Principals

1. Trade reps in town
2. Tariff pressure on SALT
3. Immigration battles
4. Google back in court
5. The Hill escapes a suit
6. A weekend of protests
7. Main St. vs. Wall St. on tariffs

PDB: Top tech and finance execs sold billions in shares ahead of tariff announcement

Pope Francis dies, aged 88 …Vance to India … Nikkei 225 index ⬇️ 1.30%

White House readies for tariff talks

Representatives from multiple countries are expected in Washington this week, hoping to strike a trade deal: A delegation from Thailand is expected to head to the US to meet administration officials, South Korea’s finance and trade ministers will be in town for meetings with Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and trade negotiators from India will reportedly visit for talks, too. The flurry of visits comes as Donald Trump’s 90-day tariffs pause ticks down — last week, he noted he’s “in no rush” to announce any trade deals, and on Sunday spent time posting in defense of tariffs and negotiations. One thing that’s unclear? Whether talks between the US and China will continue this week, after the president said the countries have spoken since he hiked tariffs.

— Shelby Talcott

Tariffs add a new twist to SALT fight

Tariffs could prove to be crucial for blue-state Republicans in high-pressure negotiations over how much to increase the cap on the state and local tax deduction. Lawmakers may have to decide whether to hinge their reconciliation vote on a SALT deal, and extra costs related to the tariffs are bolstering their case, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports. High-cost, high-tax border states in the Northeast and on the West Coast — whose residents have felt the weight of the $10,000 cap on SALT — also face unique challenges due to their proximity to US trading partners. Working-class Americans in the wine, import/export, and agriculture industries are already feeling the tariffs’ effects. “Trump could lose some of that influence by the time Congress gets around to voting for an extension for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told Semafor.

Deportation legal battles escalate

The Trump administration’s legal battles over its migration policy are set to escalate this week after the Supreme Court released a rare late-night order early Saturday that blocked a group of Venezuelan detainees now being held in Texas from being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. That 1798 law is the subject of ongoing litigation, as the administration has been trying to use it for deportations. The high court had previously ruled that Venezuelans affected by Trump aides’ use of the law must be told about their imminent deportations and be allowed to contest them. The remarkably speedy nature of the high court’s weekend order “indicated a deep skepticism about whether the administration could be trusted to live up to” the terms of the earlier order, The New York Times reported.

— Elana Schor

Google faces potential breakup

Google faces an existential threat to its business operations as a trial opens today to decide a remedy after the company was found to have a monopoly in online search last year. Judge Amit Mehta will consider a push by the Justice Department to force Alphabet to sell its Chrome browser during the three-week trial set to begin today in federal court in Washington. The $1.8 trillion company is in a weakened position, after a federal judge in a separate case ruled last week that Google illegally monopolized some advertising markets. There may be a broader reckoning afoot for Big Tech; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his company’s practices in court last week, fighting an FTC suit alleging Meta accumulated a monopoly with its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

The Hill’s parent dodges a Trump lawsuit

Since 2023, Truth Social has relentlessly pursued a defamation case against 19 media companies that all flubbed the same story about its earnings. But one outlet that got it wrong — The Hill, owned by the broadcast giant Nexstar — managed to quietly convince the owners of Trump’s conservative Twitter clone to drop it from the lawsuit. The concession Nexstar offered, Semafor’s Max Tani reports: firing The Hill staffer who’d written the story.

A spokesperson for Nexstar denied that. But there’s good reasons for Nexstar to stay out of Trump’s line of fire, as the TV company attempts to grow its business. To do that, Nexstar will need to stay on Trump’s good side. The result has been that Nexstar’s executives have tightened their grip, cutting costs while also pursuing some editorial changes — especially at The Hill.

Democrats focus on Musk at rallies

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas – Anti-Trump administration protests unfolded in more than 80 cities on Saturday, as Democrats faced more questions about how they’d battle the president. At three stops across Texas, Democratic Rep. Greg Casar told voters and protesters that his party would increase pressure on Elon Musk over the Tesla chief’s “special government employee” status, which allows Musk to temporarily lead DOGE without divesting from his business interests. “If he does not leave by May 30, there are even more legal and legislative options,” he told Semafor after a town hall in GOP Rep. Michael McCaul’s district — one of many events that Democrats are holding on Republican turf. “At that point, he has to either sell off his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX and more — or leave. And I think that we will have both legislative and legal opportunities if he doesn’t go.”

— David Weigel

Debatable: ‘Wall Street vs. Main Street’ on tariffs

The Trump administration has justified tariffs by arguing that they will benefit US small businesses on “Main Street,” rather than Wall Street investors. From the administration’s perspective, the sweeping tariffs may cause short-term pain for financiers, but will bring back domestic manufacturing and revitalize US industries. Still, tariffs are posing challenges for US companies and consumers, as they threaten higher prices and slower economic growth. Oren Cass, the founder and chief economist of conservative think tank American Compass, argues in favor of Trump’s framing, saying that the US embrace of globalization and free trade wrongly assumed that “whatever benefited Wall Street would also benefit America.” Gabe Horwitz, director of the economic program Third Way, argues that Trump’s policies are “driving us toward a recession that will hurt both” Main Street and Wall Street.

Beltway Newsletters

Playbook: Recently departed Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot lashes out at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in an op-ed: “The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

WaPo: Four House Democrats are visiting El Salvador today to demand the release of Kilmar Abrego García, who was wrongly deported there.

Axios: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is increasingly seen by some Democrats and former aides to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., aides as his successor to lead the populist movement he started.

White House

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared Pentagon attack plans on Houthis in Yemen in a separate, second private Signal chat with wife, brother, and personal lawyer, plus others close to him. — NYT
• The White House has initiated plans to reclassify 50,000 federal employees as at-will workers, stripping them of their civil services protections.

Congress

• Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the Salvadoran government tried to keep him from visiting deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia during his visit to El Salvador last week.
• GOP South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace got into a heated public confrontation with a constituent.

Outside the Beltway

• ICE wrongly detained a 19-year-old US citizen in Arizona for 10 days. — Arizona Public Media
• Former Rep. Barbara Lee was elected mayor of Oakland, California.

Economy

• The World Bank and International Monetary Fund open their spring meetings in DC this week.
• The dollar fell following comments on Friday from White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett that President Trump is looking into firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
• Top tech and finance executives, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Safra Katz of Oracle, sold billions in stock shares shortly before Trump’s tariff announcement upended markets early this month. — Bloomberg

Health

• The federal government’s COVID.gov website has been revamped to say the pandemic began when the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan and that it “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.” (The theory is still disputed among intelligence agencies and scientists.)

Education

• The administration is planning to attempt to claw back an additional $1 billion in health research funding from Harvard University after the school defied an earlier letter that may have been sent in error. — WSJ

Courts

• Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed court papers threatening to sue a woman who accused him of sexual harassment for defamation. — NY Post

National Security

• DOGE is building a master database under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security for tracking migrants. — WIRED
• The General Services Administration, under both President Trump and former President Joe Biden, mistakenly shared a Google Drive folder containing classified documents with all 11,000 of the agency’s staffers. — WaPo

Foreign Policy

• Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele offered to repatriate Venezuelans deported from the US to El Salvador in exchange for the release of prisoners held in Venezuela. Venezuela responded by calling him a “neofascist.”
• Iran and the US will continue nuclear deal negotiations, after productive talks between envoy Steve Witkoff and over the weekend.
• Russia and Ukraine accused each other of breaking a hastily declared one-day Easter ceasefire.

Technology

• Tech companies like Meta, Amazon and YouTube sponsored this year’s Easter Egg Roll.
• The United Arab Emirates will use AI to help write laws.

Media

• Bloomberg is warning its employees to bring extra documentation when entering the US, Max scoops.

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

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang offers a gift to Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba during a visit to discuss AI infrastructure.

It’s been 10 years since Publicis, the French advertising giant, shook the industry with its $3.7 billion acquisition of digital consultancy Sapient, and six years since it appointed Nigel Vaz to run the combined Publicis Sapient. The division now generates 15% of the group’s revenues and employs one in five of its 100,000 people, Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson wrote.