Principals

1. Biden, Xi ease tensions
2. House session ends on low note
3. Border talks get turbulent
4. A big week for Biden-Trump
5. Iran deterrence strategy
6. Musk antisemitism blowup

PDB: Biden defends Israel’s Al-Shifa raid

Biden to address CEO summit in San Francisco … Capitol Police break up rowdy pro-Palestinian demonstration at DNC … Congress passes bill to avoid government shutdown

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Biden and Xi try to turn the page on a year of tensions

The U.S. and China agreed to curb fentanyl and resume high-level military communications while starting new discussions on artificial intelligence risks, President Biden announced after more than four hours of meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and their top advisers. The sitdown met the modest expectations the White House had set for it, Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant writes, and sent a signal to global leaders and the business community that the U.S. and China value their economic ties despite tensions over technology curbs and Beijing’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, and Taiwan. Xi, through a translator, said at the start of the meeting at the iconic Filoli estate that China and the U.S. could not turn “their back on each other” and “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.” Still, it will take time to tell whether the dialogue actually helps stabilize the relationship, and tensions won’t magically dissipate. Biden again called Xi a “dictator” during his news conference, risking backlash from China. “We’re in a competitive relationship,” Biden said. “But my responsibility is to make this rational and manageable so it doesn’t result in conflict.” Biden said he also raised more contentious subjects, like China’s actions in the Taiwan strait, human rights, and Americans detained in China, and that he and Xi agreed to keep open lines of communication.

New speaker, old problems

House Republicans may have a new speaker in Mike Johnson, but the party is still paralyzed by many of the same old problems that bedeviled his predecessor, Semafor’s Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, and Jordan Weissmann write. Wednesday ended with yet another failed effort to advance one of the party’s appropriation’s bills, this time after 19 Republicans tanked a key procedural vote. Leaders promptly canceled the chamber’s remaining business until after Thanksgiving, punctuating a brutal 10-week session in which the chamber accomplished relatively little beyond passing a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. (The Senate passed that bill as well on Wednesday night, ensuring Washington will keep its lights on past the holidays.) “One thing! I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing! One! That I can go campaign on and say we did,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, thundered from the floor in a moment that quickly went viral.

Most of the nays on Wednesday were hardline Republicans who voted no in part because they were angry at Johnson for his decision earlier this week to pass a stopgap funding bill without any major budget cuts and with the help of Democratic votes. They also included four centrists from New York, who had a separate set of concerns. “We are at a point where these appropriations bills cannot pass and to continue putting these bills on the floor to take one idiotic vote after the next is counterproductive,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. told Semafor. That could be a sign of trouble ahead for Johnson, as he’s now being squeezed from both his right and his left.

Republicans make a bold new demand on Ukraine aid

Bipartisan talks on a bill combining Ukraine aid and border enforcement are getting more turbulent over a Senate GOP demand to sharply reduce border crossings, Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig reports. Illegal crossings from Mexico to the U.S. have reached record highs, surpassing 2 million this year so far. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. told Semafor that any acceptable deal would seek to cut those by at least half. Two Senate aides briefed on the talks said discussions are hitting a snag over how reductions in border crossings would be measured. In addition, Republicans have discussed imposing penalties, like withholding the delivery of military aid to Ukraine, if the White House fails to hit its border crossing targets. “There is a concern — and a valid one — that anything we pass won’t be enforced by this administration,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said. “And if you don’t have some appropriate metrics and consequences, you can put all the best policy out there but they’ll just ignore it.” Agreeing to such a deal would be a major gamble for Democrats, leaving open the risk that Ukraine would never receive a new round of aid.

Biden wants voters to remember why they turned on MAGA

President Biden is pivoting to offense against Donald Trump after several months focused on playing up “Bidenomics” instead, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports. In doing so, he’s relying on a message that’s worked for Democrats in key races ever since he took office: Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are an extremist threat to democracy. At a fundraiser, he likened Trump’s “vermin” attacks on opponents to “language you heard in Nazi Germany in the ‘30s” while his campaign has found some success nudging the press to pay more attention to the Republicans’ more inflammatory pronouncements. While Trump aides privately weren’t pleased seeing Mussolini and Hitler comparisons in headlines, they can only do so much to rein in their candidate — the “vermin” remarks did not come from a speechwriter, one said. But they’re hoping a relentless offense of their own and their base’s disgust with overzealous coverage will be assets. In the meantime, they’re looking to control what they can in a general election, including cracking down on the sprawling network of outside groups, allied politicians, and acquaintances who have helped fuel stories about Trump plans to install loyalists and punish opponents.

The U.S. tries to deter Iran and its ‘Resistance Axis’

Is the Pentagon’s strategy to deter Iran from targeting U.S. troops working? Some current and former U.S. officials worry that it is falling short, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reports. Iranian-backed militias have launched over 45 attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East in the five weeks since Hamas’ assault on Israel. The U.S. has carried out its own strikes in response, including some over the weekend that killed at least eight fighters, but some current and former officials tell Semafor they’re worried that the Pentagon’s carefully calibrated responses to the attacks are only encouraging Tehran and its proxies to take more risks. Senior Biden administration officials insist they’ve successfully constrained and have publicly warned Iran against escalating. “These attacks must stop, and if they don’t stop, then we won’t hesitate to do what’s necessary, again, to protect the troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in South Korea this week. One positive sign for the administration: Reuters reported that the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the leader of Hamas that it would not directly enter the Israel-Gaza war on its behalf and urged him to quiet calls for Hezbollah to join the fight — an indication that Tehran does not want to widen the conflict.

Elon Musk endorses post railing against Jews

“You have said the actual truth.” That was Elon Musk’s response to an X user who accused Jewish communities of a “dialectical hatred against whites” and said they were encouraging “hordes of minorities” to enter the country. Musk’s flirtation with extremists on the site he owns has been a recurring theme, but even by those standards the exchange stood out. CNN host Jake Tapper accused Musk of “pushing unvarnished antisemitism at a time of rising antisemitism and violence against Jews” while FT editor Edward Luce warned that “a rubicon has been crossed by the world’s richest man.” Writing in The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg noted Musk appeared to echo the same “Great Replacement” conspiracy espoused by the gunman who attacked the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. The billionaire later added that his critique “does not extend to all Jewish communities,” leaving his 163 million followers to fill in the blanks as to which ones get his seal of approval.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Congress may have averted a shutdown Wednesday night, but it still faces a handful of funding fights before the end of the year — including reauthorizing the National Defense Authorization Act, where it will be “especially difficult” to reconcile the more bipartisan Senate bill with the House’s version, which includes several culture-war provisions.

Playbook: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will rally with Ron DeSantis this weekend as he opens his new Iowa headquarters, an effort to build momentum for his flagging campaign.

The Early 202: A group of bipartisan senators are hoping to have a deal on a border security-Ukraine compromise by Thanksgiving and people familiar with this week’s discussions said they gained momentum on Wednesday, although there’s still “reason for pessimism.”

Axios: Donald Trump’s campaign team is working to build support among Latino voters of Cuban, Venezuelan and Colombian descent, billing the former president as the victim of “overzealous socialists.” The strategy is currently focusing on South Florida, but will expand to South Texas, Arizona and Nevada with Spanish-language ads next year.

White House

• President Biden has a full day of meetings at the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum summit, where he’ll speak at the APEC CEO Summit, deliver remarks on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and attend a dinner with other APEC leaders.
• Biden unveiled five new judicial nominees, including Adeel Mangi for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Mangi would be the first Muslim-American to serve on a circuit court.
• The president defended Israel’s military operation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, backing up Israeli claims that Hamas used the center to hide a command center while urging soldiers to be “incredibly careful.” The IDF shared footage Wednesday of weapons collected in parts of the complex, but has yet to offer on-site evidence of a hidden Hamas headquarters.

Congress

• Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed questioning “key witnesses” under oath in connection with Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Biden and accused members of the president’s family of “corrupt” activity. His statement came days after the Washington Post reported that he indicated to Republicans privately that there wasn’t currently enough evidence to launch formal impeachment proceedings.
• The House Ethics Committee’s report on Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. may drop today.
• “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan toured the Capitol on Wednesday with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. And just for good measure, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson showed up separately to discuss military recruitment with senators.

Outside the Beltway

A silver lining for Virginia’s GOP after last week’s elections: Bob Anderson narrowly defeated incumbent prosecutor Buta Biberaj in Loudon County with a tough-on-crime campaign.

Economy

The U.S. and other members of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) signed the supply chain agreement and reached an agreement in principle on the clean and fair economy pillars of the framework, according to an announcement from Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo made public today. The trade piece of IPEF remains elusive.

Polls

• Two-thirds of Republican primary voters have a positive view of Israel, according to a new Cygnal poll conducted for the Republican Main Street Partnership and Women2Women. Women are slightly less likely than men to view Israel positively, at 60% versus 73%, respectively.

• With concerns about crime riding high, 55% of Americans now say that the top goal of the criminal justice system should be law and order, versus 42% who think it should be reducing bias against minorities, according to new polling from Gallup. The gap has widened since 2016, when relatively recent Ferguson protests and rise of Black Lives Matter had injected police reform into the national conversation. Then, 49% chose law and order, versus 43% for reducing bias.

Courts

• Attorneys for former President Donald Trump requested a mistrial in his New York civil fraud case, attacking Judge Arthur Engoron as biased.
• Jonathan Miller, a lawyer for Misty Hampton, a Trump co-defendant in the Fulton County, Ga., case, admitted to leaking video of witness interviews in the case to the media after portions of the videos of testimony from Jenna Ellis and others were published by ABC and the Washington Post.
• A seven-judge panel in New York heard a major redistricting case that could decide the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

2024

• New Hampshire ignored the Democratic National Committee’s new primary schedule that aimed to move up South Carolina and set its primary for Jan. 23.
• Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. teased a potential presidential run after revealing he would not seek reelection. “I will do anything I can to help my country, and you’re saying, ‘Does that mean you would consider it?’ Absolutely,” he told NBC.
• Eugene Vindman, a retired U.S. Army colonel and the twin brother of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is running for Congress as a Democrat, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reported. He is trying to replace Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who is vacating her seat representing Virginia’s 7th congressional district in order to run for governor.
• Another Democrat is jumping in the primary against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.: Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, joins Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J. in challenging the indicted senator.

Media

• The bipartisan leaders of the House select committee on China queried Apple’s Tim Cook about the cancellation of Jon Stewart’s show “The Problem,” after the New York Times reported disagreements over China-related content were in part to blame for the move.
• The share of American adults who get their news from TikTok has increased from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.

Blindspot

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: The U.S. Postal Service reported losing a net $6.5 billion during fiscal year 2023.

What the Right isn’t reading: Nevada’s attorney general is investigating the state’s fake electors who supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Politico reported.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Tom Cole is a Republican congressman from Oklahoma and the chair of the House Rules Committee.

• New details show that the obscure firm snapping up global sports teams used a $1.5 billion pot of customers’ cash at an insurance company it controls to do so.
• Why AI-assisted bioterrorism became a top concern for OpenAI and Anthropic.
• South Africa’s ruling party is drawing up plans to close Israel’s embassy in the country and suspend regular diplomatic relations in response to the military operation in Gaza.