Principals

1. Columbia arrests
2. Dems back Johnson
3. Ukraine on the primary trail
4. Elon’s EV shocker
5. Trump’s TIME interview
6. Marijuana rescheduling
7. US-China

PDB: Trump trial updates

Biden cancels more student loan debt …Blinken in Israel … Fed expected to hold rates steady

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

New York police arrest dozens as occupied Columbia building cleared

New York Police Department officers entered Columbia University late Tuesday and arrested pro-Palestinian protesters who had occupied an administration building for a day, evoking fears among Democrats that such scenes would haunt the rest of the presidential campaign. News footage showed officers in riot gear entering Hamilton Hall through a window, and CNN reported dozens of people with their hands zip-tied were loaded onto buses after police issued an order for them to disperse. Columbia said it called in the police to “restore safety and order,” adding the move was “in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing.” The protesters’ seizure of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall drew condemnation from the White House. “This must end now,” Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday ahead of the police operation. The protests — which have spread to other campuses like UCLA, where violence erupted — are a nightmare for Democrats who fear an August convention in Chicago at which the president and delegates meet behind barricades as the city burns. “The longer they continue, and the worse that they get, the worse it’s going to be for the election,” one House Democrat told Axios.

MTG says she’ll make Democrats elect Johnson speaker

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s crusade against Mike Johnson might finally be speeding toward its end. The Georgia congresswoman has been threatening to force a vote that could theoretically topple the speaker since March, as she’s feuded with him over Ukraine aid and the budget. But on Tuesday, Democratic leaders cut the drama short by announcing that they would block Greene’s motion to vacate. The timing of the move surprised members of both parties: A Democratic leadership source told Semafor’s Kadia Goba that Johnson did not know ahead of time that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his deputies planned to release their statement, but he was aware they were possibly interested in providing him “with a safe landing.” Greene signaled Monday that she planned to trigger an up or down vote on Johnson anyway, posting on X that if “the Democrats want to elect him Speaker” she would “give them the chance to do it.” She and Rep. Thomas Massie, one of only two other Republicans to endorse Green’s motion, are planning a mystery press conference this morning.

Does Ukraine aid move GOP voters?

Mike Johnson’s position in the House is secure, but what about Republican members facing primary challenges from Ukraine aid opponents? They’re looking pretty good too, Semafor’s David Weigel reports. West Virginia Rep. Carol Miller and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, both facing primaries from insurgent candidates who’ve attacked their Ukraine vote, are operating like the vote won’t matter and — despite some significant endorsements — their opponents still look like long shots. The biggest missing ingredient? Donald Trump, whose decision not to oppose the final Ukraine bill robbed challengers of a simple MAGA vs. establishment story. “Everyone we hear from agrees with President Trump and Congresswoman Miller: It is in America’s strategic interest for Ukraine to prevail over Russia while we must simultaneously work to rein in our debt,” said Matthew Donnellan, Miller’s chief of staff.

Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ layoffs could hurt EVs everywhere

Analysts are still trying to figure out exactly what Elon Musk’s shocking decision to wipe out Tesla’s entire supercharger team will mean for the future of the White House’s electric vehicle push. On Tuesday, the billionaire fired the division’s top executives and its hundreds-strong staff as part of his effort to be “absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction.” The layoffs raised new questions about the Biden administration’s EV charger rollout, since Tesla is the breakaway industry leader when it comes to building stations, and other major automakers have been rushing to adopt its port (the company has also won a good deal of federal money to help its efforts). News that Tesla would immediately nix some of its plans to build additional chargers in New York compounded the concerns. “It’s not a great day for the U.S. EV transition, that’s for sure,” BloombergNEF analyst Corey Cantor told Semafor. Musk tried to calm nerves Tuesday afternoon. “Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations,” he posted to X.

Takeaways from Trump’s TIME interview

You should probably take the time to read Donald Trump’s TIME interview in full. It’s hard to get past perhaps the most discussed moments — repeating he may pardon all January 6th convicts, warning “it depends on the fairness of the election” when asked about future violence — which go beyond typical politics. But it’s also a rare case of a traditional outlet pressing him on ordinary policy, from trade (he repeated his call for a 10% global tariff, and said “it may be more than that”) to Israel (“I’m not sure a two-state solution is going to work”). Always slippery on details, he was especially evasive on abortion, where he’s rarely been pressed on the practical realities of post-Dobbs policy. He dodged on whether he’d restrict abortion pills (“I’m not gonna say it yet”), on whether he’d invoke the 19th century Comstock Act to do so (“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days”) and on states “prosecuting women for getting abortions” (“It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”) He also declined to say whether he’d vote for Florida’s abortion rights referendum in November, which would likely overturn a 6-week ban that he criticized as “too severe.”

— Benjy Sarlin

Biden administration plans to reclassify marijuana

Pot dispensaries and scientists are set to be some of the biggest winners as the Biden administration looks to loosen the federal rules around marijuana. On Tuesday, multiple outlets reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration is preparing to take the historic step of removing cannabis from Schedule I, the most heavily restricted category of controlled substances that includes heroin and LSD. It will be reclassified to Schedule III, which covers more loosely regulated drugs like Ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. The move won’t federally legalize the existing state-sanctioned marijuana trade. However, it will likely make medical research into marijuana easier to pursue. It will also allow businesses that sell marijuana to deduct their business expenses for the first time by freeing them from the notorious Section 280E of the tax code. It wasn’t all good vibes for the industry on Tuesday, though: Sen. John Cornyn harshed its high when he warned that Republicans would likely reject any effort to attach a cannabis banking bill to a Federal Aviation Act reauthorization.

Dmitri Alperovitch says US on Cold War footing against China

It’s 2028, right after the US election, and China has launched an air assault on Taiwan that has the outgoing White House national security adviser panicking over a conflict that could be far worse than World War II. That’s the entry point for national security expert Dmitri Alperovitch’s new book, “World on the Brink,” in which he argues the US needs to embrace a Cold War posture with China in order to prevent a hot war over Taiwan. The US must take “drastic” actions to curb China’s power, Alperovitch told Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant in an interview, like “shutting off their semiconductor production industry” through even more stringent export controls. “It is a zero-sum game at the end of the day,” said Alperovitch, who described national security-focused officials in the Biden administration as receptive to his arguments. His approach wouldn’t mean eliminating stepped-up communication with China, but it could jeopardize cooperation on issues like fentanyl and climate change.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is expected to “provide a much clearer picture of if and when” she plans to trigger a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson at her press conference this morning.

Playbook: Donald Trump’s hand-picked RNC chair Michael Whatley personally warned Greene not to move against Johnson, arguing that doing so would hurt party unity. She ignored his advice after Democrats publicly supported the speaker. “Fresh bait always finds a fish,” a senior GOP official said.

Axios: Trump’s TIME interview offers the clearest picture yet of what a second Trump term would look like.

White House

• President Biden is participating in a campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington today. Vice President Harris is in Jacksonville, Fla., to talk about abortion.
• The White House announced plans to cancel student debt for 317,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes, a for-profit college system that shuttered its campuses abruptly last year. “This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students, and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies,” Biden said in a statement this morning. “While my predecessor looked the other way when colleges defrauded students and borrowers, I promised to take this on directly to provide borrowers with the relief they need and deserve.”
• The White House is weighing allowing some Palestinians from Gaza to resettle in the US. — CBS

Congress

• The Senate passed legislation banning US imports of enriched uranium from Russia, sending it to the White House for President Biden’s signature.
• The House is scheduled to vote today on the Antisemitism Awareness Act, legislation that would change the definition of antisemitism to beef up the Education Department’s ability to utilize anti-discrimination laws.
• Members of Congress paid tribute to the late Donald Payne Jr., who died last week, many of them remarking on his fashion sense. “He had those beautiful bowties and he wore those fabulous suits and shoes and all of his colors that he coordinated,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
• The Agriculture Committee released a framework for the upcoming Farm Bill which is expected to be marked up on May 23, Rep. Glenn G.T. Thompson, R-Pa., said in a statement.
• Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who famously strapped his dog Seamus in a crate on the roof of the family car during road trips, was bewildered at South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s decision to shoot her puppy Cricket. “I cannot imagine circumstances that would lead one to take one’s dog to a gravel pit, particularly a [14] month old & shoot it,” he told Semafor. He also highlighted differences between his story and Noem’s. “I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog and my dog loved me.”
• The House Foreign Affairs Committee hosted a roundtable with the loved ones of Americans detained abroad, including Austin Tice and Ryan Corbett.

Economy

• The Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady after the end of its meeting today — though investors will be closely watching Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference for hints about future moves.
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted that President Biden would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $400,000 a year during testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. She also criticized former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers over his comments about inflation, calling him a “person who’s been wrong in the past.”

Environment

• A new Biden administration rule would hurry up the approval process for clean energy projects under the National Environmental Policy Act while requiring agencies to consider the impacts that projects like highways could have on climate change and pollution in disadvantaged communities. It is facing pushback from Republicans and centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
• The EPA has banned a chemical linked to cancer that is widely used to strip paint.

Courts

A Fifth Circuit panel threw out Louisiana’s redrawn Congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander, potentially throwing a lifeline to Republican Rep. Garret Graves. — WaPo

Trump Trial

Juan Merchan, the New York judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, fined the former president $9,000 and threatened him with jail time for violating a gag order that limited his speech about people involved in the case. The ruling kicked off an eventful court day during which jurors heard testimony from Keith Davidson, an attorney who detailed his effort to sell Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair with Trump in the early 2000s. Trump did get some good news: he will be able to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.

National Security

• The Pentagon denied a woman a security clearance earlier this year because she is a “close” relative of an authoritarian dictator in another country. — CNN
• President Biden signed a new memorandum to boost security of US critical infrastructure that, among other things, directs the intelligence community to share intelligence with owners and operators of critical infrastructure.

Foreign Policy

• Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to move forward with an offensive in Rafah regardless of a deal to secure the release of hostages from Hamas custody.
• US climate envoy John Podesta will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington later this month for climate change talks. — Reuters
• Russia is trying to exacerbate divisions in the US over the war in Gaza. — NBC

Technology

• Chinese e-commerce company Temu is censoring US political search terms like “Trump” and “Biden” for American consumers. — Forbes
• The US faces a steep climb to expand the workforce needed to run its expanding chip industry. — WaPo

Media

• Donald Trump told TIME magazine that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich should be freed from a Russian jail. It was the first time the former president weighed in on Gershkovich, who has been held for 13 months.
• Eight newspapers have sued Microsoft and OpenAI in federal court over alleged copyright infringement.
• Ken Klippenstein quit The Intercept.

Big Read

In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last makes a spirited case for Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. as the “dark horse” Trump running mate who quietly checks the most boxes. She can help with women, she’s broadly acceptable to the pre-Trump GOP, and she’s old and established enough that she won’t annoy Trump by drawing coverage as a potential heir apparent who will steer the party into the future. “Blackburn has a lower profile than any of the other names on the list, there’s less of a chance she could develop her own power base within the administration,” Last writes. “There were ‘Pence’ guys in the first Trump administration. In a second Trump administration, there would be no ‘Blackburn people.’”

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that US forces helping to build a floating pier off the coast of Gaza could be shot at and said they could return fire.

What the Right isn’t reading: Donald Trump also said during his interview with TIME that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “rightfully has been criticized for what took place on October 7.”

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

Reporters: Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Rick Larsen is a Democratic congressman from Washington state and a member of the Congressional Soccer Caucus. FIFA President Gianni Infantino is visiting Capitol Hill this week to talk about plans for the 2026 World Cup.

• How Musk’s Tesla layoffs could hurt EVs everywhere.
• The US and China are in a race to develop AI in Africa.
• Why a top Chinese COVID-19 scientist is protesting lab eviction.