Principals

1. Trump stays firm on tariffs
2. Global markets tank
3. Musk vs. Navarro
4. Trump’s mortgage overhaul
5. House GOP weighs Senate budget
6. Proxy voting compromise

PDB: RFK endorses measles vaccine

Trump meets Netanyahu … Florida, Houston compete for NCAA title … Bloomberg: China considers accelerating stimulus to counter tariffs

Trump vows to stay course on tariffs

The Trump administration is vowing to stick by its punishing new tariffs while downplaying the market pain. “They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on CBS. Economic adviser Kevin Hassett insisted on ABC that more than 50 countries have approached President Donald Trump to negotiate, but China doesn’t seem to be among them. Trump said Sunday that he is unwilling to make a deal with Beijing unless the US-China trade deficit is “solved,” and compared tariffs to “medicine.” The Republican pushback could get louder this week, as Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., preps a House version of legislation constraining Trump’s tariff-imposing powers. Democratic Reps. Gregory Meeks and Josh Gottheimer are in talks to sign on to it. Trump’s 10% tariffs took hold over the weekend, while the higher tariffs on individual countries take effect Wednesday.

— Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba

Market carnage over tariffs

Stock markets plummeted — in some cases by the largest margin in decades — after Trump’s massive tariffs took effect. Asian and European shares tanked, with stocks in Hong Kong suffering their steepest fall since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Haven assets such as US Treasury bonds, the Japanese yen, and the Swiss franc soared amid growing fears of a worldwide recession: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and S&P Global all raised their forecasts of the likelihood of a global downturn. “It’s hard to put in context the magnitude of the shock that has reverberated since ‘Liberation Day’,” Deutsche Bank economists wrote. “Rarely if ever have the next few days been so important.”

Musk takes on Trump’s trade guru

Trump’s trade policy seems to be frustrating even some of his allies. Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for a vast free-trade zone between the US and Europe and took aim at Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro. “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote in response to an X post praising Navarro, adding that he hadn’t “built sh*t.” Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports that the public disagreement showcases a deeper division between Trump’s MAGA base and the business and tech leaders who support him. One official downplayed the skirmish, but other Trump allies expressed confusion at Musk’s decision to publicly go after Navarro. “That’s a battle Elon won’t win,” said a person close to Trump. “Nobody is tired of Peter.” Navarro responded on Fox News, claiming Musk is “simply protecting his own interests.”

Fannie, Freddie chaos sparks concern over housing costs

Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, is jettisoning executives and policies at breakneck speed, sparking chaos at the mortgage firms he oversees. His ultimate goal remains elusive even to Republicans, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reports. That uncertainty is feeding analyst fears that Pulte, a former private equity executive, could next seek to reduce the footprints of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whether through more sweeping policy changes or layoffs — a move that would risk making housing less affordable, at least temporarily, just as newly announced tariffs threaten to do the same. GOP lawmakers say they’ve urged Pulte to weigh privatizing the firms — a longtime GOP priority — but he has yet to signal his overarching strategy. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, argue the interim upheaval could impede bipartisan housing legislation: “It poisons the well,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., told Semafor.

Now it’s the House budget crunch

House Republicans now have the Senate’s budget resolution in their lap. Many of them will probably fall in line behind Speaker Mike Johnson to move the process forward — many, but not all. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, for example, wants to see “actual spending and deficit reduction plans” before committing to the Senate budget. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune could have his own math problems with deeper cuts. On Saturday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in opposition to the budget resolution after she initially voted to proceed to it. “My No. 1 concern remains the Medicaid cuts that I believe are inevitable if the House instruction to the Energy and Commerce Committee stands at $880 billion,” Collins told Semafor. Two other Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Josh Hawley, are also fighting Medicaid cuts.

— Burgess Everett and Kadia Goba

Johnson strikes a deal on proxy voting

Mike Johnson sought to end the standoff between the factions in his conference at odds over whether to allow proxy voting for new mothers. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., agreed to stand down on blocking votes, and in exchange, House Republican leadership agreed to formalize “live pair” voting — a tool that allows an absent member to pair with a member of the opposite party who has agreed to essentially cancel out their vote by voting “present,” according to a source familiar with the conference’s discussions on Sunday. Johnson also plans to add a nursing room and make day care more accessible, though he was light on specifics. The compromise, while still fluid, may appease members who consider proxy voting unconstitutional. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told Semafor he thought vote-pairing “ought to be considered” instead of proxy voting.

— Kadia Goba

Debatable: Should the US government be involved in brokering a sale of TikTok?

TikTok is in limbo after a Saturday deadline came and went without a permanent solution from the Trump administration to avert a US ban meant to force ByteDance to sell the popular video app. Trump said he would sign a directive ordering another 75-day extension for the company to find a partner — and acknowledged that trade tensions with Beijing got in the way of a breakthrough — but the president’s involvement in the search has revived questions about what role the US government can and should play in any sale. Michael Sobolik of the Hudson Institute said it’s appropriate for the US administration to be involved so long as any deal ensures China “doesn’t control a social media app that over half of Americans have on their phones.” But Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor, argued the government’s involvement undermines “not only capitalism, but free speech.”

Since the 80s, Piers Morgan has ridden massive changes in the media industry, jumping from print to cable to, more recently, YouTube. In this episode of Mixed Signals, the TV star joins Ben and (subbing in for Max) Semafor’s head of comms, Meera Pattni, to discuss how he’s building his Uncensored brand, what he likes about being a YouTuber, and if he misses anything about legacy media. They also talk about how some journalists take themselves too seriously, why having fun is important even in news media, and his views on Trump’s term so far.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Republicans are starting to worry about not moving fast enough to pass President Trump’s agenda. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., said that Congress needs to demonstrate momentum on his policies to send a positive sign to the stock market.

Playbook: Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., raised a record $11 million for his reelection campaign in the first quarter.

WaPo: Republicans are still largely defending Trump’s vision on tariffs.

White House

• The Guardian dug up more details on how national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a sensitive Signal group chat.
• The National Parks Service removed some references to slavery and mentions of figures like Harriet Tubman and John Brown from its websites. — WaPo
• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued a memo opening up more than half the land managed by the US Forest Service to logging.

Outside the Beltway

• Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited West Texas after a second unvaccinated child died there due to a measles-related illness, and endorsed the measles vaccine as “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.”
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been offering to make tariff exemption deals with countries (though the federal government still has ultimate authority to regulate trade). — Fox

Economy

• Facing a 46% tariff, Vietnam offered to remove all tariffs on US imports. — Bloomberg
• India is likewise unlikely to retaliate against US tariffs; Prime Minister Narendra Modi is actively looking for ways to make concessions. — Reuters
• A math error caused the Trump administration to impose roughly quadruple the level of tariffs its own formula called for. — Axios
• The British automaker behind Jaguar and Land Rover is pausing shipments of cars to the US.
• US oil prices dipped below $60 a barrel, the lowest since 2021.

• Hedge funder Bill Ackman warned that Trump’s tariffs could bring on “economic nuclear winter.”

Courts

• A federal judge gave the Trump administration a Monday deadline to repatriate the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
• The Justice Department immigration lawyer who acknowledged that the deportation of the man to El Salvador was a mistake was put on leave. — NYT

National Security

• DOGE is coming to the Department of Homeland Security, and may push for cuts to the Secret Service. — CNN
• The Trump administration revoked visas issued to all South Sudanese passport holders.

Foreign Policy

• A Palestinian teen with US citizenship was reportedly shot dead by an Israeli settler in the West Bank.
• A recent US strike in Yemen killed several Houthi militants, though the exact number is unclear; official Houthi sources put the tally at six, but apparent footage of the bombing posted to X by President Trump on Friday suggests many more were hit.
• United Autoworkers head Shawn Fain’s support of Trump’s tariffs is straining the union’s ties to its Canadian equivalent. — Globe and Mail
• The Canadian government is warning travelers to the US to expect border authorities to search their electronic devices.
• The White House fired USAID workers who were in Myanmar after last month’s earthquake.

Health

• The advocacy group Care in Action starts running a new ad in Washington today as the Care Can’t Wait Coalition kicks off a weeklong Hill event to advocate against cuts to Medicaid and other social safety nets, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller scoops.

Technology

• Some are worried that the White House might “pull the plug” on a major antitrust trial against Meta as CEO Mark Zuckerberg cozies up to President Trump. — Politico

Media

• The National Press Club rejected Natalie Winters, the White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room, Semafor’s Ben Smith writes.

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

And Graph Massara, copy editor

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Anti-Trump demonstrators rallied on the Washington Monument grounds on Saturday during a “Hands Off!” protest, one of 1,200 across the country.

“Oh sh*t,” Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman said upon learning that his shares were down 30% after the White House made its Liberation Day splash. “I just looked at the screen.”

His comments, on a live earnings call with stock analysts, captured the feeling in the business world, which was shocked by the arrival of tariffs that President Donald Trump has talked nonstop about for more than a year, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman writes.

This is not going well, murmur CEOs with thousand-yard stares, as if what’s happening now was some sort of edge case that couldn’t have been predicted.