Principals

1. Moderates defend Johnson
2. Tax talks heat up
3. Lloyd Austin’s cancer surgery
4. Trump’s ‘SEAL Team 6’ argument
5. SEC investigates hack
6. Duel in Des Moines

PDB: Sanders says Biden should include lowering Medicare age, adding benefits in his 2024 platform

House GOP holds Mayorkas impeachment hearing … Blinken meets Abbas … Boeing CEO acknowledges ‘mistake’ related to Alaska Airlines incident

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Do not try to boot Johnson, moderate Republicans warn

With hardline Republicans grumbling about Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent budget deal, some moderates are already issuing a stern warning: Do not even think about attempting to oust him. “If they try it, they are fucking idiots,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., told Semafor’s Kadia Goba. Many of the House GOP’s most conservative lawmakers have been openly furious with Johnson since this weekend, when he and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled a topline spending plan that stuck closely to the terms of last year’s debt ceiling agreement. Appearing on the Steve Deace Show Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas floated the possibility of trying to remove the speaker. “I’m leaving it on the table,” he said. It’s unclear, however, how much appetite GOP members have for another leadership fight after the ordeal to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “I kind of doubt anyone wants to go through that three-ring circus again,” one member told Semafor. Even some hardliners are waving off the idea. “I’m not going there. Mike deserves a chance,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. told reporters. Still, moderates aren’t happy about the talk of toppling Johnson. “It would be the dumbest move ever and the counter-reaction from the 95% of our conference who want to govern and who know the realities of our constitutional system and divided government would be fierce,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. told Semafor.

A child tax credit expansion is back on the menu

House and Senate tax writers are closing in on an agreement to expand the Child Tax Credit in return for extending and restoring some popular tax benefits for businesses, writes Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig. “We’ve made a substantial kind of progress. We’ve already prevailed on a crucial issue, which is that there’s going to be equal treatment for working families with business,” Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore. told Semafor. Wyden said he believed that Jan. 29 — the start of tax filing season — amounted to a deadline to have the changes reach President Biden’s desk. On Tuesday, Wyden met to discuss the potential deal with House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. “Things are progressing really, really well,” Smith told reporters. A person briefed on the talks said the total cost of the package is likely to range between $50 billion to $80 billion, though the amount wasn’t final. But even if negotiators can reach a deal on paper, pushing it to passage could prove tough: A bill may have to compete with higher priorities like a potential border security and Ukraine package, and there’s no guarantee that Senate GOP leadership will get on board.

White House just catching up on Defense Sec’s cancer battle

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early December, leading to surgery later that month that eventually landed him at Walter Reed with complications on Jan. 1. Two doctors there put out a detailed statement explaining what led to Austin’s secretive hospital stay, which in some ways has led to even more scrutiny. The White House, after acknowledging that President Biden wasn’t informed of Austin’s cancer diagnosis until yesterday morning, acknowledged the lack of communication was a problem but said Biden would stick by his Pentagon chief. “It is not optimal … for a situation like this to go as long as it did without the commander-in-chief knowing about it or the national security adviser knowing about it,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients has ordered an administration-wide review of policies for delegating authority. The House Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, launched a formal investigation into the situation, sending letters to top officials requesting communications, details about the transfer of authority to Austin’s deputy and other information. It isn’t as if every Republican is jumping to call on Austin to step down, however. “I don’t think he’s going to resign and I think we can put it past us,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said on Fox Business. “But I hope everybody’s learned a lesson here.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Trump’s lawyers struggle against ‘SEAL Team 6’

Donald Trump looks unlikely to prevail in the latest round of his fight to avoid a federal criminal trial over Jan. 6. Judges on an appeals court panel seemed skeptical of Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution because he was president at the time and was acquitted by the Senate of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol assault. At one point, one of the judges asked Trump attorney John Sauer whether a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent could be tried if they weren’t impeached. Sauer answered that an impeachment and conviction “would have to occur” but assured the judge that such a president would be “speedily” impeached. A ruling is expected to come down quickly — as soon as today — but a decision against Trump won’t mean an end to the saga. “The case is clearly headed” for the Supreme Court, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told Semafor. “And the slower the better for Trump.” The former president is hoping to delay the trial — currently set for March — until after the election. At a news conference following the arguments, Trump warned ominously there would be “bedlam in the country” if the charges undermine his candidacy.

— Morgan Chalfant

SEC, law enforcement investigate fake bitcoin post

The Securities and Exchange Commission says it’s working with law enforcement to figure out who the heck hacked its X account yesterday. The financial regulator appeared to announce on Tuesday afternoon that it had approved the first round of Bitcoin ETFs, briefly causing the digital currency’s price to spike before SEC Chair Gary Gensler clarified that the post was fake and that his agency’s feed had been “compromised.” X later issued a statement not-so-subtly dragging the SEC for its lax social media security: “Based on our investigation, the compromise was not due to any breach of X’s systems, but rather due to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number associated with the @SECGov account through a third party. We can also confirm that the account did not have two-factor authentication enabled at the time the account was compromised.” Anyway, the SEC is widely expected to greenlight those Bitcoin ETFs later today, a major milestone for the crypto industry that could draw in more investors.

— Jordan Weissmann

It’s Haley vs. DeSantis in tonight’s Iowa debate

In the world where Donald Trump isn’t running for president, it might be the biggest night of the campaign: Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have finally whittled down the debate stage to just the two of them in tonight’s CNN debate. Trump, sitting at 58% support in a recent poll of Iowa Republicans, will try to drag down the debate’s ratings with a simultaneous Fox News town hall nearby. Semafor’s David Weigel has the rundown of what to watch from the candidates tonight. Will Haley look as commanding without her favorite punching bag, Vivek Ramaswamy, in the room? Can DeSantis make Haley pay for prioritizing New Hampshire in order to “correct” the Iowa results? And can either of them make their core arguments against Trump stick — that he’s too chaotic and divisive (Haley) and not competent and conservative enough (DeSantis)? Meanwhile, the biggest wild card of the caucus might be the state’s atrocious winter weather, which has already forced campaigns to cancel several events, stranded one of our reporters’ flights, and shows no sign of easing up. The forecasted high for caucus day in Des Moines: 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly argued during a closed-door GOP leadership meeting on Tuesday night that Republicans must avert a government shutdown, without specifically talking about a short-term funding bill.

Playbook: Democrats are chastising current Biden White House staffers for protesting over the Gaza war. “If you said you didn’t like some of President Clinton’s policies, the idea that you would go public with that would be insane,” said James Carville.

The Early 202: Some moderate House Republicans are concerned that two or even three impeachment proceedings would be “overkill”: “It seems like we’re getting a little impeachment friendly,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y.

White House

• President Biden and Vice President Harris are having lunch today.
• Returning from Atlanta last night, Air Force Two was diverted from Joint Base Andrews to Dulles Airport because of the bad weather in the D.C. area. Harris’ plane encountered a wind shear, according to a person familiar with what happened.
• Correction: In yesterday’s Principals, we reported that top U.S. economic officials like Gina Raimondo and Janet Yellen won’t be attending the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos under the headline “U.S. snubs Davos.” But Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan are making the trip — so it’s hardly a snub.

Congress

• The House Homeland Security Committee is holding a hearing today on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which will include testimony from the Republican attorneys general of Montana, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The conservative lawyer Jonathan Turley writes in the Daily Beast that none of the things Mayorkas is accused of “amount to high crimes and misdemeanors warranting his impeachment.”
• The House is expected to vote on a Senate-passed resolution that would block the Biden administration from waiving some “Buy America” requirements for electric vehicle charging stations.
• A House committee probing antisemitism at elite universities gave Harvard two weeks to produce emails, text messages and other information. — WSJ
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Congress will need to pass another short-term funding measure to prevent a partial shutdown this month while lawmakers work on appropriations bills.
• Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. lashed out in response to new charges that he took bribes to aid Qatar in a speech on the Senate floor, accusing federal prosecutors of engaging “not in a prosecution, but a persecution.”

Polls

Donald Trump is leading President Biden 47% to 39% in a hypothetical matchup in the key swing state of Michigan, according to a new poll from The Detroit News and WDIV-TV. Eleven percent of likely voters in the state, which Biden won in 2020, said they were undecided. Another notable takeaway: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer leads Trump by 4 in the same poll.

2024

• Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig that he has communicated to President Biden that lowering the Medicare eligibility age and adding dental, vision, and hearing benefits should be part of his 2024 re-election platform. “I hope we can move in that direction and that’s something I’ll be pushing for,” Sanders said. Asked for comment, the Biden campaign cited the president’s healthcare record of strengthening the ACA, capping insulin prices for seniors on Medicare, and cutting prescription drug costs. “As we chart the course to November, the campaign will make clear to voters the President’s priorities and choice they face — between extreme MAGA proposals that will strip away rights and freedoms and an agenda that will improve access to health care and make their lives better,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster said in a statement to Semafor.
• Former first lady Melania Trump announced Tuesday on X that her mother had passed away.
• Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman running to succeed Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., endorsed Donald Trump despite previously saying the former president’s “time has passed.” — National Review
• The Biden campaign is calling attention to Trump’s recent prediction that the economy will crash and his hope that it would be in the next year. — CNN
• Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., Mike Pence’s older brother, became the latest House member to announce plans to leave Congress at the end of his current term.

Welcome to Iowa

Courts

• Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was subpoenaed to testify in the divorce proceedings of one of her colleagues. Separately, an attorney for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case alleged in a court filing that Willis has engaged in a “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with a special prosecutor she hired to assist with the case. — WSJ
• Trump intends to deliver his own closing argument when his civil trial wraps up in New York on Thursday. — AP
• A federal appeals court dealt a blow to the Biden administration’s effort to undo Trump-era dishwasher and washing machine efficiency rules.

Foreign Policy

• For the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic, senior Chinese military officials visited the Pentagon for in-person talks with U.S. officials. China put the annual talks on ice after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 Taiwan visit but President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to reopen military channels last November. (Other signs of cooling tensions between the two nations include a dose of ping-pong diplomacy, an exchange between players from Peking University and the University of Virginia.)
• China’s foreign ministry expressed anger at a Tuesday meeting between Taiwan’s new de facto ambassador to the U.S., Alexander Yui, and Speaker Mike Johnson.
• The State Department said it was “extremely concerned” by violence and kidnappings taking place in Ecuador. The country has plunged into chaos with explosions, looting, and jail breaks, and armed men stormed a television station in Guayaquil.
• Add oil executives to the list of people worried about escalating violence in the Middle East. — CNN

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: Nikki Haley received an endorsement from Judge Judy.

What the Right isn’t reading: Maine’s Democratic-controlled legislature voted down an attempt by Republicans to impeach Secretary of State Shenna Bellows for removing Donald Trump from the state’s ballots.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Rep. Larry Bucshon is a Republican representative from Indiana. He announced plans this week to retire from Congress.

• Taylor Swift becomes an issue in Taiwan’s election and more in Semafor’s inaugural Global Election Hot List.
• Investor Bill Ackman’s latest fight turns personal, again.
• Mask off: Ghana’s mystery presidential candidate reveals his identity.