Principals

1. Biden admin nuke speech
2. Russian asset deal
3. Hallie Biden testifies
4. Tax cut math
5. Egyptian wind, US tariffs

PDB: America’s shocking cricket win.

Biden to speak at Pointe du Hoc … Israel defends school strike … Trump to Dr. Phil: “Sometimes revenge can be justified.”

US to adopt more ‘competitive’ nuclear weapons strategy

The Biden administration will announce its plans to embrace a more assertive nuclear weapons strategy later today, after China and Russia spurned US efforts to discuss arms control over the past year. The US believes it needs “to adopt a more competitive approach to non-proliferation and arms control” in light of rising global tensions, and “make certain adjustments to our posture and capabilities,” a senior administration official told Semafor’s Mathias Hammer. The NSC’s Pranay Vaddi is expected to outline the new direction at an arms control conference today. At the same gathering last year, national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced the US was willing to discuss arms control with China and Russia “without preconditions.” But Beijing and Moscow have effectively rejected those overtures, forcing the US to shift its approach, according to the administration.

Western allies near deal to fund Ukraine with Russian assets

President Biden is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after warning in his D-Day speech that Western allies must not “surrender to bullies” like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, US and European officials are nearing an agreement on using profits from frozen Russian assets to secure a $50 billion loan for Ukraine, with one Treasury official telling Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant that “there’s a lot of forward progress” towards an agreement ahead of the G7 summit in mid-June. White House official Daleep Singh said at a conference in Washington that G7 leaders “have the chance to send an unmistakable signal that Putin cannot outlast us, that we’re not going to fatigue no matter what happens in the elections here or anywhere else.”

Hallie Biden testifies about finding Hunter’s gun

“I panicked,” Hallie Biden told jurors in Hunter Biden’s trial as she recounted the moment she found a gun in her former lover’s car and then drove it to a local grocery store to throw it away. The widow of Beau Biden, who began a relationship with his brother after her husband’s death, said she was ashamed of using drugs with Hunter and that she found “some remnants of crack cocaine and paraphernalia” in his truck in October 2018. But during cross examination, she acknowledged she hadn’t witnessed Hunter “smoke crack around this time,” a detail that could help the defense. Prosecutors intend to rest their case Friday, while Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell said he would call “very few” witnesses. During an interview with ABC, President Biden ruled out pardoning his son and said he would accept the trial’s outcome.

Some dismal tax cut math

America’s budget wonks have been running the numbers, and they’ve all come to the same conclusion: Extending the expiring Trump tax cuts won’t come even close to paying for itself with economic growth. That’s the bottom line from a report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which looks at five different recent scores. Even the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation thinks economic feedback effects could offset 14% of cost renewing the cuts. A big reason? Most of the expiring provisions involve individual income tax cuts, which offer less of an economic pop than business cuts in their models. That could pose a challenge for Republicans, who have already signaled they’re hoping that dynamic scoring — which takes growth effects into account — will make their budget math look better.

What African renewables say about Biden’s EV tariffs

A giant wind farm set to be built in Egypt illustrates the risks inherent in the Biden administration’s tariffs on Chinese EVs. Infinity Power — by some definitions Africa’s biggest renewables company — plans to rely on wind turbines manufactured by Chinese companies to achieve its target of installing 10 gigawatts of clean power by 2030 and, as the company’s chair told Semafor’s Prashant Rao in an interview, the turbines aren’t just cheaper, they’re also better. What does that have to do with EVs? “You can try to patch [shortcomings] up with import tariffs, but,” he said, “long term, if you don’t fix your product, you’re going to lose out on market share.” In effect, by protecting American car makers at home, the Biden administration may kill those same carmakers abroad.

In this episode of Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, presented by Think With Google, Ben and Nayeema dissect the battle brewing between American newsrooms and President Biden, wondering whether the Brits are to blame. Then they call up Richard Linklater, famed director of films including Boyhood, Dazed and Confused and, his latest, Hit Man, to contemplate whether it was Marvel, #MeToo or something else that took sex out of the cinema. Finally, Max opens our eyes and hearts to the world of faith-based news. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Rep. Nancy Mace appears to have overcharged a Congressional program that refunds members for living expenses while in D.C. by about $8,900, according to an analysis by the site. “We follow all the rules for reimbursements and last year we were reimbursed less than what was allowed,” Gabrielle Lipsky, Mace’s communications director, said in a statement.

Playbook: Washington Post publisher Will Lewis CEO is facing a crisis of confidence within his own paper after revelations that he pushed back reporting on his involvement in the British phone hacking scandal. “The newsroom is almost uniformly horrified,” one source tells Politico.

WaPo: Democratic pollster Zac MacRary says that the presidential election “feels pretty much like a coin flip.”

Axios: Far-right groups and white nationalists are hinting at violence after Donald Trump’s guilty verdict last week. An Ohio Proud Boys chapter vowed “war.

White House

• After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in Normandy, President Biden will deliver a speech about democracy at Pointe du Hoc. Biden will seek to emulate one of former President Ronald Reagan’s “most iconic speeches,” Peter Baker writes for The New York Times.
• Biden is looking into moves he can make on immigration policy to pacify progressives furious over his recent executive order restricting asylum at the border. — Politico
• George Clooney called Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti last month to voice concerns about Biden’s rebuke of the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants of top Israeli officials. The actor’s wife, Amal Clooney, is an international human rights attorney who said she reviewed evidence and provided legal analysis for the ICC’s chief prosecutor. — WaPo

Congress

• After a bit of a scheduling snafu, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now expected to address a joint session of Congress on July 24. — Punchbowl
• Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, is being accused of stealing valor by fellow House Republicans for wearing a Combat Infantryman Badge pin that recent reports suggest he didn’t earn. — NOTUS
• Democrats don’t really want to weigh in on the question of whether Donald Trump should serve jail time. — The Hill
• House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan is asking for an interview with a top prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith’s Florida documents case, Jay Bratt. — The Hill
• Ten House lawmakers — nine Republicans, one Democrat — parachuted from a WWII-era plane into Normandy on Thursday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The group, made up of military veterans, included GOP Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Derrick Van Orden, Cory Mills and Ronny Jackson. The planned jump unnerved some House Republicans, with one House GOP staffer calling it “ballsy and stupid” given the party enjoys only a two-seat majority.

Outside the Beltway

• New York lawmakers shot down the payroll tax hike governor Kathy Hochul proposed to fund subway and transit improvements after she hit pause on the state’s congestion pricing plan. So what now? Nobody’s sure.
• Michael Bloomberg wants to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Sports

The underdog U.S. cricket team, whose star player works a full-time day job as an Oracle engineer, pulled off a surprise victory over Pakistan, the no. 6-ranked squad in the world.

Economy

The European Central Bank cut interest rates for the first time in nearly five years.

Courts

• Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon was ordered to prison on July 1 to begin his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena to testify before the Jan. 6 committee. “There is not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up,” he said.
• A 5-4 Supreme Court sided with Native American tribes in a case against the federal government over healthcare costs. (As usual, Justice Neil Gorsuch backed the tribes.)
• Another case to keep on your radar: The justices will hear a challenge to President Biden’s order requiring hospitals to perform emergency abortions in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, including in states where the procedure is banned.
• Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is working on a legal memoir. — Axios

On the Trail

• President Biden’s campaign brought on a former aide to ex-Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger as its leader of Republican outreach, seeking to make inroads with GOP voters who don’t support Donald Trump.
• The Trump campaign has rebranded its Hispanic outreach, and is set to relaunch as “Latino Americans for Trump” on Sunday at a rally in Las Vegas. — NBC
• A fundraiser hosted by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Sacks last night was expected to net more than $12 million for Trump’s reelection effort. — NYT
• Trump’s campaign now says it doesn’t have immediate plans to share its position on abortion pills. Back in April, the candidate promised a policy announcement “probably over the next week.” — CNN
• Meanwhile, conservatives in Trump’s orbit are talking about “how to use a little-known labor law to impose sweeping restrictions on private-employer-covered abortions.” — WaPo
• It’s official: The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC rescinded its endorsement of Mondaire Jones over his decision to back the primary challenger to Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Meanwhile, Bowman netted an endorsement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
• Some progressives think Biden needs to lean harder on the message that corporate price gouging is responsible for inflation — a line that seems to be working for purple state senators like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. — NYT

Foreign Policy

• The US has warned Israel against starting a “limited war” with Lebanon. — Axios
• Israel has wiped out half of Hamas’ forces. — Reuters
• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called protecting the civilian population in Gaza a “strategic imperative.” — NBC
• The NAACP urged President Biden to halt weapons shipments to Israel and call for an “immediate and permanent” ceasefire.

Technology

• SpaceX’s fourth test of its Starship megarocket was a success.
• Social media app X has been placing ads in search results for at least 20 hashtags used to promote racist and antisemitic extremism. — NBC

Media

• Some journalists the New York Times and other newsrooms are angry with their union, the NewsGuild, in part because some of its employees criticized their own reporting on Gaza, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.
• NPR media reporter David Folkenflik wrote that Washington Post CEO Will Lewis offered him an exclusive interview if he agreed to not publish a story about an alleged phone-hacking scandal involving Lewis.
• Note to our fellow journos: Science has now proven that readers prefer shorter headlines.

Big Read

Sde Teiman was an obscure Israeli military barracks before Oct. 7, but it’s now synonymous with the detention of Palestinian Gazans, according to the New York Times, which visited the site in late May and interviewed commanders and other officials. It’s a focus of allegations that Israel’s military has mistreated detainees, including those later deemed to have had no ties to Hamas or other groups. The Times said 1,200 Palestinian civilians were held in demeaning conditions for months while waiting to go before a judge — sometimes facing beatings and “and the use of an electric probe.” The IDF says it “thoroughly examines concrete allegations” of abuse, while the Shin Bet intelligence agency said its interrogations were “in accordance with the law.”

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: Former Attorney General Bill Barr predicted Donald Trump’s hush money verdict would be overturned.

What the Right isn’t reading: An analysis by the group Fix the Court found that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted millions of dollars worth of gifts in two decades on the bench.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Chad Pergram is the senior congressional correspondent for Fox News.

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• Nvidia receives a watchful antitrust eye from the US government.