Principals

1. Border talks creep on
2. The Richardson Center’s Gaza role
3. Freedom Caucus splits on Trump
4. U.S. Steel’s new owner
5. Inside Biden HQ
6. A COVID spending clash

PDB: The 2023 news stories with the biggest partisan readership gap

Austin pushes ‘more surgical’ Gaza strategy in Tel Aviv … Cardin ‘disappointed’ after staffer sex scandal … Volcano eruption in Iceland

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Border talks look like they’ll stretch into January

With Republican Senators already heading home for the holidays, it’s looking all but certain that the Senate’s bipartisan talks over border enforcement and Ukraine aid will spill into January. During a floor speech Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said ongoing talks were “headed in the right direction,” but cautioned that “finding the middle ground is exceptionally hard” and it would “take more time to get it done.” Republicans were more to the point: Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the chief GOP negotiator, told reporters “there’s no way” for the Senate to vote on a deal this week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans would need time to “carefully review” the final legislative text on any deal before voting on it. Lankford did say he expects more meetings with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. throughout the week. But the Senate chamber already appears to be emptying out: At Monday night’s vote to confirm Martin O’Malley to be the next head of the Social Security Administration, 39 senators were absent, most of them Republicans. “Obviously a lot of our members have already made their assessment of this week’s schedule known by their feet,” Lankford said.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

The private hostage negotiators helping in Gaza

The U.S.-based Richardson Center is playing an under-the-radar role alongside Qatar in its efforts to negotiate the release of roughly 110 hostages still held by Hamas, Semafor’s Jay Solomon writes. Founded by the late politician and diplomat Bill Richardson, the nonprofit gained prominence in recent years for helping release a string of Americans imprisoned by regimes hostile to the U.S, including basketball star Brittney Griner. The organization’s staff, who have been retained by groups representing families of Gaza hostages, are known for “fringe diplomacy,” a strategy that involves cultivating contacts that may be off-limits to official diplomats. But this approach will face challenges in the case of Hamas, which the U.S. and Europe designate as a terrorist organization and whose leaders are either under Israeli fire in Gaza or closeted away in Qatar and Turkey. The center is closely coordinating its work with the Qatari, U.S., and Israeli governments, said the two people working with the families. Meanwhile, the U.S. is stepping up its official diplomatic efforts: CIA director William Burns met with the head of Mossad and the prime minister of Qatar in Poland on Monday to try to restart hostage negotiations, The New York Times reported.

Key Freedom Caucus leaders aren’t backing Trump — yet

The House Freedom Caucus has long been viewed as the Trumpiest corner of the House GOP. But it has always had a smattering of conservatives who keep some distance from the former president, and that tension is coming out into the open thanks to the group’s new leadership, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who serves as policy director, will stump for Ron DeSantis this week; Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. a board member, has been on the road for Nikki Haley. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., who was recently elected as the group’s new chair, is also a vocal DeSantis backer, and was recently caught on tape privately criticizing Trump. For now, Good has been able to temper internal concerns, after members pressed him about his decision to back the Florida governor, CNN first reported. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. told Semafor she had a “very straightforward conversation” with Good who she said has promised to “absolutely back President Trump if he’s elected or if he is the primary nominee.” Other prominent members don’t seem to be sweating the issue. “Just because you’re Freedom Caucus doesn’t mean you’re right all the time,” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., a reliable Trump supporter, told Semafor. “They’re allowed to be wrong.”

Politicians vow to block sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese firm

U.S. Steel, the iconic American company formed in 1901 by the biggest tycoons of the era, is being bought by Japan-based Nippon Steel for $14.9 billion. It’s a 40% markup over the company’s share price as of Friday, but the proposed sale immediately ran into a wall of bipartisan opposition in Congress, where members warned that putting a company critical to American infrastructure in foreign hands raised national security concerns. “I live across the street from U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thompson plant in Braddock,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. said in a statement. “It’s absolutely outrageous that U.S. Steel has agreed to sell themselves to a foreign company.” The United Steelworkers, which represents the company’s workers, also slammed the deal, even as Nippon Steel pledged to uphold existing labor contracts. The sale will require regulatory approval, including from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., but some analysts are skeptical there would be strong grounds to contest it. “Unless Nippon Steel move[s] assets out of the US, I don’t see any issues with this,” Josh Spoores, a steel analyst at CRU, told the FT.

Why President Biden’s campaign isn’t panicking

President Biden is reportedly upset with his lousy polling, but his campaign sounds surprisingly chill. New York Magazine’s Gabriel Debenedetti checked in with Biden HQ in Wilmington, and reports that his team is confident that their 2020 coalition will remember why they dislike Trump so much, why they support Democrats on issues like health care and abortion, and that angry progressives will return home when the time comes. “If the campaign has an unofficial motto, it might be ‘Calm the fuck down, trust the process, and vote for Joe Biden. One. More. Time,’” he writes. The trickiest problem, though, is still Biden’s age where there is “no consensus” about how to handle it: One piece of research found that Biden using “fighting words” against big business and abortion bans helps at the margins, at least. Meanwhile, 32-year old digital strategist Rob Flaherty is working on how to package Biden for the army of young supporters they’ll need to inspire. The answer involves a lot of pictures with laser eyes. “He is an empathetic, kind person, and people can see that,” Flaherty said. “And then the other side of the personality is the Dark Brandon stuff — he’s fucking shit up.”

The new fight over old COVID aid

There’s a fight brewing in Washington over an estimated $109 billion in unspent COVID aid. Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., and 34 House GOP cosigners are sending a letter to the Treasury Department demanding it roll back a move it made last month extending a deadline for state governments to claim remaining cash from the American Rescue Plan. Under the ARP, recipients had until Dec. 31, 2024 to “obligate” the funds and spend them within two years. The new interim rule provides more wiggle room, letting states use the money later so long as their officials inform Treasury of how they plan to spend the funding by April of next year. “The effects of this rule are staggering,” Hern and Cline write, adding that “Treasury must immediately withdraw this unlawful rulemaking.” Republicans have long attacked the $350 billion pot of state and local aid that President Biden and Democrats authorized in the ARP. The conservative Economic Policy Innovation Center is urging lawmakers to reverse the new rule using the Congressional Review Act, an idea that could at the very least get momentum in the GOP-controlled House.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Both Democrats and Republicans are “hesitant” to release a framework for their deal before the Senate leaves for its Christmas break since that would give critics lots of time to “bludgeon” it.

Playbook: The Biden campaign has compared Donald Trump’s rhetoric with Adolf Hitler’s four times in the last six weeks, most recently after the former president said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The Early 202: Democrats on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are already gearing up to fight the unfinished border deal. They “will absolutely work to slow momentum on this and slow forward progress on this absent dramatic changes,” according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Axios: Joe Biden is having some trouble accepting his age, and it’s frustrating staff, Axios reports. The president has a habit of tiring himself out with an overly demanding schedule, which can make him look weary in public. “He is his own worst enemy when it comes to his schedule,” a former Biden aide said.

White House

• U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv Monday to discuss how they could shift to a “more surgical” strategy in Gaza, as he put it at a joint press conference. According to the New York Times, the Biden administration wants Israel to “switch to the more precise tactics in about three weeks.”
• Austin’s Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, signaled that the IDF would eventually transition to more precise tactics without offering a specific timeline. “In every area where we achieve our mission we will be able to transition gradually to the next phase and start working on bringing back the local population,” he told the press conference, adding it may shift approaches sooner in Gaza’s heavily bombarded north than its south.

Congress

• Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. addressed reporters for the first time since firing a staffer who allegedly filmed a sex tape in a Senate hearing room. “I was angry, disappointed,” he said. “It’s a breach of trust. All of the above. It’s a tragic situation and it’s presented a lot of anger and frustration.”
• Comedian Ziwe and George Santos: The perfect marriage of interviewer and subject. In one meta moment, Ziwe discussed how difficult it was to make Santos “go away” even after his expulsion. “The lesson is to stop inviting you places,” she said. “But you can’t — because people want the content,” Santos (accurately) replied.
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. posed with — and defended — Jacob Chansley, the infamous “QAnon Shaman” who was convicted, jailed, and apologized after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Outside the Beltway

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill allowing state authorities to arrest migrants who cross the border illegally — a direct challenge to legal precedents reserving those powers for the federal government.

Economy

Russia’s central bank raised interest rates to 16% to combat inflation that’s been spurred by massive military spending and labor shortages from workers moving to the frontlines in Ukraine — or fleeing the country to avoid them.

Courts

• The Supreme Court and former law clerks paid tribute to the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the Capitol, where she lied in repose on Monday.
• Why have wealthy Republicans provided Clarence Thomas so many gifts over the years? Possibly just to keep him on the bench, a new Pro Publica scoop suggests. During the early 2000s, the Supreme Court Justice complained regularly about his salary and pushed to end the ban on members of the court giving paid speeches, at one point telling a Republican congressman that “one or more” members of the court would leave if their pay didn’t go up.
• The 11th Circuit rejected former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ effort to move his trial on election-related racketeering to federal court.
• A Florida man pleaded guilty on Monday to threatening to kill a Supreme Court Justice, according to the Justice Department.
• Google agreed to pay $700 million and give app developers more options to charge users directly in order to settle an antitrust suit brought by a group of state attorneys general.

Polls

Biden hit yet another new polling low, this time a 34% approval rating in Monmouth’s latest survey. It could be worse, though: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approval rating is 6%, with 60% disapproving.

2024

• The pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. is going up on the New Hampshire airwaves with an ad targeting Nikki Haley, the first time Trump allies have gone after the former South Carolina governor. (Haley’s response, via X: “#BringIt.”) — NBC News
• Top cryptocurrency boosters, including big firms like Andreessen Horowitz and big names like the Winklevoss twins, are pumping $78 million into a trio of super PACs aimed at boosting supportive candidates. — CNBC
• Trump’s allies are preparing to staff a second administration with loyalists more closely aligned with his “America First” agenda. Among the policy ideas being floated, per his former national security adviser Robert O’Brien: Tariffs on NATO countries who don’t spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. — Reuters

Global

• A candidate from the populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was elected mayor in the eastern German town of Pirna on Sunday, the first time the party has won a mayoral election in a mid-sized town. The AfD has surged to second place nationally in the polls in recent months, polling above 20%, and Pirna is the latest in a string of local- and regional-level victories for the party.
• The U.S. outlined the creation of a 10-nation task force to protect ships traveling through the Red Sea, part of a crucial global shipping route, after increasing drone and missile attacks from Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen forced many ships to divert around Africa.

Big Read

Jeff Bezos and Amazon are placing a $10 billion bet on a space-based broadband service to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink, Bloomberg’s Matt Day reports, which is being built with help from Starlink engineers fired by Musk. The hope is that by going second, Amazon will be able to incorporate more cutting-edge technology that leapfrogs Starlink. And there’s another reason to think there may be demand for their services, Day writes: “Amazon is building an alternative to Musk’s service at a time when governments and corporations alike are looking for ways to reduce their reliance on the erratic and controversial businessman.”

See The World

It’s not true — at least not that true — that Americans are insular. Nearly half the U.S. population now have passports, compared to just 5% in 1990, according to the State Department. The overall number of passports in circulation, 160 million, has doubled since 2007, with 24 million issued in the year to September, a record.

Blindspot

For this week’s Blindspot, we’re doing a special look back at 2023, courtesy of Morning Consult’s annual Seen, Read, Heard report. The report asks Americans about the stories they followed in 2023 and looks at which news events had the biggest partisan gap when it came to who was paying attention.

What the Left wasn’t reading: About the conservative boycott of Bud Light after it sent transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a personalized can. Republicans were more likely to say they’d heard “a lot” about the story by 15 percentage points.

What the Right wasn’t reading: About the 84-year-old white homeowner in Kansas City, Mo. who shot a Black teenager who rang the wrong doorbell last April. By a margin of 25 percentage points, Democrats were more likely to say they’d heard “a lot” about it.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

• African filmmakers prepare for a tough 2024 after a stream of major African releases this year.
• A fight over how to cover Trump breaks out at The Messenger, a news organization launched with a plan to find an elusive center of media and politics.
• A top strategist quit pro-DeSantis super PAC in yet another hit for the beleaguered organization.

Mike Rounds is a Republican senator from South Dakota.

What is your biggest policy obsession at the moment?

Creating a bipartisan atmosphere for the development of AI legislation.

You were in Halifax just before Thanksgiving in a CODEL. Is there a moment you’re going to remember most from the trip?

A really good panel discussion on the integration of artificial intelligence into the defense community.

What do you tell people they absolutely HAVE to do when they visit your state?

Visit the combination of Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse: highlighting the only state where we don’t just carve part of a mountain, we carve the entire thing.

Who’s your closest relationship on the other side of the aisle?

Senator Angus King.

What’s at the top of your Spotify playlist?

Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys