Principals

1. Freddie Mac executives fired
2. Massie primary challenge?
3. GOP concerns about Medicaid
4. Paul Weiss deals with Trump
5. Trump pares down Education
6. Zelenskyy: Crimea is Ukraine
7. Wisconsin court race

PDB: Musk to receive top-secret Pentagon briefing

Power outage closes Heathrow airport … Trump, Hegseth to announce next generation fighter jet contract … NYT: Intelligence contradicts White House on Venezuela gang

Top Freddie Mac executives fired in FHFA overhaul

Top executives at Freddie Mac including CEO Diana Reid and head of human resources Dionne Wallace Oakley were dismissed Thursday amid Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte’s ongoing overhaul of the mortgage giant and its sister Fannie Mae, two people familiar with the development told Semafor. Pulte previously axed Freddie Mac Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and External Affairs Craig Phillips, plus FHFA’s chief operating officer and head of human resources, the people said. It’s the latest escalation of the former private equity executive’s bid to cement control of the companies after appointing himself chair of both boards earlier this week. A former staffer of then-Sen. JD Vance has reportedly joined the agency to aid further cuts. “There is no doubt Pulte has effectively usurped power and is running the show,” said one Fannie Mae employee.

— Eleanor Mueller

Massie stares down another primary challenge

President Donald Trump is mad at Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., again — and this time, there’s a concerted effort to find a viable candidate to unseat him, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports. The Trump-backed, behind-the-scenes push to replace Massie involves locally recruiting a candidate who’ll get the financial backing of MAGA world and its allies, according to sources familiar. That challenger would have to appeal to Trump loyalists while not turning off other moderate Republicans disenchanted with Massie’s libertarian leanings. But even his critics know beating him won’t be easy. “This is obviously the best opportunity for someone to run against him, but it’s still a big challenge,” former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson told Semafor. Massie isn’t too worried; anyone who wants to unseat him will try running “‘to the Trump’ of me, instead of to the right of me,” he said.

How Medicaid cuts could squeeze West Virginia

All eyes are turning to Republicans’ budget reconciliation efforts — and Medicaid is still under pressure. House and Senate Republicans are still feeling each other out on what to cut, but any Medicaid changes could pose a huge political challenge to red-state lawmakers. GOP West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, his state’s former governor, acknowledged on Thursday he’s dialed in on the issue. “West Virginia has a gigantic participation and really and truly, we have concerns,” Justice said at the Capitol. “At the same time, we know there’s waste.” Semafor asked him whether he’d be willing to consider cutting benefits and he said it wouldn’t be fair to say he’d “never, ever cut benefits,” but “none of us want to cut benefits.” He suggested there may be “methodologies” that some might call cuts — but that improve the program.

— Burgess Everett

Paul Weiss strikes deal with White House

Paul Weiss, one of the law firms Trump targeted by name with an executive order, has struck a deal to aid his administration — a development that comes after Semafor scooped on Wednesday that Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp had been making overtures to the White House. The New York Times reported the firm will offer $40 million in pro bono legal work for Trump priorities, like helping to combat what the White House sees as antisemitism on college campuses. In exchange, Trump rescinded the order, which had sought to block the law firm from government buildings and strip it of its contracts, among other things. Trump went after the firm in part because it once employed a lawyer who worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s investigations into him; The White House claimed that Karp had “acknowledged” the lawyer’s “wrongdoing” in that case.

Trump’s latest target

Trump signed an order aimed at dismantling the Education Department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” The department “will be much smaller than it is today,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, adding that “critical programs” like Pell Grants, federal student loans, and funding for special education and low-income students would continue. (Trump later suggested these functions would be “redistributed” to other agencies, though the text of the order offered no specifics.) Trump signaled he’ll look to Congress to take action to fully shutter the agency. “The Democrats know it’s right, and I hope they’re going to be voting for it, because ultimately it may come before them,” he said. It’s unclear how much appetite there will be among Republicans for such legislation, but Democrats and teachers unions are itching for a court fight.

Zelenskyy did not discuss recognition of Crimea with Trump

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did not discuss the possibility that the US would recognize Crimea as Russian territory during his call this week with Trump, Semafor’s Mathias Hammer reports. Trump “did not raise this issue with me,” Zelenskyy said Thursday when asked about Semafor’s reporting that Washington is mulling a formal recognition of Crimea as Russian as part of an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he had emphasized how important Crimea is to Ukrainians to Trump at a meeting last September, adding that the president had seemed interested in “why Ukrainians love it so much.” Crimea “is a Ukrainian peninsula,” Zelenskyy stressed, that is being suffocated under Russia’s occupation. Maria Mezentseva, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, put it bluntly in a text this week: “Ukraine can never recognise Crimea as a [Russian] territory.”

— Morgan Chalfant

The state election standing in for Trump’s court battles

Early voting in Wisconsin’s state supreme court election got underway this week. And both sides have been campaigning hard, Semafor’s David Weigel writes — Republicans, because they’re trying to paint incumbent liberal Susan Crawford as a stand-in for the justices blocking Trump’s most sweeping policy moves, and Democrats, because they recall how close Wisconsin’s court came to overturning the state’s election results in 2020. Crawford has tried to tie GOP-backed candidate Brad Schimel to Elon Musk and DOGE, while Schimel has sought to “nationalize” the race by calling in Donald Trump Jr. and former Gov. Scott Walker to stump. “People are really fired up,” said the vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP. “They’re seeing the effects of what DOGE is doing, and what Trump has done in these first days of his presidency, and the everyday Wisconsinite wants more of that.”

YouTube is undeniably the dominant media platform of the moment — and not just for video. Last month, the company announced that podcasts now rack up 1 billion viewers a month. This week, Ben and Max bring on YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to talk about how YouTube has become the epicenter of culture, how it’s thinking about podcasts and TV, and who Neal thinks the platform’s biggest competitor is. They also discuss why YouTube’s content policing guidelines have changed since 2020 and how he plans to manage its recent run-in with the FCC.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Blindspot: Jail and stock

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: Two ICE detainees in Colorado fled from custody after the jail they were held in lost power.

What the Right isn’t reading: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged people to buy stock in Tesla.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The Trump administration is divided on whether Republicans should actually move to impeach US District Judge James Boasberg. Some White House officials want Congress to put Boasberg through the impeachment process to punish him for ruling against President Trump, while some senior administration officials think Republicans should avoid the issue because it would divide the party.

Playbook: Colleges are caving to Trump “with staggering speed.”

WaPo: Former education secretaries doubt Trump will actually shutter the Education Department.

Axios: A group backed by Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to add their name to a petition opposing “activist judges.”

White House

• The Pentagon is expected to brief Elon Musk, the CEO of multiple companies with significant Chinese financial ties, on top-secret plans for a hypothetical war with China. President Trump denied that the briefing would mention China in a Truth Social post. — NYT
• Trump indicated the US would soon sign a deal with Ukraine on rare earths. He also signed an order invoking the Defense Production Act’s wartime authority to expand domestic production of critical minerals.

Congress

• Rep. Clay Higgins won’t challenge Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana but suggests Cassidy’s career will be over soon.

Outside the Beltway

• The Interior Department said it will open up millions of acres in Alaska to oil drilling and to build a new liquefied natural gas pipeline.
• Kirsty Coventry became the first woman and first African to be elected president of the International Olympic Committee.

Business

• A consortium led by Bill Chisholm purchased the Boston Celtics for $6.1 billion in the most expensive sports takeover ever.

Economy

• The European Union plans to delay imposing tariffs on US goods until mid-April, in a bid to avert an escalating trade war.
• The number of jobless claims rose slightly last week, an indication of a stable labor market amid concerns about the Trump administration’s tariff plans and inflation.
• Existing home sales beat expectations in February, showing an uptick in activity.

Courts

• In a temporary restraining order Thursday, a federal judge compared DOGE’s efforts to cut staff at the Social Security Administration to “hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.” In response to the order, which blocked DOGE employees from accessing the agency’s systems on privacy grounds, acting SSA chief Leland Dudek threatened to lock down the agency’s IT systems entirely and “turn it off,” as the White House promised to appeal.
• A judge has ordered that Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown fellow on a student visa who was detailed by immigration officials, cannot be deported.
• The judge handling the ongoing legal fight over deportation flights to Venezuela said the Trump administration “evaded its obligations” to provide more details about the flights by claiming the Cabinet is still deciding whether they are state secrets. He has demanded an update from the White House by this morning.

Health

• The family of the Texas girl killed by measles last month has partnered with Children’s Health Defense, formerly led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to push anti-vaccine falsehoods. — NBC

Foreign Policy

• The Taliban released an American citizen, George Glezmann, after holding him captive for two and a half years, as Trump hostage envoy Adam Boehler visited Kabul.
• Taiwan plans to increase its defense budget to more than 3% of its GDP.
• Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to call for snap elections.

Technology

• Tesla recalled more than 46,000 Cybertrucks — almost all of them — due to an issue with an exterior panel.

Energy

• The Trump administration plans to extend an impending deadline calling on Chevron to halt its Venezuela operations by at least 30 days. — Bloomberg

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

And Graph Massara, copy editor

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Leena-Kaisa Mikkola is Finland’s ambassador to the US. She participated in Semafor’s event on the World Happiness Report on Thursday.