Principals

☞ White House: The Justice Department is taking the battle of the abortion drug mifepristone to the Supreme Court. It said it would appeal Wednesday’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that allowed some limits on how the pill can be sold and used to stand while hitting pause on a lower judge’s ruling that entirely reversed the FDA’s two-decade old approval of it. On Thursday, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington ruled that the 5th Circuit’s ruling did not apply to 17 states, and ordered the FDA to maintain current access to the drug.

☞ Senate: Minority leader Mitch McConnell said he plans to return to the Senate on Monday, after an absence due to injuries he sustained during a fall in D.C. Senate HELP Committee Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. also scheduled a nomination hearing next Thursday for Julie Su to be Labor secretary, despite some uncertainty surrounding her support.

☞ House: The GOP’s Main Street Caucus — a group of over 70 self-identified “pragmatic” Republicans — sent a letter to Speaker Kevin McCarthy with a list of demands for a debt ceiling agreement. They’re asking to return non-defense discretionary spending to 2022 levels and cap its growth at just 1.5% per year. They also want to claw back unspent COVID-19 funds, block the White House’s student loan forgiveness plan, and create a commission to study Medicare and Social Security solvency.

The FBI arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, in connection with its criminal investigation into the recent leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents. Texeira was detained less than two hours after the New York Times revealed he was the “unofficial leader” of the Discord server known as Thug Shaker Central where the material first surfaced. Members of the small group of young video gamers told the paper he uploaded the documents mostly to “inform and impress” his online friends, and was not an Edward Snowden-style whistleblower.

What happens next? Teixeira has not yet been formally charged but is expected to make an initial appearance in Massachusetts federal court. The Pentagon is still reviewing the national security implications of the leaks, which exposed U.S. spying on allies and assessments about Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Pentagon is also actively warning officials not to leak classified information or even talk about leaks to reporters, according to a memo sent this week to senior leaders that Semafor obtained. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio announced he would investigate the incident to determine “why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill enacting a six-week abortion ban in the Sunshine State late last night, hours after it passed the state House. Up until now Florida banned the procedure after 15 weeks and was a place for patients to access abortions who could not get them in surrounding states in the South with tighter restrictions. The six-week ban includes new exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, or human trafficking.The White House was quick to respond, issuing a statement within minutes of the bill passing the legislature that called the measure “extreme and dangerous.”

Republican donor Harlan Crow purchased Georgia real estate properties from Justice Clarence Thomas and his family for $133,363, but the justice did not disclose the sale, an apparent violation of federal disclosure law, ProPublica reports. The properties included Thomas’ mother’s home, which Crow proceeded to invest in repairing and improving while she still lived there. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. asked that Thomas be referred to the attorney general for possible violations of ethics laws.

— Morgan Chalfant and Shelby Talcott

Punchbowl News: Ron DeSantis is headed to D.C. next Tuesday for a “meet and greet and policy discussion” with Sen. Mike Lee and Reps. Ken Buck, Randy Feenstra, Mike Gallagher, Bob Good, Darin LaHood, Laurel Lee, Thomas Massie, and Chip Roy, according to an invite that Punchbowl obtained.

Playbook: Former vice president Mike Pence is expected to try to draw a contrast with former President Trump during the NRA summit today (without explicitly naming him). Trump had a mixed record with Second Amendment groups while in office, offering support for “red flag” laws and banning bump stocks that increase firing rates.

The Early 202: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker tells the Washington Post that he repeatedly raised the idea of Chicago hosting the 2024 Democratic convention in conversations with Biden since 2021 and said he was on the phone with prospective donors and sponsors within hours of finding out the city had been selected.

Tim Scott’s soft launch runs into some hard questions on abortion

THE SCENE

MANCHESTER, NH — Inside the Red Arrow Diner — a compact, no-frills, 24-hour restaurant that’s become a staple along the campaign trail — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott charmed the crowd, probing locals on the state’s “hot topics,” posing for photos with kitchen staff, and eating a hearty breakfast (he had an omelette with a side of grits and toast).

“He’s very, very good at retail politics,” Christopher Ager, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, told Semafor. “He’s very comfortable with it, and I think that’s a good indicator for how he might be received in the state.”

Everything seemed to be going great — except for one very specific topic.

SHELBY’S VIEW

Scott, who announced he is exploring a run for president this week, repeatedly struggled to handle questions about his position on abortion.

He didn’t directly answer when pressed on whether he believes “medication abortion” should remain legal. A gifted orator in most circumstances, Scott seemed less comfortable when asked point-blank whether he would “support a federal ban on abortions.”

“I’m 100% pro-life. I’d never walk away from that, but the truth of the matter is, when you look at the issues on abortion, I start with the very important conversation I had in a banking hearing, when I was sitting in my office and listening to Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury, talk about increasing the labor force participation rate for African American women who are in poverty by having abortions,” Scott said, going on to argue that the country is “having the wrong conversation” and continuing to discuss the banking hearing.

Scott declined to say whether he supported Sen. Lindsey Graham’s, R-S.C. bill to ban abortion nationally after 15 weeks in a CBS News interview on Wednesday, though he repeatedly said he was “100% pro-life.” The next day he told New Hampshire-based WMUR that he would “definitely” sign a 20-week abortion ban as president and that the country should “have a federal limit on how far we can go.” He brought the subject back around to the left’s “extreme positions” when asked Thursday morning about a bill he co-sponsored that would jail doctors who performed abortions past 20 weeks, and then told Fox News that evening that he’d also consider a 15-week abortion ban.

His winding, at times half-answers underscore the reality for both the South Carolina lawmaker and Republican 2024 hopefuls writ large: The topic remains a sticky subject for the party.

Even within Scott’s home state he’s caught between competing Republican messages. Rep. Nancy Mace has criticized the party for going too far and too fast on abortion and called on the FDA to ignore a court decision blocking mifepristone. Graham has been pushing Republicans to sign onto his 15-week ban, which would also allow states to go further (South Carolina has a 6-week ban). And Scott’s 2024 rival, former governor Nikki Haley, has called for “consensus” on the issue without making her own position fully clear.

Ron DeSantis, who also resisted committing himself to a clear position for months, quietly signed a 6-week ban in Florida on Thursday. Former President Trump has complained Republicans did not include enough exceptions in state abortion bans ahead of the midterms, but is vague beyond that. Only Mike Pence has affirmatively rushed to leap on every new anti-abortion measure and publicize doing so. Just hours after Scott’s abortion comments on Thursday, Vivek Ramaswamy said that abortion should remain a state issue, full stop.

While that ambiguity might slide for now, eventually voters are going to be looking for solid, clear-cut policy positions on virtually all topics, especially one that members of both parties believe is playing a major role in recent elections.

“Candidates will have to recognize that we have a split view within the country and in the state. And so you can have your personal beliefs, but what will your public policy be?” Ager, the party chair, told Semafor.

That position could play differently in New Hampshire, where the GOP primary electorate tends to be more secular, independent, and supportive of abortion rights, than in early states like evangelical-heavy Iowa and South Carolina. At the same time, Ager said the relative lack of partisan conflict over New Hampshire’s abortion laws — a 24 week ban with exceptions he described as “very reasonable” — could make it a less front-of-mind issue.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Some Republicans and anti-abortion groups believe Scott and other candidates will have an opportunity to turn the tables on Democrats for supporting late term abortions. “Joe Biden owns [abortion] all the way to pregnancy and that’s the least popular position of all,” GOP strategist Brad Todd said Thursday on Meet The Press NOW while discussing Scott’s and DeSantis’ positions.

Chuck Schumer gets the ball rolling on AI regulations, but he could have competition

As Congress scrambles to catch up to artificial intelligence advances this year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he’s working on a framework to regulate the technology.

“The Age of AI is here, and here to stay,” Schumer said in a statement. “Now is the time to develop, harness, and advance its potential to benefit our country for generations.”

According to a broad memo, first reported by Axios, Schumer’s office will focus on providing transparency guidelines to require AI developers to report how their programs work, who built them, what information they draw on, and ensure they operate within a set of ethical guidelines.

The release comes a week after China released a draft of their own rules to regulate AI after Alibaba introduced a ChatGPT rival. The EU is currently advancing a package of regulatory rules, but the introduction of ChatGPT has complicated the process.

The Schumer outline may be vague, but it also gives him the initiative over the House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made studying AI a priority without tipping his hand as to how he might handle the issue.

“McCarthy has talked about AI and Quantum lessons from MIT for more than a year. He took members there last year and will take a bipartisan intel group this Congress,” a spokesman for McCarthy told Semafor.

Members of the House AI Caucus were not briefed on the framework and Schumer’s office, when asked, provided no additional information on the topic.

Based on conversations with members and outside experts, here are some policies we’ll be keeping an eye on that might make their way into an eventual House or Senate bill.

One proposal: A new central AI agency to help other federal agencies develop expertise in the technology and help with enforcement to ensure companies are following the legal standards. The agency would also monitor general purpose AI like ChatGPT to track who’s deploying the technology and how much computer power they’re using.

Other measures under discussion include disclosing AI’s role in job recruitment, home mortgage access, and healthcare provisioning, so that companies are required to make clear when high-stakes decisions are being made by an algorithm and give individuals a chance to review and appeal.

“That’s a really sort of low hanging fruit in this business and I think it would meaningfully improve how people understand how they’re being affected by an algorithm,” Alex Engler, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, told Semafor.

Some experts are also lobbying for expanding subpoena authority so that agencies can collect data from private companies to make sure they’re meeting the requirements.

The White House rolled out its own blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights last year, which contains some overlapping principles, including preventing AI from engaging in discrimination, testing programs for safety, ensuring data privacy, and allowing users to contact a human when needed.

—Kadia Goba

Jim Manley is a communications consultant and former top aide to the late Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. when he was Senate majority leader.

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: NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers seemed to endorse Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long shot presidential bid.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: DeSantis’ political team has been calling Republican lawmakers in the Florida delegation to convince them not to support Trump in 2024, according to a report from NBC News.

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— Steve Clemons