Principals

1. 2024’s packed political calendar
2. Haley’s quiet Hill backer
3. Republicans at the border
4. Hamas leader killed
5. Harvard president resigns
6. Totenberg in recovery

PDB: Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. faces new accusations that he accepted gifts from Qatar

Biden will begin 2024 by casting Trump as a threat to democracy … Battle for second place in Iowa … FT: Carmakers warn of Trump plan to kill Inflation Reduction Act

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Iowa’s debate night pileup

It’s actually 2024 now — time to start paying some serious attention to the political calendar in what’s been an unusually sleepy primary contest so far. Iowa’s Jan. 15 caucus is already around the corner, while New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 contest looks like the last, best chance for an upset that might make the Republican race interesting. But the next big date to circle is Jan. 10, where Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are officially headed to a one-on-one CNN debate in Des Moines. Donald Trump, still the runaway polling leader in the state and still refusing to share a stage with his opponents, will do a town hall on Fox News at the exact same time. Vivek Ramaswamy, who missed the polling cutoff for the debate, will do his own counterprogramming with conservative influencer Tim Pool. For a detailed rundown of what’s coming in January and beyond, check out David Weigel’s exhaustive guide to the 2024 political schedule. What we know: Primary dates, ballot deadlines, special elections, and conventions. What we still don’t: Trump’s legal calendar.

Nikki Haley’s (very quiet) Capitol Hill support

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has the support of a lone member of Congress, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. — for now. But there’s a small crop of lawmakers quietly rooting for Haley, including Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has attended at least one event in Iowa with the former governor. Bacon’s wife Angie chairs the Nebraska arm of the coalition Women for Nikki in their home state. “Her Reagan-like philosophy best matches mine,” the congressman told Semafor, but he admitted he’s “trying to not be decisive” in doling out endorsements. The muted fist pumps for Haley are a reminder of how much Donald Trump still controls the party’s base: Politicians across the ideological spectrum have been reluctant to back anyone else while he’s the obvious frontrunner. Just last month, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who’s facing a tough reelection bid, was caught on audio privately supporting Haley in front of constituents before telling reporters he won’t be making any official endorsements. None of this has dismayed her congressional ally Norman, who predicts more members are primed to raise their hands for Haley if she performs well in the early contests and Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie drop out of the race. “They will [endorse] after she becomes the clear favorite to take on Trump which she is in the process of doing!!” he texted.

— Kadia Goba

House Republicans visit the border as negotiations drag on

Speaker Mike Johnson and dozens of House Republicans are using their first big 2024 event to draw attention to the situation at the U.S. southern border. “Every state is now a border state,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., whose own constituents have been grappling with the migrant crisis. The trip to Texas, which will include a Border Patrol facility tour near Eagle Pass and a briefing with Texas officials, according to a GOP aide, comes as Senate negotiations on potential border policy changes drag on, with Ukraine aid hanging in the balance. Key senators involved in the talks — Chris Murphy, D-Conn., James Lankford, R-Okla. and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. — arrived back in Washington on Tuesday and met in person for negotiations, aides confirmed. There’s no sign yet of a breakthrough but the Biden administration, which is also involved in the discussions, is sounding cautiously optimistic. “We believe these conversations are continuing in the right direction,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters last night. Meanwhile, administration officials insist they are making progress stemming the flow of migrants, in part due to stepped-up enforcement from Mexican authorities following talks in December. Another senior administration official said four border crossings — including one in Eagle Pass — that had been closed to stem the surge would reopen, and that migrant encounters at the border had declined in recent days (clocking in at about 2,500 on Monday).

— Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba

Israeli strike kills Hamas leader in Beirut

A blast in Lebanon killed the senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri along with top Hamas military leaders. U.S. officials say that Israel, which has not claimed responsibility, was behind the strike. The operation comes almost three months after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, and raises fears that the conflict could spread to new fronts — something the Biden administration has hoped to avoid. Israeli officials reportedly did not notify the U.S. in advance of the attack. Meanwhile, the State Department issued a strongly-worded rebuke of far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir for “inflammatory and irresponsible” calls to uproot Palestinians and resettle them outside of Gaza. As Democrats grapple with domestic divisions on Israel, some are moving away from support for the war effort. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. said Tuesday that Congress should block further funding for Israel, citing the humanitarian costs in Gaza. “While we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,” he said.

Republicans cheer Harvard president’s resignation

Time’s up for Claudine Gay, the embattled Harvard president who resigned on Tuesday. Her departure ended a brief but turbulent six-month tenure just a day after the conservative Washington Free Beacon reported on new plagiarism accusations. “It has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual,” she wrote in her resignation letter. Gay, who was the first Black female president of Harvard, also wrote that the attacks on her had been fueled by “racial animus.” Republicans were jubilant, after spending weeks criticizing Gay and other university presidents for struggling to answer questions about how their schools address threats against Jewish students during last month’s House hearing. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. called Gay’s resignation “long overdue” and vowed that an existing investigation into elite universities would continue. “It’s an institutional rot that we are addressing,” she said on Fox News.

Gay is the second of three university presidents who participated in the December hearing to resign. She will be replaced in the interim by Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer. Some Harvard faculty members and progressive commentators were dismayed by Gay’s resignation, viewing her as the victim of a political campaign orchestrated by conservative activists like Chris Rufo. Others, like New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, argued the plagiarism charges needed to be evaluated purely on their own merits, regardless of who scored a partisan victory in the process. To Harvard’s culture war critics, he wrote, “claiming scalps is a small victory, while disproving the commitment to truth and rigor in institutions like academia and media is a much greater prize.”

NPR’s missing legal eagle

Want to know how the Supreme Court is assessing Donald Trump’s eligibility to be on the Colorado ballot? Or why the court is ducking Jack Smith’s pressure to rule on Trump’s immunity from prosecution? Well, Semafor’s Steve Clemons wants to know — and has been waiting for NPR’s legal diva Nina Totenberg to weigh in. But it turns out Totenberg had major emergency back surgery, more than 7 hours’ worth, just before Christmas. She’s now working hard to get herself walking again at the National Rehabilitation Center. Totenberg tells Steve she’ll be walking in three weeks, but that it will take a couple more months to really get back to running up and down the iconic marble stairs. Totenberg had back surgery 20 years ago and got a couple of good decades out of it, so she’s hoping for the same again. Our best wishes to Totenberg, an essential voice in a high-stakes judicial year.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The House Homeland Security Committee intends to start impeachment proceedings against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the situation at the border, with a first hearing planned for Jan. 10.

Playbook: The White House tried to get ahead of House Republicans’ border trip with a statement accusing the GOP of exacerbating the crisis by voting to cut Customs and Border Protection funding and failing to pass President Biden’s national security supplemental package, which includes more funding for border security.

White House

• President Biden has a habit of going off-script at fundraisers, diverging from his usual scripted official events. It worries his aides, but some donors think the president could use more of his more aggressive rhetoric. — Reuters
• Biden will travel to Charleston, S.C. on Monday to speak at Mother Emanuel AME church, one of the oldest Black churches in the South and the location of a 2015 mass shooting that killed nine parishioners.

Congress

• The House Republican majority is about to shrink further to 219. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio is resigning beginning Jan. 21 — earlier than expected — to become president of Youngstown State University.
• A bipartisan group of senators is traveling to the Middle East, making stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. — Punchbowl News
• Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, endorsed Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, joining all other leadership colleagues (except GOP Whip Tom Emmer) who have done so.
• Niraj Antani, an Ohio state senator and one of a dozen Republicans running to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup in Ohio’s 2nd congressional district, raised over $612,348 for his bid in 48 days, according to figures he shared first with Semafor. Antani said he is not self-funding and the money is all primary dollars. The district is overwhelmingly Republican.

Outside the Beltway

The Ohio House is planning to return to session in order to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of H.B. 68, which would have restricted access to gender transition care for minors.

Economy

U.S. auto sales bounced back in 2023, but higher interest rates could pose challenges for sales in the new year. — WSJ

Courts

• Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, faces new charges that he helped the government of Qatar in exchange for bribes. His lawyer dismissed the new accusation as “a string of baseless assumptions and bizarre conjectures.”
• Donald Trump filed a lawsuit challenging the decision by Maine’s secretary of state to remove him from the state’s ballot over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Foreign Policy

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is delaying a planned trip to Israel until early next week. — Times of Israel

Polls

The share of Republicans who say Donald Trump bears “a great deal” or “a good amount” of responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has declined by half in the three years since the violence, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll.

2024

• Vivek Ramaswamy won an endorsement other Republicans weren’t really competing for: Steve King, the former congressman from northwest Iowa. King lost his committee assignments and then his seat in a 2020 primary, after telling the New York Times that he didn’t understand how language like “white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization” became offensive. “He has been wrongfully villainized by a media that not once has quoted the alleged racist remark, or whatever it is, that he made,” Ramaswamy told reporters in Bettendorf, where King’s endorsement played on a video screen.
• Donald Trump told Breitbart that he intends to make a “heavy play” for traditionally blue states like New Jersey, Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota.
• Nikki Haley’s campaign says it brought in $24 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. — Fox News
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hired Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, as his campaign’s communications director. — NBC
• Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah is joining the race to fill Mitt Romney’s Senate seat after previously rejecting a run in October.

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 man arrested last week for carrying a machete outside the U.S. Capitol was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which said he is an undocumented immigrant.

What the Right isn’t reading: Elon Musk’s X has lost 71% of its value since he purchased it last year, according to an estimate from Fidelity.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Kevin Hern is a Republican representing Oklahoma’s 1st congressional district. He chairs the Republican Study Committee. Semafor’s Kadia Goba is asking the questions.

What’s your biggest policy obsession at the moment?

There’s a strong, bipartisan disconnect between the Biden Administration and Congress on international tax treaties. The Admin is setting themselves up for failure — they haven’t brought Congressional tax-writers in on their negotiations! I think about this issue every single day.

What’s harder? Managing a chain of McDonald’s restaurants or managing more than a hundred GOP members as RSC chair?

In business, you can’t just talk about getting things done, you have to actually do it. You must lead by example, make tough decisions, convince people to follow you — knowing that their families depend on you getting the decisions right. This is the major difference between people who have been successful in business and being a Member of Congress.

Instead of a law, I’d like an amendment to the Constitution mandating that we complete the Appropriations process on time every time for the House and Senate. If we don’t pass everything on time, then we stay in session until we do.

I’m visiting Tulsa on Juneteenth. Where should I eat?

Jimmy’s Chophouse for steak or Burn Co for BBQ.

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

Henry Cuellar — there’s a lot you can do when you put partisanship aside and respect your colleagues for what they bring to the table.

• Hispanic leaders have a message for the president: Latino voters remain unconvinced by Biden.
• Russia launches retaliatory strikes on Ukraine. The attack on Kyiv came as both Zelenskyy and Putin vowed to keep on fighting.
• Here’s what journalists got wrong in 2023.