Principals

1. DOGE bill(s) incoming
2. Senate megabill deadline
3. Russia sanctions momentum
4. More tariff talks
5. Colorado suspect charged
6. Dem primary future
7. South Korea election

PDB: Polish PM demands vote of confidence after right wing’s victory

OECD cuts US growth forecast … Eurozone inflation falls … NYT: Israeli soldiers open fire near Gaza aid site

White House teases more rescissions packages

The White House plans to send lawmakers legislation today that would claw back $9.4 billion in federal spending on public media and foreign aid to enshrine DOGE’s cuts — and if it advances, similar proposals could be close behind. “We’re very interested to make sure it passes both the House and the Senate, but we’re very open to sending multiple bills,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told reporters as he left a meeting at the Capitol with House Speaker Mike Johnson Monday night. The pair huddled for more than an hour “strategizing on how to make these DOGE cuts permanent,” Vought said. “We’ve never had these kinds of conversations … but I think they just proved what the House can do with a three-seat majority if you start the process early enough and bring the members along.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Senate GOP rushes to meet July tax deadline

Senate Republicans on the tax-writing Finance Committee left their weekly meeting Monday night committed to passing the GOP’s sprawling spending bill by the administration’s July 4 deadline. That “means things are going to have to move at a much faster schedule,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. Don’t expect dramatic changes from the House’s version: “It will have to track fairly closely,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who met with President Donald Trump on Monday, said. Still, Senate leaders must find a way to appease lawmakers who want fewer changes to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits — as well as those who want more cuts to spending. “We’ve got to have some sort of way to put all that in the funnel and get a work product, I’d say, over the next 10 [to] 15 days,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Russia sanctions fight brews

Senate Majority Leader John Thune made his strongest statement on Russia sanctions Monday, indicating the chamber may move on new sanctions legislation as soon as this month, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. “There’s a high level of interest here in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, in moving on it. And it very well could be something that we would take up in this work period,” Thune said. But Thune is also navigating a tricky line: He’s being careful not to get too far ahead of the White House. And for good reason, because the president is making clear he still has ball control. “While he remains in constant communication with leaders on the Hill, the decision on whether to impose sanctions will come from the commander in chief,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.

Tariff deadline draws closer

The Trump administration is continuing trade negotiations this week as its self-imposed deadline for nations to make agreements and avert tariffs draws closer.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is sitting down with the EU trade commissioner in Paris tomorrow as the bloc warns that it is prepared to implement retaliatory measures. That meeting notably comes the same day Trump plans to double steel and aluminum tariffs. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will sit down with Trump in Washington on Thursday for a meeting that’s also expected to touch on trade, as well as the war in Ukraine. Despite a flurry of high-level discussions, it’s unclear when the administration will announce another deal. Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender recently expressed optimism that more pacts are on their way, but the administration is also pressuring countries to provide their best offers — by tomorrow, according to Reuters.

— Shelby Talcott

Colorado attack colors immigration debate

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the man accused of ambushing a pro-Israeli Jewish group with Molotov cocktails in Boulder, has been charged with a federal hate crime. Soliman told investigators “that he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” according to the criminal complaint, which also said he had been planning the assault for a year. A dozen people were injured in Sunday’s attack, which has turbocharged immigration rhetoric on the right. The Department of Homeland Security said he was living in the US on an expired visa but had applied for asylum in 2022, meaning he was lawfully in the country, an expert at the Migration Policy Institute told The Washington Post. “This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Dems ponder future of South Carolina primary

One question Democrats are pondering ahead of their next presidential contest: Will South Carolina vote first again? The state has a majority-Black primary electorate, and Joe Biden convinced his party to put it first on the calendar for 2024. “He said, that’s gonna be a part of my legacy, and I’m gonna fight like hell to make sure it works,” recalled former DNC chair Jaime Harrison, who talked with Biden during a visit to the state on his last full day in office. But New Hampshire is bidding to get its first-state status back (it held a Biden-less primary in 2024), and Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., told Semafor that it was only vital that his state be one of the first four. “We had nothing to do with being No. 1,” he said. “That’s something that Joe Biden decided to do, for whatever reason.”

— David Weigel

S. Korea’s new leader to face Trump challenge

South Korea’s new president will face the immediate challenge of going toe-to-toe with the Trump administration on trade. South Koreans headed to the polls Tuesday to choose between liberal Lee Jae-myung (who is leading in polling) and conservative Kim Moon Soo, after conservative Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office in April after his short-lived declaration of martial law late last year.

Relations with the US will be top of mind for Yoon’s successor, as Trump’s threat of heightened steel and aluminum tariffs starting tomorrow weighs on South Korean steelmakers; the country was the fourth largest exporter of the metal to the US last year. Broader trade talks have moved slowly without a president in Seoul, and South Korea is looking to avoid Trump’s 25% “Liberation Day” tariffs set to take effect next month absent an agreement. The country is also confronting the prospect of a substantial US troop withdrawal.

Blindspot: Crime and hate

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: Assaults in New York City’s subway system increased 19% this year, despite an overall drop in crime across the transit system.

What the Right isn’t reading: A report from the advocacy organization GLAAD catalogued 932 anti-LGBTQ incidents in the US in the last year.

As electricity demand soars — driven by the rapid expansion of data centers and AI — pressure is mounting to scale secure and reliable energy resources.

Join Semafor for a timely conversation with Chairman Mark Christie, FERC; Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky.; and Aamir Paul, President of North American Operations at Schneider Electric, as they discuss how the new Administration plans to accelerate domestic energy production — and whether current infrastructure is up to the task. The discussion will also explore the innovative policies and technologies that could help close the growing supply-demand gap.

June 11, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Rep. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has hired President Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio for his reelection bid as he faces blowback from Trump Republicans and a GOP primary challenge.

Playbook: Trump’s public schedule is relatively quiet this week as he pressures Republicans to get in line on his tax and spending bill.

WaPo: Democratic Rep. JD ​​Scholten of Iowa said he found GOP Sen. Joni Ernst’s non-apology for her comments on Medicaid cuts so “disrespectful to constituents” that he decided to challenge her for the Senate, even though his campaign was not ready yet.

Axios: Nearly a third of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s workforce — roughly a thousand people — have so far left the organization under the second Trump administration.

White House

• The acting head of FEMA said he wasn’t aware the US had a hurricane season, baffling staff. — Reuters

Congress

• Rep. Jerry Nadler wants the House Judiciary Committee to investigate an incident last week, in which ICE officers “barged” into Nadler’s office and arrested one of his aides.

Outside the Beltway

• New York Lieutenant Gov. Antonio Delgado will challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul in next year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. — NYT
• Texas lawmakers sent a bill to ban students from forming LGBTQ-themed clubs to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

Polls

• Roughly eight in 10 voters believe that the Trump administration should restore funding for victim services, community violence prevention, and youth outreach, according to a new poll commissioned by the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a criminal justice reform group. The data, out this morning, follows news that the Justice Department would end hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.

Business

• The Trump Organization is doing more business overseas than ever, announcing a dozen international projects in the last seven months. — WSJ
• Elon Musk launched a fundraising drive for his artificial intelligence company, xAI.
• Bill Gates said most of his estimated $200 billion fortune will be spent on improving education and health in Africa over the next two decades.

Economy

• Syria’s stock market reopened after a six-month hiatus.
• Madagascar is looking to the UAE to offset impacts of US tariffs. — Bloomberg

Courts

• US prosecutors are pursuing a new investigation into Indian billionaire Gautam Adani regarding possible violations of Iran sanctions. — WSJ
• The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case from an Illinois Republican challenging mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. It also declined to decide two cases focusing on state gun control laws.

Foreign Policy

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he will seek a vote of confidence in parliament after nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki won the country’s presidential election. Tusk is expected to win the vote, but the move reflects the political blow delivered to his centrist government by Nawrocki’s victory.
• The US offered Iran a deal over the weekend that would allow it to continue “limited low-level” uranium enrichment. — Axios

Technology

• Ukraine is working on “a generation of drones designed to identify and shoot down other unmanned aerial vehicles.” — Bloomberg
• The Pentagon has withdrawn about 500 US troops from Syria, making good on plans laid earlier this year. — Fox News

Media

• Comedian Marc Maron’s long-running podcast, WTF, is ending.
• The New York Times spent a couple weeks visiting Butterworth’s, a DC restaurant that’s a MAGA hotspot.

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

Oren Cass is the chief economist at American Compass, a conservative think tank that is hosting an event tonight featuring Vice President JD Vance.