Principals

☞ White House: President Biden will huddle with donors in Washington later today, having just announced his reelection bid. He and Vice President Harris will also attend the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday with their spouses.

☞ Senate: Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. doubled down on his call for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. to resign from her seat, noting that in her absence the Senate voted to overturn a Biden regulation to limit truck emissions. (The president has said he’ll veto the resolution). Former California Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC that Feinstein “either has to get back to Washington or really consider an early retirement.”

☞ House: McCarthy is gearing up for a visit to Israel, his first overseas trip since stepping into his current leadership role. But first, the House will vote later this morning on overturning a Biden administration rule waiving tariffs on solar materials from Southeast Asian nations. Also some good news: Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. said that his cancer is in remission after completing chemotherapy.

Former Vice President Mike Pence testified on Thursday before the grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, a source with knowledge of his appearance confirmed, a day after a federal appeals court rejected Trump’s last-ditch bid to block Pence’s testimony.

West Virginia’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice formally announced he would run for Senate in 2024. Justice, who has been aggressively recruited by the Senate GOP leaders, is considered a favorite against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. But first he faces a potentially competitive primary against Rep. Alex Mooney. Club for Growth, which is backing Mooney, called Justice “Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate” and pointed out that he’s a former Democrat.

Biden’s approval rating dropped to 37% during the month of April according to Gallup, the lowest number that the public opinion and analytics firm has registered for the president to date and only the second time he’s dropped below the 40% line. Gallup blames the low figure in part on Americans’ declining views of the U.S. economy.

The Biden administration is preparing for an expected influx of migrants next month by setting up regional processing centers throughout Latin America to determine whether migrants are eligible to enter the U.S. through refugee resettlement or other programs. Officials hope the centers will help maintain some order when Title 42 ends on May 11, a tool they had used to more rapidly remove border crossers. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who has at times criticized the Biden administration’s moves on immigration, praised the announcement, telling Semafor they would “ensure that there’s a safe place to make application without having to take a treacherous journey as well.”

— Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba

Punchbowl News: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged that the Senate has “had a little setback with Dianne” when it comes to moving judicial nominees, but he insisted Democrats would keep up the pace of confirmations despite her absence.

Playbook: Relatives of Austin Tice and Evan Gershkovich will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and Biden plans to address “the plight of wrongfully detained journalists” in his speech.

The Early 202: Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wouldn’t rule out sitting out the presidential race if the GOP nominee doesn’t embrace at least a 15-week national abortion ban. “It would be a tough spot for us,” she told the Washington Post. Dannenfelser also said she believed Trump would come around to supporting the policy.

Axios: Some Biden advisers acknowledged to Axios that Biden’s age has “diminished his energy” and limited his schedule. A breakdown of his public events this year found most of his public appearances occur between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

In Israel, Ron DeSantis tries muscling in on Donald Trump’s political turf

THE NEWS

JERUSALEM, Israel – After a stop in Japan, Ron DeSantis landed Wednesday evening in Israel to continue his multi-country tour to, at least publicly, foster economic relationships with Florida.

Israel is used to receiving potential White House candidates testing out their presidential chops. He was given a dignitary’s welcome, including meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was one of Donald Trump’s closest allies abroad during his time as president.

But the message DeSantis sought to convey is that he was no stranger to high-stakes Middle East diplomacy already. In fact, he even tried to muscle in on one of Donald Trump’s signature achievements: Moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

During his speech at the Celebrate the Faces of Israel event (a project of the Jerusalem Post and the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem), he prominently highlighted his 2017 trip to Israel, noting he’d been “an outspoken proponent and advocate of relocating our embassy” in Congress as well as a mentioning a hearing he carried on the topic.

While DeSantis declined to single out Trump directly, he made clear that he felt he played a vital role in pressuring the administration to ultimately move the embassy, a key Israeli request that prior presidents had promised and reneged on.

“When we were trying to cajole the previous administration to do it, I actually launched a very small delegation over here, we looked at a bunch of different sites,” DeSantis said. “We did a big press conference, announced that this was going to happen.”

SHELBY’S VIEW

The embassy story has become a staple for DeSantis, particularly in recent months as he moves closer to an expected presidential bid: In his book, published earlier this year, the Florida governor noted that Trump signed a waiver to delay moving the embassy, and suggested he might have gotten nervous when “experts” warned it would inflame tensions in the region and close off peace talks with Palestinians and Arab countries. Ultimately, DeSantis wrote, Trump went with “the site I thought was the best.”

Trump, of course, received copious credit within Israel for his decision. There’s even a roundabout in Jerusalem named after him next to the embassy. In general, the former president treats Israel — and the Jewish Republican vote in America — as his political territory. He has even accused American Jews of showing “great disloyalty” by not voting for him on that basis (the Biden White House condemned similar remarks by Trump last year in a Truth Social post as antisemitic).

But DeSantis’ version of events underscored yet another way in which the Florida governor could try and outflank his potential opponent by selling himself as the more decisive leader. He and his allies have dropped similar hints criticizing Trump on COVID-19, especially his decision not to fire high-up officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci for encouraging tight public health restrictions.

“You know what, I didn’t realize his history with Israel,” 76-year-old Steve Rosdal, who was at the event from Colorado, told Semafor after DeSantis’ speech. “I really loved that speech and it might make a difference in the way I vote.”

And although he brushed off a question about announcing a presidential bid in mid-May (he derided the use of anonymous sources and said that “any announcements” would “come at the appropriate time”), the Florida governor sounded like a man looking to run the country at times. He trashed Biden’s Middle East policies and, without taking a position on Netanyahu’s attempted judicial reforms that have sparked mass protests, criticized U.S officials for getting involved at all. “The United States should be a strong ally to Israel, but we should not butt into their internal affairs,” he said.

Notably, DeSantis had some major 2024 supporters in his posse: Megadonor Ken Griffin was reportedly listed as a guest of the Florida governor, and he began his speech by pointing out his “friend” Miriam Adelson, another major political donor who attended the event. Semafor’s Bradley Saacks reported Thursday that Griffin’s enthusiasm for DeSantis has been called into question lately, confirming reporting in the New York Times that the billionaire was upset with his tack right on issues like abortion and the war in Ukraine.

THE VIEW FROM MAR-A-LAGO

“President Trump made a campaign promise in 2016 that he would move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and he did just that. Ron DeSantis is trying to cajole and gaslight others into thinking he had anything to do with that. It’s sad that he has diminished himself in such a tiny way where he has to outright lie about the facts to bolster his thin resume,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Some observers don’t see the race for pro-Israel GOP voters and donors as a binary choice between Trump or DeSantis: At least a few board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition are pushing for people to back 2024 candidate Nikki Haley. In a letter distributed back in March, the board members argue that Haley is “the best candidate for Jewish Republicans,” citing her work on Middle East issues as the ambassador to the U.N. under Trump.

Four Democratic camps on the debt ceiling

The White House reportedly didn’t think that House Republicans would manage to pass a debt ceiling bill. Now that they have, President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have to decide how to respond. For now, it still isn’t exactly clear what their next move might be, and with the House set to adjourn until May 8, it may be a while until we find out. But there seem to be roughly four camps within the party. Here’s a rundown of where they stand.

1. Negotiate a “budget” deal. The White House has said that although it had no interest in negotiating over the debt ceiling, Biden is willing to bargain over a budget. At the moment, most Democrats appear to be rallying behind some version of this line. “The debt limit is not negotiable,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a member of the Senate Appropriations panel, told Semafor. “The deficit is negotiable.”

What this distinction would look like in practice, however, isn’t entirely clear. Some top Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have said Republicans should raise the borrowing limit without conditions first, with spending talks to follow later as part of the annual appropriations process. “The right answer is still to raise the debt ceiling and then have a really tough budget negotiation,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters Thursday.

That said, it seems plausible that Democrats might try to fudge things by haggling over the “budget” even while the debt ceiling is unresolved.

2. Just negotiate. A handful of Democrats have been urging Biden to sit down with the GOP over the debt ceiling throughout this process. The calls have come from the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House, and from Joe Manchin in the Senate. On Thursday, the West Virginian put out another statement lauding McCarthy for passing a bill and urging the president to “come to the table.”

3. Hope moderate Republicans cave. A few months back, there was a lot of chatter that moderate Republicans might team up with Democrats in the House to diffuse this whole self-imposed crisis using an old tool known as a discharge petition, which can force legislation to the floor if it has majority support. Some people in Washington have yet to give up on this very “West Wing” scenario. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen brought it up in a gaggle of reporters Thursday, for instance, saying lawmakers should “look in the mirror and decide whether they want to be part of blowing up the US economy simply to make a partisan political point.”

None of this seems particularly realistic at the moment. Moderate Republicans haven’t shown any interest in breaking from McCarthy so far, and discharge petitions involve complicated procedural hoops ill-suited for a debt ceiling showdown. If the default date is in June, there may not even be enough legislative calendar days to actually execute one.

4. Pray Mitch McConnell steps in. On Wednesday, Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse suggested that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could help broker a more realistic debt deal in the upper chamber than what the House produced. As of now, McConnell says he has no desire to step in, and that it’s up to Biden to sit down with McCarthy. But, hey, things can sometimes change when financial apocalypse is around the corner.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Jordan Weissmann

Evan Gershkovich works for the Wall Street Journal and is sitting in a detention cage in Moscow. Austin Tice, also a journalist, is believed by the U.S. government to still be held captive by the Syrian government. These are but two of many reporters wrongfully detained around the world. Last year, 67 news-media workers were killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

I try to keep Evan, Austin, my friend Jamal Khashoggi who wrote columns for the Washington Post, Shireen Abu Akleh who was killed in May 2022, and many others in my thoughts as I go to the parties organized around the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Each year, I try hard to anchor discussions and encounters in something important, by talking to journalists, politicians, and officials about the threat toward individual rights both in our country and outside of it, and the people who depend on a transparent and responsive government. These kinds of conversations can make a difference, in their own small way: I’ve witnessed intense exchanges over the years on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the ongoing impact of racism, and most recently transgender rights, between a rare mix of high-profile figures inside and outside Washington who are eager to hear from each other for just one night. People can even sometimes change their mind.

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the fun, amidst celebrities and silliness, the spotted lists, and crafted cocktails and gossip and I have my share of goofy stories from these dinners too. But what I think is also essential is that all of those powerful people in politics, in business, in Hollywood, from advocacy organizations domestically and internationally, remind their governments that journalism makes us safe and protects us from abuse, exploitation, and tyranny — and that’s why journalists are so frequently targeted. That’s what will be on my mind this weekend — and hope some of you reading this keep this in mind as well.

— Steve Clemons

We reached out to two New York members of Congress to discuss the New York Knicks’ 5-game victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team’s first playoff series win in 10 years.

Nicole Malliotakis is a Republican who has represented New York’s 11th congressional district since 2021.

Pat Ryan is a Democrat representing New York’s 18th congressional district. He has served in Congress since 2022.

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: Tucker Carlson’s Twitter video in which be broke his silence after leaving Fox News netted 57 million views in less than a day.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Biden has a small, secret, gold-framed TV amongst other picture frames atop a desk in the Oval Office, Politico reported.

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— Steve Clemons