Principals

1. Johnson doubles down
2. Mayorkas impeachment hearings
3. Liberals for Haley
4. The view from Davos
5. Justices question Chevron doctrine
6. Trump on trial
7. Pakistan, Iran tensions rise

PDB: Trump’s sharp pivot to attacking Nikki Haley

Biden to North Carolina … ‘Light’ D.C. snow forecasted for Friday … Senate continues work on short-term funding bill ahead of Friday deadline

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

A White House meeting ends with no deal on Ukraine aid

President Biden urged congressional leaders to quickly pass more Ukraine assistance at a White House meeting Wednesday. But the nudging failed to change the tune of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who still insisted afterwards that any aid for Kyiv be paired with “substantive” border policy changes akin to the House GOP’s party-line bill known as H.R. 2. (The New York Times called it Johnson’s “ultimatum.”) A new wrinkle emerged in the evening, when the speaker confirmed to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that he’s been speaking with Donald Trump “pretty frequently” about the border deal being negotiated in the Senate, which the former president is urging Republicans to oppose. “We have to reserve judgment to see whatever comes out of it,” he said, adding that so far the deal “doesn’t sound good.” Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said negotiators were making “really good progress,” while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted that a bill packaging together border security and Ukraine aid could be considered next week. Another positive sign for Kyiv: Lawmakers who attended the White House meeting said there was broad agreement on the need for future Ukraine funding. “When you have the consensus, the devil is always in the details,” said House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

— Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba

Why the Mayorkas impeachment will be low on drama

The House is set to hold its second impeachment hearing against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the border Thursday. Mayorkas, however, won’t be around to take questions — he was asked to submit written testimony, after telling the Committee on Homeland Security he had a scheduling conflict. As Semafor’s Kadia Goba explains, we probably shouldn’t expect much drama when Republicans inevitably send the case to the Senate, either. It’s not just that Senate Democrats are unlikely to convict a Biden Cabinet member. The process for impeaching non-presidential candidates is also designed to be low-key: Instead of convening the whole Senate for a trial, most of the effort is traditionally handled by a 12-member committee that hears evidence and testimony, while the rest of the chamber goes about its normal business. (Notably, Democrats could also choose to dismiss the whole case.) Still, Republicans are using the impeachment the best they can to highlight the border crisis, which they see as a political winner in 2024: For instance, the Judiciary Committee is out with a new report today, shared first with Semafor, calculating that the Biden administration has released 3.3 million migrants into the U.S., while only removing about 10,000 of them.

The progressive push to save Nikki Haley

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — The effort to convince liberal independents to vote for Nikki Haley here was underway long before the Iowa caucuses. It picked up momentum this week, as the Primary Pivot super PAC sent 150,000 pieces of mail urging those voters to “protect our democracy” with a strategic vote for Haley, who still trails Trump in the latest state polls. “We’re not going to stop Trump from getting probably 130,000 votes here,” said Robert Schwartz, the super PAC’s co-founder, who said it had raised $650,000 over the last month to spend on messaging. “The only way you beat him is by changing the denominator.”

While Haley undershot expectations in Iowa, Schwartz believed that Ron DeSantis’s single-digit numbers here made him irrelevant, clarifying the choice for independents: skip the Democratic primary and try to slow down Trump instead. At a town hall in Hampton, DeSantis said Haley’s crossover support was a reason not to trust her: “A lot of her voters were Democrats!” But she does have some competition outside the GOP for their support: Jeff Weaver, a strategist for Biden challenger Dean Phillips, said the Iowa result should convince independents to vote in the Democratic primary. It was “almost inevitable that Trump is going to be the nominee,” he said, and nominating Phillips would be a safer insurance policy.

— David Weigel

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Good news from Davos for Joe Biden

The World Economic Forum, which convened this week in Davos, Switzerland, is the world’s greatest machine for manufacturing conventional wisdom, Ben Smith writes from the mountaintop. It’s also, notoriously, a place where the topline conventional wisdom is always wrong. As Liz Hoffman pointed out last year, Davos missed the global recession in 2008, while both Trump and Brexit were absent from its 96-page Global Risk Report in 2016. The economic mood was giddy before the 2018 slowdown, and despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic had already started by the time of the 2020 Forum, the greatest minds in the world didn’t notice. This year, one thing is crystal clear in private and public conversations with the political and financial elites gathered on the mountaintop: Donald Trump will return to the White House. Joe Biden’s political skills are a laugh line, and the dominant feeling toward the Trump restoration is more or less resignation. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a gathering of journalists (off-record, but we weren’t there) this week of his worries about the madness of domestic U.S. politics. To the former Trump aide and current Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci, the lesson is clear: “There are three reasons Trump’s not going to be president, and the first is that everyone here thinks he’s going to be president again,” he said. Don’t worry about the other two.

The Supreme Court looks ready to shoot down Chevron

The Supreme Court looked ready on Wednesday to upend 40 years of legal precedent and hand judges more power to override federal agencies during one of the most closely watched arguments of the Court’s current term. In a pair of cases challenging fishing boat regulations, the conservative majority made it clear they were eager to pare back the Chevron doctrine, a longstanding rule that requires courts to defer to the executive branch on how to interpret ambiguously worded statutes. Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that Chevron put people like immigrants and veterans seeking government benefits at a legal disadvantage against regulators, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh said it “ushers in shocks to the system” as each new White House reinterprets old laws. By the end of the hearing, the major question seemed to be whether the Court would simply narrow the doctrine, or junk it entirely. Liberal legal commentators are bracing themselves for an earthquake: “Without Chevron deference, it’ll be open season on each and every regulation, with underinformed courts playing pretend scientist, economist, and policymaker all at once,” writes Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern.

Trump’s risky defamation defense

Donald Trump came close to being expelled from the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial on Wednesday, as Judge Lewis Kaplan berated him for grumbling “con job” and “witch hunt” during her testimony. “I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that,” Kaplan said. “I would love it,” Trump replied. The former president seethed some more on Truth Social, where he’s posted frequently about the case. In her own remarks, Carroll described years of threatening messages after she publicly alleged that Trump had raped her and he accused her of lying. “Previously, I was known simply as a journalist, and now I’m known as the liar, the fraud and the wack job,” she said. In Trump’s defamation and civil fraud trials, judges have tried to walk a fine line between chastising Trump and giving him grist for his campaign, where he’s eagerly played the victim to voters. But while the politics work great in the GOP race, Trump is “playing with absolute fire” in terms of his personal finances, TPM’s David Kurtz writes: The realtime abuse by a billionaire could help sway the jury that especially large punitive damages are needed to force him to stop. Carroll’s lawyer even cited one of Trump’s Truth Social posts from Tuesday during the trial.

Pakistian strikes Iran, U.S. strikes Houthis

Pakistan fired retaliatory strikes on Iran, the U.S. launched further attacks on Yemen’s Houthis, and Israel’s army chief warned the likelihood of its war with Hamas expanding to include Lebanon was “much higher.” Domestic politics in Iran and Israel are a key driver of the growing regional tensions. Iran’s recent strikes on Pakistan, Syria, and Iraq — unusual in that they were carried out by the country itself, rather than the proxies Tehran often relies on — were designed in part “to reassure conservatives domestically and militant allies abroad,” The New York Times said, while warning Israel, the United States, and terrorist groups “that Iran will strike back if attacked.”

— Prashant Rao

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Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, D-Mass. spoke with Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. yesterday presumably about potential changes to the tax package being marked up tomorrow. Republicans also released bill text for the package.

Playbook: People close to Donald Trump are battling it out behind the scenes over who should be his running mate: Some, including his son Donald Trump Jr., are working to head off the possibility that the former president chooses Nikki Haley.

Axios: House Democrats are weighing whether they’d stand by House Speaker Mike Johnson if hardline GOPers try to force him out as speaker. “I don’t know that you would see the same kind of wholesale buy-in to a motion to vacate by the Democrats” that happened with Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, said Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa.

White House

• President Biden is headed to North Carolina today to talk about “Bidenomics.” He’ll announce that his administration is putting $82 million from the American Rescue Plan toward connecting 16,000 homes and businesses in the state to high-speed internet.
• Vice President Harris will discuss gun violence prevention with Kansas City’s Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ meeting in Washington.
• White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients apologized to former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Biden’s behalf for a snarky DNC statement in response to him ending his longshot presidential campaign. Hutchinson, one of the most aggressive Trump critics in the race, said the call was unnecessary “but still appreciated.”
• Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have not spoken in a while.

Congress

• The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up the big bipartisan tax package between Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo. and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore. on Friday. (The bill text dropped Wednesday night.) But it’s already crashing into resistance via a blistering Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Smith for striking a deal with Democrats that boosts the Child Tax Credit, calling it “bad tax and social policy.” Some GOP senators on the Senate Finance panel are also critical. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., assailed plans to fund the deal by rolling back the Employee Retention Tax Credit as a “fake pay-for.” (The Joint Committee On Taxation disagrees).
• Fourteen Democrats voted with Republicans to support a resolution rebuking President Biden’s so-called “open-border policies.”
• Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y. introduced a resolution to censure House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. that accuses her of supporting the “duly charged and convicted January 6 insurrectionists.”
• Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C. is retiring from Congress.
• In other South Carolina news, Rep. Nancy Mace’s until-recently chief of staff Dan Hanlon is considering challenging her in a primary. Mace has no shortage of enemies after voting to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. — Politico
• A group of senators requested a special Republican conference meeting on the GOP’s position on Ukraine funding next week. The signatories include a number of Republican senators who have been critical of further funding from Ukraine (like Josh Hawley, R-Mo.), alongside those who have been more supportive of aid to Kyiv (like Jim Risch, R-Idaho).

Polls

• What should the U.S. do about humanitarian aid for Palestinians? Well, 25% of Americans think it should be increased, 25% think it should be decreased, 25% think it should be maintained as is, and 24% aren’t sure, according to the latest YouGov/Economist poll.
• The share of Americans who consider themselves “thriving” averaged about 52% last year, higher only than results recorded during the 2008-2009 Great Recession and the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index, which it has been taking since 2008.

On the Trail

• Donald Trump has made a sharp pivot in recent days, focusing far more on attacking Nikki Haley — with quips about Ron DeSantis a clear afterthought — as he seeks to blunt her support in New Hampshire. Speaking there on Wednesday night, the former president highlighted her push to raise the retirement age (for younger people), accused her of being backed by “radical left Democrats,” and summed it up by declaring: “If she wins, Biden wins.” — Semafor’s Shelby Talcott
• Donald Trump is taking a close look at House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, D-N.Y. as a potential running mate. “She’s a killer,” he reportedly told attendees at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month. — NBC
• CNN scrapped plans for an upcoming New Hampshire GOP primary debate after Nikki Haley declined to participate unless Donald Trump did as well. Instead, the network will hold a town hall with Haley tonight.
• In the NY-3 race, a group of Italian-American organizations accused Republican Mazi Melesa Pilip’s campaign of spreading “anti-Italian stereotypes” by calling Democrat Tom Suozzi “the godfather of the border crisis.” Suozzi also objected to the term.
• Trump is trying to prevent Rep. Bob Good, R-Va. from getting reelected due to his endorsement of Ron DeSantis. “Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told the Cardinal News.
• The pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down has started laying off some people, while the candidate is increasingly looking past New Hampshire to South Carolina for a last stand. — NYT

Foreign Policy

• A group of U.S. lawmakers including Reps. Ami Bera, D-Calif., Andy Barr, R-Ky., and Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla. plans to travel to Taiwan “in the coming weeks.” — FT
• Former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen blamed the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations for laying the groundwork that led to today’s global conflicts. “Recent global events in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, in Ukraine … are all results of American hesitance to actually lead,” he told Politico.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken got stuck (briefly) in Davos after his Boeing 737 was“deemed unsafe to fly.” — Bloomberg
• Documents obtained by a congressional committee show that Chinese researchers had mapped the virus that causes COVID-19 by Dec. 28, 2019, but didn’t turn over information on the virus’ sequence until Jan. 11, 2020. — WSJ
• Argentina’s President Javier Milei seemed to win over more international investors with a fiery speech at Davos in which he warned the West was threatened by an agenda that “inexorably leads to socialism, and therefore poverty.”

Technology

Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC said that it is delaying production by a second chip plant it is building in Arizona by a year or two.

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: JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon complemented some of former President Donald Trump’s policies and warned Democrats to “think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA” during an interview on CNBC.

What the Right isn’t reading: Allies of Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear formed a new advocacy group to promote his agenda.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Pavel Verkhniatskyi is a managing partner at the corporate intelligence firm COSA and a member of the Yermak-McFaul International Working Group on Russian Sanctions. Verkhniatskyi is based in Ukraine.