Principals

1. Reconciliation on tap
2. Stock ban latest
3. Tariff polling
4. Last chance for Ukraine peace talks
5. Tuberville’s gov plans
6. Power group chats
7. Pritzker visits NH

PDB: The Atlantic publishes Trump story

Canadians head to the polls … WSJ: New Trump order targets sanctuary cities … S&P 500 futures ⬇️ 0.19%

House, Senate clash on SALT

The House starts cranking on tax cuts this week as Congress returns, starting with a Financial Services Committee meeting today on lowering the cap on Fed transfers to the CFPB plus folding the US audit regulator into the SEC. A meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson is also on President Donald Trump’s schedule. And there are big fish to fry: spending cuts, tax rates and the state and local tax deduction (or SALT). Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said on The Hill Sunday that he’s working with interested Republicans on raising SALT. Striking a balance will be tricky, he said, because “they do not have a senator that represents a SALT state that’s Republican.” He said his committee would look at all tax brackets (including the highest one), and that the House will consider spectrum sales to augment savings from Medicaid changes.

— Burgess Everett and Eleanor Mueller

House members push stock ban

House Republicans and Democrats who want to ban lawmakers from trading stocks are rushing to negotiate compromise legislation so they can capitalize on recent comments by Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries backing the proposal, Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., told Semafor. There’s just one problem: Leadership has yet to inform those supporters of any plans to put it to a vote, another person familiar said. “Ultimately, the ball’s in his court,” Magaziner said of House Speaker Mike Johnson. In the meantime, Magaziner says he and Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., are discussing how to penalize members who trade and handle cryptocurrency as they look to blend their measures. It’s worth noting that though politicians take a lot of heat for alleged insider trading, they rarely beat the market (and many outsource their portfolios).

Trump loses public on tariffs

Americans aren’t really buying Trump’s tariff arguments. New Gallup polling shows that 70% of US adults say tariffs will end up costing the US more money than they bring in in the short term, while 62% say the same for the long term. Majorities of independents and Democrats believe tariffs will cost the US more in either scenario, while 36% and 22% of Republicans said tariffs would cost more in the short and long term, respectively. And nearly nine in 10 US adults believe tariffs are likely to result in higher prices, including 82% of Republicans. The April polling shows that Trump’s claims about tariffs bringing in billions and ultimately helping US industries are falling on deaf ears (at least in some corners). Half of US adults also said tariffs are unlikely to result in the creation of more manufacturing jobs.

US eyes Ukraine-Russian peace talks

The White House will keep a close eye on peace talks with Ukraine and Russia after Trump’s surprise meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy this weekend. The two leaders met in Rome ahead of Pope Francis’ funeral, after Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. This week will be “very critical” for the administration to make “determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC. The Trump administration recently presented a ceasefire plan to Ukraine that includes a formal recognition of Crimea as Russian territory (an idea Semafor first reported). Zelenskyy reportedly went to Rome with an alternative and discussed security guarantees with Trump. Notably, the US president criticized Putin after meeting Zelenskyy, writing that “maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war.”

— Shelby Talcott

Tuberville looks to the governor’s mansion

Two US senators are making plays for governor. GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville is telling senators he’s running for governor in Alabama, a move that would also open up his Senate seat in 2026, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. Tuberville isn’t confirming anything; his office didn’t comment and he tweeted that he and his wife “are still praying about how to best serve the people of Alabama” after Alabama website Yellowhammer News reported he told donors he’s running for the job. Tuberville joins Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for governor of Colorado and Gov. Mike Braun, who left a safe seat in Indiana to run for governor in 2024. Who’s next? Sen. Marsha Blackburn has made no secret of her ambitions to run for governor of Tennessee, though she’s not quite ready to launch her campaign.

The group chats that changed America

A sprawling network of private group chats revolving around the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are the dark matter of American politics. The chats began in earnest when he asked, Sriram Krishnan, now a White House aide, to set up dozens of WhatsApp groups for tech elites in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as an alternative to progressive-dominated social media. Another ally, Erik Torenberg, set up some Signal groups with a more political focus. Some saw the groups as building trust and community. Others saw a political project: “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites,” the conservative activist Chris Rufo said. All agree that ideas and causes seeded in the chats made their way onto Substack, X, and podcasts, and helped shape the current American intellectual moment.

— Ben Smith

Pritzker rallies NH Dems against ‘tyrants’

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called Trump and his defenders “tyrants” and “traitors” in a speech to New Hampshire Democrats, making a very early visit to the state that typically holds the first nominating primary. To win, he argued at the party’s spring fundraiser, Democrats needed to reject a “do-nothing” faction that would “blame our losses on our defense of black people and trans kids and immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.” Pritzker, a billionaire who has been able to largely self-fund his campaigns, told Semafor before the speech that he was not part of the “oligarchy” that progressives were campaigning against: Elon Musk and other wealthy Trump allies, he said, were “trying to impose their will on everyone else, and make them pay for what the oligarchs are unwilling to pay for.”

— David Weigel

Uncommon Bonds: Fed independence

Trump’s attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have raised an uncomfortable prospect for Washington lawmakers: a potential attempt to fire the central bank chief. Trying to dislodge Powell before his term is up is unpopular, even among Republicans who share Trump’s hopes for interest rate cuts in the near term, and some are floating a solution — a bill that could also let them make their own changes to the Fed. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., told Semafor last week that he wants Congress to pass a bipartisan measure that would protect the Fed against attempts to encroach on its independence, even though Trump walked back his earlier comments targeting Powell. Democratic members of the Financial Services panel are expressing at least mild interest in the idea — though they have some hesitations about embracing it right away.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Elise Stefanik is leading Mike Lawler in a hypothetical GOP primary for New York governor.

Playbook: President Trump is embarking on “headline-grabbing media blitz ahead of his 100th day in office” this week.

WaPo: Media coverage in Iran of the nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran has been largely positive.

White House

• President Trump and other world leaders attended the funeral for Pope Francis at the Vatican over the weekend.
• OPM will take over the purge of the federal workforce as Elon Musk steps back from DOGE. — WSJ

Congress

• Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is thinking about retiring. — NOTUS
• House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Cory Booker held a sit-in on the Capitol steps on Sunday to protest the GOP’s planned budget cuts.
• Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., argued to Politico that progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., shouldn’t campaign with technical terms like “oligarchy.” Sanders shot back on Meet the Press that Americans aren’t “dumb” and “understand very well.”
• Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., endorsed Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton for Senate, shortly after Stratton announced plans to run for retiring Sen. Dick Durbin’s seat.

Outside the Beltway

• A 30-year-old suspect was charged with murder after eleven people were killed when a car rammed into a crowd at a Filipino festival in Vancouver.
• New York state lawmakers are exploring getting rid of a carveout in state law that allows Tesla dealerships to sell cars direct to buyers. Meanwhile, Tesla owners in a wealthy Bay Area enclave are grappling with a love-hate relationship with their cars.

Economy

• President Trump floated cutting income taxes for Americans making less than $200,000 a year.
• Saudi Arabia and Qatar said they would pay off Syria’s outstanding debts with the World Bank.

Education

• A “collective” of university presidents, trustees and leaders is trying to coordinate ways to fend off pressure from the Trump administration. — WSJ

National Security

• Two men have been arrested on suspicion of stealing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse earlier this month.

Immigration

• Two American children were deported to Honduras with their mother last week, the same day another child was sent to the country with her mother. President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan denied they were “deported,” saying the mothers wanted to bring them along.
• The Drug Enforcement Administration said federal agents arrested 114 immigrants in a raid on an underground nightclub in Colorado. A local DEA office said they were in the US illegally and now face “likely eventual deportation.”

Foreign Policy

• North Korea admitted to sending troops to help Russia in Ukraine.
• President Trump demanded free passage for US ships through the Panama and Suez canals.

Media

• The Atlantic published a long preview of its interview with President Trump, in which he compared his second term to his first: “The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
• The annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was decidedly low-key this year, with fewer celebrities, no comedian entertainer, and no presidential guest. “The mood and reality sucks,” said Axios’ Jim VandeHei. — NYT
• The Daily Wire is expanding into a DC bureau and promoting Brent Scher to editor-in-chief, Semafor’s Max Tani scoops.
• 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley chastised the leaders of Paramount, CBS’ parent company, in a blistering direct-to-camera segment.

Big Read

• The son of a CIA deputy director was killed in Ukraine while fighting on behalf of Russia, according to the independent Russian news site IStories, which painstakingly retraced his steps.

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

Laura Gillen is a Democrat representing New York in Congress.