Principals

She’s making it official: Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic party and registering as an independent. In an interview with Politico, she said she “never really fit into a box of any political party,” and would like more space to pursue bipartisan deals.

It’s not clear how this will affect the (until now) 51-49 incoming Senate just yet. Sinema said she will not caucus with Republicans, expects to keep her committee assignments, and is not planning a huge shift in her votes. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

If that holds, the majority might function essentially the same. “Sinema is expected to maintain her committees through Democrats,” a Democratic aide told Semafor. But she also said she won’t attend weekly Democratic luncheons, which independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King do.

Sinema faced a seemingly imminent primary challenge from Rep. Ruben Gallego in 2024 over her refusal to back top Democratic priorities. By leaving the party, she sets up a potentially messy three-way general election if Democrats field a competitive candidate. Sinema said she is undecided on running, but a video she released this morning announcing her independent turn sure has the look and feel of a campaign launch.

☞ White House: The Respect for Marriage Act is headed to Biden’s desk following a bipartisan House vote and he’s expected to soon sign it into law.

☞ Chuck Schumer: The newly-elected Senate majority leader must now deal with the ramifications of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party. And will Democrats clear the field for her in 2024?

☞ Mitch McConnell: While Sinema isn’t joining McConnell’s team, the longtime GOP leader has a good relationship with her that he’ll surely try to leverage even more now on key votes. Sinema spoke about bipartisanship at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center earlier this year, where McConnell called her “the most effective first-term senator” he’d seen.

☞ Nancy Pelosi: HBO premiered a trailer of Pelosi in the House, an upcoming documentary on the outgoing Speaker filmed over a span of 30 years.

☞ Kevin McCarthy: The Republican leader has yet to secure the gavel yet but is already being pressured by outside groups to cut funding to so-called “woke” programs … like the FBI. And the House Freedom Caucus just sent quite a list of new demands (more on that later).

The White House’s decision to trade a convicted arms dealer for the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner — who just landed in the U.S. this morning — received mixed reviews in Washington. Many Republicans argued that releasing Viktor Bout, nicknamed “the merchant of death,” was dangerous and criticized the administration for reaching an agreement that left out Paul Whelan, a former Marine jailed in Russia since late 2018.

Cameron Hume, a former ambassador who told Semafor he traveled with Bill Richardson to Moscow in September as part of an effort to free Griner, defended the decision. “Bout did half of his sentence, like many other criminals. He is not a threat to our security now. He has been held accountable. It made sense to give him up to bring BG home. As for Whelan, efforts for his release must go on undiminished.”

Things are getting ugly between the Justice Department and former President Trump behind closed doors. Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to hold Trump’s office in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena compelling him to return all classified documents to the government, according to the Washington Post.

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: McConnell told Democratic senators and top Biden administration officials during a classified briefing earlier this week that Republicans wouldn’t budge in their opposition to more domestic spending in the omnibus.

Playbook: Before Sinema announced plans to become an independent, Politico learned that Gallego had been interviewing paid media firms for 2024 — another signal of him gearing up to challenge her next cycle.

The Early 202: Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. said the House Oversight Committee would investigate COVID-19 relief under both the Biden and Trump administrations.

It’s do-or-die time for an immigration deal

By Kadia Goba and Joseph Zeballos-Roig

THE NEWS

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. has been burning up the phones reaching out to Republicans on a last-second immigration deal, her colleagues say. A draft of the bill, which she’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., could be released as soon as today.

OUR VIEW

Sinema has helped win GOP colleagues over on infrastructure, guns, same-sex marriage, among other issues, giving her an unusual degree of credibility. On Friday morning, she announced she was renouncing her Democratic label altogether and becoming an independent.

An immigration deal that gave certainty to two million Dreamers caught in agonizing limbo while surging resources at the border could seal her reputation as an heir to John McCain.

“Nobody [patrols] the chambers for wayward Republicans better than she does,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, N.D. said.

But Cramer, who has been in touch with Sinema on the bill, sounded wary about signing onto a process that would involve drafting, reviewing, and debating major legislation within a matter of days.

“That’s a family discussion that takes much longer for people to get comfortable with,” he said.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. worried that the talks were “giving false hope to people that are out there that are really looking for an answer.”

Sinema has gone back-and-forth with Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah on the bill, who told reporters they plan to talk more.

But he added that any bill would have to address “individuals claiming asylum that really don’t have any true claim to asylum,” which may require more than simply adding resources to the border.

“I’m skeptical at this point, but certainly open minded and willing to dig into it,” Romney said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas said ongoing court fights between his state and the administration over the government’s ability to detain migrants and prioritize removals made him wary of signing onto a deal.

“It’s the 600-pound gorilla in the room,” Cornyn told Semafor. “It creates a loss of any confidence that they are going to actually use the laws that we pass to enforce border security.”

On the Democratic side, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. suggested the bill should be expanded to help bring in more skilled workers from abroad to work at U.S. semiconductor plants subsidized by the CHIPS Act.

“Unless we can bring some people to train Americans, we’re not going to be able to build these facilities,” he said.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who is retiring at the end of the year, sounded the most optimistic, so long as they kept negotiations tight and avoided incorporating too many topics.

“If we can get a bill that solves two or three of the problems and make enough members happy in the House and Senate to move forward, plus the Border Patrol, I think we ought to do that,” he said.

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House conservatives make big new demands for the next speaker

Seven members of the House Freedom Caucus released a new set of demands for the incoming speaker that would require House Republicans to give their most conservative members more power and commit to using hardline tactics to pursue dramatic government spending cuts. The 3-page “dear colleague” letter does not mention Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who can only afford to lose a handful of members in his quest for the gavel.

The demands extend beyond the initial asks that they released this summer. Among them, the group wants more “conservative representation” on key committees; a commitment from leadership not to interfere in Republican primaries; and to fully reinstate the rule allowing any member to bring a motion to remove the speaker, nixing a compromise the party voted for last month. Conservatives used the rule to pressure former Speaker John Boehner into quitting, and Nancy Pelosi curtailed it in her tenure.

On policy, the group is asking for a commitment not to raise the debt ceiling without new spending caps or a ten-year plan to balance the budget. That could put them on record for some painful cuts, especially if programs like Social Security and Medicare enter the mix.

— Kadia Goba

One-on-one with Sen. Joe Manchin

I had a chance to sit down with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who for the last two years has been the single most important Democratic swing vote, for a wide-ranging discussion at The Economic Club of New York Thursday evening. Here are a few newsy highlights from our chat.

ON PERMITTING REFORM

Manchin’s proposal to streamline the process for approving new energy infrastructure was recently dropped from a must-pass defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, in the face of opposition from Democrats and Republicans. But “it’s still in flux right now. We’re still moving around,” he insisted. “I’m always hopeful. I haven’t given up.” 

ON THE SENATE’S LATEST IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL

Manchin suggested that the Senate’s last-ditch effort to get bipartisan action on immigration didn’t spend enough on border security. “In 2013, we put $60 billion just on the border. $60 billion back in 2013. How in the heck is 25 going to do it now? Not going to happen,” he said.

“But we need to do something,” he continued. “Without a good immigration policy guys, we’re not going to be able to meet the economy that we’re going to have an opportunity to really energize. We just can’t do it. And look around, we all got here. Someone brought us here for some reason.”

ON CRYPTO

Back in 2014, Manchin called on federal regulators to ban Bitcoin. Today, he says colleagues who invested in crypto are suddenly “very silent.” As with immigration, though, he said “something has to be done.”

“The Banking Committee is looking at it more seriously now than ever, but they can’t come to an agreement,” he said. “It’s a lack of knowledge.”

ON THE MOST FUN PRESIDENT HE’S WORKED WITH

With regrets to Joe and Barack: “President Trump was the most engaging. He called me all the time. I was the one Democrat that he could talk to.”

ON WHETHER HE’D RUN FOR PRESIDENT

“I don’t know where I would fit, I don’t fit in either party, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m just strictly an independent and I’ve always been that and I think the people in the Democratic Party know that, some tolerate and some don’t like it. The Republican Party, they want me to change over, I said you won’t be any happier with me. Because I don’t like a lot of things you all do.”

—Steve Clemons

One good text with ... GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: A group of Texas Republicans released a plan to curb illegal migration at the southern border.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 is weighing other criminal referrals besides Trump.

— with our partners at Ground News

“Amtrak released their new vision for passenger rail expansion in the United States, and I don’t really know what to say except that it sucks,” begins Matt Yglesias’ latest post at Slow Boring.  He argues the agency wants to build out too many new, marginal routes, and should focus instead on create a true high-speed line in the Northeast, “one of the best high-speed rail corridors on God’s green earth.”

Members of the New York Times union walked off the job Thursday to pressure management over contract negotiations, but New York’s Shawn McCreesh writes that some quiet moderates on staff think the whole standoff may be going a bit too far.

Maxwell Frost, the 25-year-old who recently became the first Gen Z member elected to Congress, was rejected on an apartment application because of his credit score. “A lot of the members who come into the Congress don’t have these issues when they move, because they already have money,” Frost, who drove an Uber to pay his bills during his campaign, told the Washington Post.

Join me and my Semafor colleagues in Washington DC on Dec. 12 for the Semafor Africa Summit. We are convening African and American government and business leaders, technologists, and entrepreneurs for critical conversations on innovation, connectivity, workforce development, sustainability, and more.

RSVP here to learn more about the event and attend in person, or watch online.

— Steve Clemons

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— Steve Clemons