Principals

1. Border shutdown showdown
2. White House on Iran
3. Johnson greenlights tax vote
4. No hostage breakthrough
5. Trump waits for fraud verdict
6. NATO chief pushes Ukraine aid

PDB: China courts U.S. mayors and local officials

Biden campaigns in Florida … Musk’s Neuralink implants brain chip in first human subject … Politico: Anti-abortion groups prep an agenda for Trump

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

The battle over ‘shutting down’ the border

Just how much power does the president have to close off the asylum system? That question is quickly becoming one of the key flashpoints over the Senate’s bipartisan border security package, even as the text of the deal has yet to be publicly released, writes Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig. Over the weekend, President Biden promised that he would “shut down the border right now and fix it quickly” if Congress were to pass the legislation. He appeared to be touting new emergency powers that will kick in under the bill if daily crossings at the southern border rise above 4,000 per day: In those circumstances, the president would be allowed to bar new asylum claims by migrants who arrive in the U.S. outside of an official port of entry, and return them to Mexico without a hearing. The authority resembles Title 42, the emergency pandemic measure the Trump administration used to quickly expel migrants. But conservatives in the House have hammered the Senate’s measure as too weak: They want to empower the president to similarly clamp down on asylum claims regardless of how many migrants are crossing the border. “Any border ‘shutdown’ authority that ALLOWS even one illegal crossing is a non-starter. Thousands each day is outrageous. The number must be ZERO,” Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted on Monday.

White House quietly weighs response to deadly attack on troops

The White House isn’t giving away much about its planned response to the attack over the weekend by Iran-backed militias that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan, but appears unlikely to heed calls from some Republicans to strike targets inside Iran. “We are not looking for a war with Iran,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday, though he declined to get ahead of a decision by President Biden. Bloomberg reports that the U.S. reaction will be “stronger than its most recent retaliations against Iranian proxies,” but a strike on Iran would be unprecedented and would risk triggering a wider war. Other options could include strikes on Iran’s Quds Force in another country or on its proxies, or ratcheting up sanctions on Tehran, according to The Wall Street Journal. There’s bound to be more scrutiny on the circumstances surrounding the attack, following reports the U.S. military mistook the enemy drone for a U.S. drone headed on a similar path. The Pentagon identified the three service members killed in the attack as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett.

Congress’s $78 billion tax bill will get a floor vote, Johnson says

Mike Johnson just gave Congress’ $78 billion bipartisan tax deal a green light to move ahead. The House speaker said Monday that he’d soon bring the legislation — which combines a bigger child credit with a slew of business deductions — to the House floor under a suspension of the rules, meaning it will need a two-thirds majority to pass. Rounding up that support might be tricky: New York Republicans, for instance, are currently furious that it does nothing to lift the $10,000 cap on the State and Local Tax Deduction, with some vowing to oppose the legislation as-is. Heritage Action circulated a memo to GOP offices lambasting the bill (which, through the magic of X, eventually led to Elon Musk taking shots at it). But key lawmakers are doing their best to round up votes: House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith briefed members on the deal Monday evening. It also gained a prominent conservative booster in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

A deal to release hostages held by Hamas appears far off

Negotiations to broker a new hostage deal between Israel and Hamas appear far from a breakthrough. While U.S. and Qatari officials expressed optimism, Hamas seemed to reject the new framework because it did not include a permanent end to the Gaza war and withdrawal of Israeli troops, the Times of Israel reported. The talks have centered around a deal that would implement a lengthier ceasefire in exchange for the release of scores of hostages still being held by Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, described the talks as “constructive” but said there were “significant gaps.” Still, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani insisted the parties “are in a much better place than where we were a few weeks ago,” while Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the proposal “strong” and “compelling.” “But Hamas will have to make its own decisions,” he added.

A Trump New York fraud verdict could be unlike any other

A verdict in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial is expected any day now. In addition to a possible $370 million penalty, Judge Arthur Engoron could order the “dissolution” of the Trump Organization — dismantling the former president’s business empire and his carefully crafted persona. Such a decision would be highly unusual, according to a review by the Associated Press, which found that a penalty dissolving a business has only been imposed a dozen times since 1956 and almost always in cases where “victims and losses were key factors.” Trump, his family members, and associates are accused of exaggerating his net worth to obtain more favorable loan terms, but as the AP notes, the trial singled out no clear victims. One New York real estate lawyer who previously sued a Trump condo building for misrepresenting sales told the publication that imposing the penalty would set “a horrible precedent.”

NATO chief lobbies for Ukraine in DC

NATO’s secretary-general began a lobbying tour of Washington this week, focusing in particular on persuading conservatives and allies of ex-President Donald Trump to unblock military funding for Ukraine. Stoltenberg’s trip — which includes talks with House Speaker Mike Johnson and a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, both of whom have expressed skepticism over such aid — comes amid growing concern for Kyiv’s battlefield prospects: The White House’s 2024 strategy for Ukraine does not foresee any significant territorial gains, according to The Washington Post. In part, that is down to Republicans’ “blending of domestic politics with foreign policy decisions” by tying aid for Kyiv to a domestic border-security deal, an intertwining that “can have dire consequences,” the Ukraine analyst Olga Lautman argued.

— Prashant Rao

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote a lengthy letter to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn. defending himself ahead of today’s markup of impeachment articles against him. “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service to which I remain devoted,” Mayorkas wrote.

Playbook: The MAGA wing of the Republican Party “remains isolationist and stubbornly anti-war,” setting it apart from hawkish Republicans who have called for direct strikes on Iran. Donald Trump has notably not called on President Biden to attack Iran and himself called off a retaliatory strike on Iran in 2019.

Axios: Biden has begun regularly mentioning Trump by name since late November after deliberately avoiding saying his name for years — a sign Biden and his team are in general election mode.

White House

• President Biden will spend the day in Donald Trump’s backyard: He’s attending campaign receptions in Jupiter, Fla. and Miami.
• The White House announced the 10 “regional innovation engines” that will receive funding through the National Science Foundation to help drive science and technology research and development across the country.

Congress

• The House Homeland Security Committee will meet today to consider impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
• The House select committee on China will hold a hearing this morning with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
• A group of Democratic lawmakers queried Secretary of State Antony Blinken about what they said were “highly unusual” emergency arms sales to Israel. — Politico
• Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla. said she could not remember voting against the CHIPS and Science Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and a 2023 government funding bill during an appearance on CBS News Miami in which she was pressed about taking credit for related funding in her district. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. had something to say about it: “So many lawmakers in both parties are husks of humans who merely hand their vote card to the leadership. Then, stuff like this happens,” he wrote on X, sharing a video of the exchange between Salazar and reporter Jim DeFede.

Outside the Beltway

Some Oklahoma Republicans voted to censure Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. over the weekend for his work on a bipartisan border security package, but the Oklahoma Republican Party said Monday that the meeting at which the resolution was passed was “illegitimate.”

Courts

• Mark your calendars: The Supreme Court announced it will hear oral arguments in a case about access to the abortion drug mifepristone on March 26.
• A former contractor for the Internal Revenue Service who pleaded guilty to leaking then-President Donald Trump’s tax records as well as those belonging to other wealthy Americans was sentenced to five years in prison (the maximum sentence).

On the Trail

• Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez recently met with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who has criticized President Biden’s handling of the Gaza war. — Politico
• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced the first 17 candidates in its “red-to-blue” program focused on winning back competitive House seats from Republicans. — NBC
• Two outside groups aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the super PAC Senate Leadership Fund and its affiliated nonprofit advocacy group One Nation, raised nearly $95 million in 2023 to aid in Republicans’ efforts to take back the Senate in November.
• In another sign the economic vibes might be shifting in Biden’s favor, Donald Trump actually attempted to take credit for the surging stock market in a Truth Social post. White House spokesman Andrew Bates had some fun in response.

National Security

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin started working in person at the Pentagon again on Monday, his first time back since he was hospitalized at the beginning of the year due to complications from prostate cancer surgery.

Foreign Policy

• More than a dozen countries, including the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Japan, have suspended funding for the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, after Israel accused employees of the organization of complicity in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
• The U.S. and U.K. imposed sanctions on an Iranian network they said is responsible for targeting dissidents and activists for assassination. The Justice Department also announced parallel charges against the network.
• Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for leaking state secrets, allegations his political party described as a “sham” and said would be challenged in a higher court. The news comes shortly before the country’s Feb. 8 elections, in which Khan was barred from running.
• Hong Kong will pass a new national-security law soon, the city’s leader said, one expected to be even more draconian than legislation imposed by Beijing in 2020 to quell huge pro-democracy protests.

Technology

TikTok is struggling to live up to promises it made with Project Texas, the setup designed to address concerns in Washington about protecting American data. Managers “sometimes instruct workers to share data with colleagues in other parts of the company and with ByteDance workers without going through official channels.” — WSJ

Big Read

China rolled out the red carpet for mayors from cities in Indiana and Mississippi recently, treating them to Mao Zedong’s favorite liquor, Maotai, and offering them the chance to test drive new models of electric vehicles, Lily Kuo and Cate Cadell write in the Washington Post. “Everywhere we went, whether it was Hong Kong or Wuhan, they hadn’t had a delegation like this for a long time,” said Min Fan, executive director of the organization that helped plan the trip, the U.S. Heartland China Association. Chinese officials are trying to forge bonds with local U.S. officials, “the kinds of connections that give Beijing leverage against an increasingly hostile government in Washington,” Kuo and Cadell write.

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: Snoop Dogg reversed himself from past criticism of Donald Trump. “I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump,” the rapper said in a new interview.

What the Right isn’t reading: A lawsuit from the voting technology company Smartmatic alleged that the conservative One America News may have violated federal and state data privacy laws.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Meet  Flagship  Asia  Morning, a new edition of our Flagship newsletter. Timed for the Asian morning and North American afternoon, the new edition’s mission remains the same — to keep readers informed without overwhelming them, ensuring they are aware of the world yet still able to go about their day — while offering a deeper look at the changes underway in the world’s most populous continent.

In an exclusive interview with Semafor on Feb. 5, Rep. Krishnamoorthi will explore the House Select Committee on China’s achievements and answer questions about key priorities such as addressing forced labor, protecting U.S. intellectual property, and examining the future of TikTok in the United States. Sign up here.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster and commentator. She is the founding partner of Echelon Insights.

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