings from pharmaceutical companies, while Republicans will turn to Social Security and Medicare cuts instead.

The border crisis might be a boon for the economy

The daily march of migrants across the Southern border has been a political curse for President Joe Biden. But for the economy, it may have turned out to be a blessing, writes Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann. By adding millions of new workers to the labor market, the immigration surge has lifted payrolls and growth, and potentially helped keep a lid on consumer prices, according to recent research. In an analysis published earlier this week, Ernie Tedeschi, a former Biden White House economist, found that the post-pandemic pickup in immigration accounted for at least one-fifth of the increase in U.S. gross domestic product since 2019, and helped it outgrow other rich countries. A March report by the Hamilton Project found that the influx of migrants approximately doubled how many workers employers could hire each month without putting pressure on inflation. These findings are only emerging now thanks to new estimates of immigration trends released in February by the Congressional Budget Office, which found the uptick in migrant workers would likely reduce the deficit. To Tedeschi, it all “punctuates the need for us to solve the chaos at the border” so that it doesn’t undermine support for legal immigration more broadly.

China is using fake accounts to poll U.S. voters, Microsoft says

The Chinese government is likely behind an increase in social media accounts that are asking American users about hot political issues like immigration and race, according to new research from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. China may be laying the groundwork to influence the 2024 election in its favor, according to Microsoft, which assessed with “moderate confidence” that the accounts on X are run by the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing also stepped up its use of artificial intelligence-generated content to sway the January election in Taiwan and spread conspiracy theories about U.S. crises, like the August 2023 Maui fires, the report says. (The posts suggested the U.S. government had deliberately set the fires using a “weather weapon.”) This follows reporting from the New York Times about Chinese social media accounts impersonating Donald Trump fans or mocking President Biden’s age. China has denied undertaking efforts to influence elections, and Xi Jinping told Biden in November Beijing would not meddle in the 2024 vote.

— Morgan Chalfant

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Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Republicans released their proposal to extend and reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (the same proposal that the House Judiciary Committee opposed earlier this year) and are planning a briefing for members with intelligence officials next week.

Playbook: Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. is going to bring up a handful of ideas about increasing pressure on Israel with President Biden today when the two meet in Baltimore today. For instance, Van Hollen wants the U.S. to pause the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel if it doesn’t reduce civilian casualties or speed up humanitarian assistance. He also wants Biden to change the U.S. approach at the U.N. Security Council and apply more public pressure.

The Early 202: Donald Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, believes the former president’s 2020 Middle East peace plan is no longer viable and “has been overtaken” by events.

Axios: Half of the half-trillion dollars the Biden administration is pumping into infrastructure and clean energy projects is going to swing states and red states.

White House

• President Biden will visit Baltimore today to survey the damage from the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, deliver a speech, and meet with families of the people who died in the bridge collapse.
• White House Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young penned a letter to relevant congressional chairs and ranking members urging them to commit to paying for the full cost for reconstructing the bridge in Baltimore. The White House is still assessing the total cost of rebuilding, she wrote.
• Meanwhile, the White House has been pushing big companies like Amazon and Home Depot to commit to keeping jobs in Baltimore despite the shutdown of a major port due to the bridge collapse. — Bloomberg
• Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will hold a joint press conference on Wednesday following their meeting, the White House said.
• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan slammed a Ugandan court for upholding an anti-LGBTQ law, calling it “deeply disappointing” and a threat to human rights.

Congress

• The House Foreign Affairs Committee released another tranche of transcribed interviews in its Afghanistan investigation that showed the lack of preparation officials had before the evacuation of personnel, Americans, and Afghan allies from the war-torn country. — CNN
• Senate Republicans are looking likely to sink a bipartisan tax package that received broad support in the House and backing from the White House. — Bloomberg

Courts

• GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs were subpoenaed by Arizona prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state. — Politico
• Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida, rejected — for now — Trump’s effort to toss out the case based on the Presidential Records Act, but she didn’t rule out that he could raise the same argument at trial.
• Trump also lost a bid in Georgia to dismiss his charges in Fulton County on free speech grounds.
• Experts are raising questions about the validity of Trump’s bond in his civil fraud judgment. — CBS
• A court ordered the federal government to “expeditiously” relocate migrant children who cross into the U.S. from open-air sides near the southern border.

Polls

A Marquette Law School poll finds Biden leading Trump 52%-48% among likely voters. New York Times analyst Nate Cohn, a human mood ring for Democrats, cited it as evidence of a modest Biden rebound across multiple recent surveys.

On the Trail

During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump said Israel was “losing the PR war” over the Gaza war and urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “get it over with.”

Foreign Policy

• During a meeting with American businesses in Guangzhou, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen promised to raise concerns about China’s “unfair” economic practices, including “coercive actions against American companies,” during her meetings with Chinese officials over the course of the next several days.
• U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron urged his European counterparts to pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to pass Ukraine aid. — Politico
• The Biden administration approved the transfer of thousands of MK82 bombs and small-diameter bombs to Israel on Monday, before an Israeli strike killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza. — CNN
• CIA Director Bill Burns is scheduled to travel to Cairo this weekend for hostage negotiations. — Axios

Media

Former President Bill Clinton is writing a memoir.

Big Read

More than 400 lawmakers, civil rights leaders, activists, actors and musicians have signed a joint letter to President Biden urging him to support a list of congressional bills addressing racial equity and reparative justice via executive actions and orders, ABC News says. According to the report, the letter is the third that lawmakers and activists have sent to White House this year. Marcus Anthony Hunter, the sociology and African American Studies professor who coined the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and is leading the push, said the letter is a measure of accountability after work behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and across the country. “President Biden is actively delivering for Black Americans by executing his Day One commitment to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities,” White House spokesperson Rodericka Applewhaite was quoted as saying.

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: First lady Jill Biden insisted it was “obvious” that President Biden will win the 2024 election after being questioned about a poll showing him losing to Donald Trump in battleground states.

What the Right isn’t reading: California Democrats settled on a plan designed to reduce the state’s enormous budget deficit.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Steve Daines is a Republican senator from Montana and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He visited Geno’s Steaks in Philadelphia with Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McMormick earlier this week.

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