Principals

1. Border deal gets closer
2. Impeachment probe is on
3. Stocks surge on dovish Fed
4. Polling Biden’s foreign policy
5. Semafor’s Made in America event
6. Hurdles for EU’s Ukraine funding

PDB: The Economist: Ousted NYT editor on the paper’s “illiberal bias”

Biden talks lowering drug costs … Jake Sullivan in Riyadh … Politico: Harris presses Biden to show more concern for Palestinians in Gaza

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

White House sees border deal in reach

The White House believes it’s closing in on a deal with Senate Republicans to approve more aid for Ukraine in exchange for major reforms to U.S. border enforcement policies, according to a person briefed on their outreach. But, as Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig writes, some Democrats are already furious at reports of possible concessions, setting up another potential tension point with President Biden’s already-strained progressive base. One potential piece of the agreement would make it more difficult for individuals to qualify for asylum by raising the standard to show they have a “credible fear” of being persecuted back home. Another component would trigger a new authority similar to Title 42, the controversial COVID-era policy established by the Trump administration that allowed for the quick expulsion of migrants, if border crossings reached a certain level. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. called the deal that appeared to be shaping up “unconscionable,” while Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. said he “could not comprehend” that Biden seemed ready to put forward “the most Trumpian anti-immigrant proposal that President Trump himself could only have dreamed of accomplishing.” GOP negotiators, for their part, said they welcomed the escalating attacks. “There are several Democrats that have spoken against it,” GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. told Semafor. “That means we’re hitting the right sort of tone.”

The House’s impeachment probe is official now

The House formally opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden in a party-line vote on Wednesday. House Republican probes have yet to uncover evidence Biden engaged in illegal or improper activity, and some Republicans are openly unsure they’ll get there, but Speaker Mike Johnson united his conference by emphasizing the vote’s importance in shaking loose subpoenas. “We need an official inquiry to force him to provide information that the citizens deserve to know,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. told Semafor. Among their targets: Hunter Biden, who showed up outside the Capitol the morning before the vote to defy a request that he testify to House investigators privately, rather than in a public hearing. “Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home, nor abroad,” he told reporters.

Biden’s bull run?

Investors were downright giddy after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference on Wednesday, which seemingly set the stage for a very dovish 2024. The central bank’s monetary policymaking committee announced it would leave interest rates unchanged, but penciled in three quarter-point cuts for next year as they projected that inflation would continue to fall. Notably, not a single committee member predicted that rates would go higher next year. (JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli described the forecast as “12 doves a-leaping.”) That, combined with Powell’s upbeat tone was enough to send stocks surging: The Dow Jones hit a new record, while the S&P 500 is getting close. Political food for thought: If the Fed’s cuts play out as forecast, President Biden could be presiding over a bull market that dominates financial news during his reelection battle — something that might just help his ailing approval rating on the economy. Notably, Powell said the Fed wouldn’t let the coming race influence its decision-making. “We don’t think about politics. We think about what’s the right thing to do for the economy,” he said.

Dem group: Biden needs a ‘throughline’ for his foreign policy

President Biden should cast his foreign policy as a mission for peace, according to a new polling memo from the Democratic strategy firm Blueprint. The Reid Hoffman-backed group shared its research with Semafor, which tested a variety of descriptions of Biden’s approach to international affairs based on quotes from the president — one emphasized American values, for example, another American interests, another peace, and another more isolationist sentiments. Independents were most attracted to a pitch that Biden’s involvement in military conflicts abroad was meant to advance “peace above all else.” They were also less likely to say it described Biden versus other options. “Voters do not have a clear throughline for what Biden’s trying to do on foreign policy,” pollster Evan Roth Smith told Semafor. “They don’t understand, or they don’t see any linkage, between the decisions made around Afghanistan and the decisions made around Ukraine and the decisions made around Israel.” That muddle could be costing him: Voters are more likely to say Trump’s views are closer to their own by an 11-point margin as Biden struggles to keep his base on board during the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Top Biden officials talk chips, China at Semafor event

A top Biden administration official teased “multibillion-dollar investments” in semiconductor manufacturing projects in early 2024, signaling plans by the Commerce Department to accelerate awarding grants through the CHIPS and Science Act. The remarks from Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves at Semafor’s “The State of Made in America” event came days after the department announced its first grant funded by the chips law passed in August of last year, a $35 million infusion to a BAE Systems subsidiary. Graves also downplayed comments from TSMC founder Morris Chang doubting the chips law would succeed. “You might ask him why he’s investing so heavily in Arizona,” Graves said. “I think he’s a little bit off, and maybe he’s frustrated he … can’t get more money to invest in TSMC.” Semafor’s event also featured an interview with U.S. Trade Representative Amb. Katherine Tai, who described U.S. industry policies and Trump-era tariffs on China as reactions to an “unfair” global economy and expressed concerns about China’s dominance of the electric vehicle supply chain. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., meanwhile, took aim at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, citing it as an example of agencies slow to implement “Build America, Buy America” provisions of the 2021 infrastructure law.

The view from Europe: Ukraine funding faces challenges in Brussels

It’s not just Washington that’s facing further hurdles for Ukraine funding: As European Union leaders arrive in Brussels today for the latest European Council meeting, the 27-country bloc is also mired in a battle over its future aid for Kyiv. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has consistently played the spoiler on Ukraine-related issues, has threatened to veto the EU’s latest proposals to help Ukraine in its efforts against Russian aggression: An additional €50 billion ($54 billion) in funding and plans to start formal talks for Ukraine’s membership in the EU. Orbán had indicated he might be willing to back down if Brussels agreed to unfreeze billions of euros of funding for Hungary that had been put on hold over rule-of-law concerns in the Central European country. Amid frantic negotiations Wednesday, the European Commission announced it would unblock €10.2 billion of €31 billion in EU funding for Hungary, potentially clearing the path for Orbán to reverse course. Although polls suggest support for financial and military aid to Ukraine remained high across Europe earlier this fall — and Germany just approved a budget doubling its support for Kyiv to from €4 billion to €8 billion for 2024 — the recent victory of populist and far-right parties in European countries like Slovakia and the Netherlands could serve as further potential roadblocks for Kyiv aid going forward.

— Emily Schultheis

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The “general consensus” among House GOP leadership is that the Republican conference would not accept a White House-Senate brokered border security deal.

Playbook: Most voters — 55% of all voters, and 63% of independents — say in a new Blueprint poll that they’d prefer a deal in Congress tying foreign aid to stricter border security than one that doesn’t include border provisions.

The Early 202: The issue of paroling immigrants for certain humanitarian reasons was taken off the table in border security talks, but some Republicans would like to bring it back into the discussion — which could “throw the negotiations into a tailspin.”

White House

• President Biden will use a speech at the National Institutes of Health to announce that Medicare Part B drugmakers who raised prices faster than inflation may be required to pay rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Biden met privately at the White House with families of U.S. citizens taken hostage by Hamas on Wednesday. “We felt before, and we were only reinforced in seeing and believing, that we could have no better friend in Washington or in the White House than President Biden himself and his administration,” Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of one of the hostages, Sagui Dekel-Chen, said following the meeting.
• Masked Biden administration staffers gathered outside the White House at a vigil to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. It’s the latest in a recent wave of typically anonymous protests and letters from aides and interns around Washington.
• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is in the Middle East, met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh to discuss Israel’s war with Hamas and the humanitarian response in Gaza.

Congress

• In an 87-13 bipartisan vote, the Senate passed the $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act. The House will take up the bill today and some House conservatives will try to tank it.
• The Senate isn’t leaving town just yet: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teed up a procedural vote on a judicial nominee later today.
• The House approved legislation to return whole milk back to schools.

Economy

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is giving a speech this evening on U.S.-China economic ties at the U.S-China Business Council’s 50th anniversary dinner.
• Tesla recalled over two million electric vehicles amid a regulatory investigation of crashes involving autopilot technology.

Foreign Policy

• The Biden administration is blocking the shipment of thousands of rifles for Israel’s national police force because of concerns they may wind up in the hands of extremist Israeli settlers. — WSJ
• The U.S. and U.K. imposed more sanctions on Hamas officials following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
• Michael Chase, the Pentagon’s top official for China policy, met with his counterpart, Liu Zhan, ahead of the summit between President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was their first meeting since Chase ruffled feathers in Beijing with a trip to Taiwan. — FT

Courts

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case concerning the legality of the widely used abortion medication mifepristone, which some court-watchers saw as a positive sign for abortion rights supporters.

Media

From D.C. to the world: The powerhouse Beltway digital agency known as Bully Pulpit Interactive, founded in 2009 by Obama campaign alums and now all over the politics, policy, and business market, has acquired Boldt, a consultancy with a presence across Europe, including Brussels and London. The combined firm will change its name to Bully Pulpit International.

2024

• Donald Trump disputed a Politico report about him considering a plan to get North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief if he returns to office. “The only thing accurate in the story is that I do get along well with Kim Jong Un!” he wrote on Truth Social.
• Former House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump an “authoritarian narcissist.” — The Hill
• The Cook Political Report moved Rep. Scott Perry’s, R-Pa. district from “likely” Republican to “lean” Republican, citing the congressman’s legal expenses and the entry of former local news anchor Janelle Stelson into the race.

Polls

Donald Trump has inched ahead of President Biden in Michigan and also leads in six other swing states, according to a new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.

Big Read

In June 2020, the New York Times pushed out the top editor who had published a column by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. about the protests and violence in American cities titled, “Send in the Troops.” The column was forgettable but the Times’s reaction continues to echo through American journalism and politics, as the editor, James Bennet, reflects in the new issue of The Economist. Hired in 2016 to fix problems including “too many liberals” on the opinion pages, Bennet, who first broke his silence on the affair last year to Semafor, says he found that “the Times’s problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether.” While his furious colleagues sought to respond to the racial justice protests that wracked America in the summer of 2020, Bennet saw a shift in journalistic values that he links to Donald Trump: “Every one of his political lies became more powerful because journalists had forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work: their credibility.”

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: A local San Francisco official blamed capitalism for the city’s homelessness problem.

What the Right isn’t reading: The White House hosted a meeting with state legislators on gun violence prevention.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Eleanor Holmes Norton is a Democrat who represents Washington, D.C. in Congress. We asked her about the emerging deal to move the Washington Capitals and Wizards to Virginia.

• COP28 reaches a landmark deal to “transition away” from fossil fuels by 2050. But some activists remain unconvinced, pointing to significant gaps in the deal.
• Will Vivek Ramaswamy find his niche by one-upping Trump? In the run up to the New Hampshire primary the self-funded candidate is hunting for MAGA voters who are ready for a change.
• ChatGPT seems to be “lazier” in December, and users are wondering if that’s because it took a lesson from human behavior.