Principals

1. GOP on the clock
2. Sanders’ Social Security play
3. Trump’s new DOGE order
4. DOGE in Virginia
5. Starmer visits Trump
6. Venezuela crackdown
7. Economic picks face grilling
8. Dem’s new housing push

PDB: Nvidia earnings

Senate panel to vote on Trump labor nominee … Last-minute SCOTUS stay keeps USAID funds frozen ... Bloomberg: More US-Russia talks

Republicans’ tough decisions multiply

The House’s surprise budget breakthrough is scrambling Republican leaders’ decision tree heading into a pivotal few weeks, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Eleanor Mueller report. There are big questions to be resolved on how to make President Trump’s tax cuts permanent, whether to keep the debt ceiling in the budget plan, and how to navigate the Trump administration’s call for more border funding without the Senate’s skinny reconciliation bill. Those battles are just starting to play out — and there’s a more urgent task at hand: avoiding a shutdown. “We’ve got to deal with the March 14 deadline first and then we’ve got to get work on the bigger project, the budget resolution and reconciliation,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He and Speaker Mike Johnson met with top spending chiefs on Wednesday, but they’ve had no breakthrough yet.

Sanders to needle Republicans on Social Security

All the talk about entitlements will bring Sen. Bernie Sanders to the floor on Thursday to poke Republicans over Social Security. The Vermont independent will reintroduce the Social Security Expansion Act on Thursday, we’re told, and then ask for unanimous consent to pass the bill on the Senate floor (a Republican will certainly object). It’s a clear dig at President Trump’s pledges to protect the program — and a bid to put Republicans on the defensive. The bill, cosponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., increases yearly benefits by $2,400 by applying the payroll tax to income over $250,000. “Our job is not to cut Social Security as many of our Republican colleagues want to do,” Sanders told Semafor. “Our job is to expand Social Security so that every senior in America can retire with the dignity that they deserve.”

— Burgess Everett

Trump signs cost-cutting directive

Trump signed an executive order that gives new cost-cutting instructions to federal agencies as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s work. The directive, first reported by Semafor’s Shelby Talcott, tells agencies to justify and publicly release government payments and travel expenses and orders the General Services Administration to develop a plan for offloading “unnecessary” government real estate. And it directs agency heads to work with DOGE to end excess contracts, though it wasn’t immediately clear what criteria officials would follow to single out contracts to cut. The administration also took a new step toward significantly downsizing the federal workforce by ordering agencies to develop plans for eliminating positions by Mar. 13.

DOGE on the ballot in VA gov race

Trump’s DOGE-led purge of the federal workforce is on the ballot in Virginia, handing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger an attack line against her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. In an interview with Semafor’s David Weigel, Spanberger said her campaign is getting an earful from worried government employees and the business owners who serve them. “I had a woman who owns a tattoo parlor and piercing shop in Virginia Beach come to me with concerns about the impact on her, because of the threats of these firings on her customers,” she said. Term-limited GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this week announced an online portal that could help the commonwealth’s 144,000-odd federal workers find new employment, a response Spanberger criticized as “out of touch.” The Virginia race is one of two gubernatorial contests poised to become political bellwethers this year.

Starmer visit tests ‘special relationship’

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will pitch Trump today on a European peacekeeping proposal that involves using the US as a “backstop” to secure Ukraine post-war. “We get it, that this needs to be a European endeavor,” a British official said, “but we know that European defense and defense of Ukraine will depend in some part on the United States.” Starmer is the second of three European leaders to visit the White House this week, and his meeting comes on the heels of a new UK pledge to significantly boost defense spending. Starmer also hopes to maintain the “special relationship” by increasing defense and economic ties; he’ll propose a new partnership on advanced technology, the British official said. Starmer may have better luck courting Trump than other European leaders, after Trump decried the EU as “formed to screw the United States.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Trump cracks down on Venezuela

The Trump administration is reversing Chevron’s Biden-era license to export Venezuela oil, the US president announced Wednesday. Trump cited the country’s “electoral conditions” as one reason for the decision, adding that the regime hasn’t taken back “violent criminals” at a fast enough pace. Ric Grenell, Trump’s special envoy, sparked confusion over the weekend regarding US policy towards Venezuela by saying Trump “doesn’t want to do regime change.” But press secretary Karoline Leavitt later told Semafor that Trump “stands in opposition to the Maduro regime” and pointed to comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who at the start of Trump’s presidency held a call with “Venezuela’s rightful president,” 2024 candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, and opposition leader María Corina Machado. Machado praised Trump’s Chevron move during a podcast episode with Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday, saying it sends “a clear, firm message that Maduro is in huge trouble.”

— Shelby Talcott

Democrats resist nominee blitz with close hold

Senate Banking Committee Democrats are revealing as little as possible about plans to grill Trump’s picks for top economic jobs as they look to push back on Chair Tim Scott’s decision to schedule nominees to the Council of Economic Advisers, Federal Housing Finance Agency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Commerce Department for the same hearing Thursday. “We have four nominees and five minutes; that’s one minute and 15 seconds per nominee,” ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told Semafor. “It’ll be pretty tough to get the kind of accountability [needed] from each of them.” Her strategy? “I’m not going to talk about it,” Warren said (though one recent letter provides some clues). A spokesperson for Scott pointed out that previous Democratic chairs did the same: “Scott looks forward to continuing this practice and moving quickly to get President Trump’s team in place.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Senate Dem wants to kick private equity out of housing

The top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, plans to introduce a new bill today that would make it harder for hedge funds to purchase single-family homes by hiking taxes. The rollout comes as plummeting housing affordability ratchets up pressure on Congress to finally coalesce around a legislative solution. Merkley’s solution: “Let’s kick hedge funds to the curb,” he told Semafor. “The HOPE for Homeownership Act fights back against billionaire corporations controlling the single-family housing market.” He’s eyeing multiple avenues for enactment — including reconciliation, the wonky budget process Republicans will use to push through their more partisan priorities using only a simple majority, in hopes that some on the right will like his idea. Merkley offered a related amendment to the Senate’s budget proposal earlier this month that drew the support of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

— Eleanor Mueller

Blindspot: Bills and loans

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: Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., said he is drafting legislation to get President Trump’s face on a new $250 bill.

What the Right isn’t reading: Elon Musk’s businesses have received upwards of $38 billion in government funding through loans, contracts, subsidies, and credits, The Washington Post reported.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: A bipartisan group of senators is introducing a bill to ban China’s DeepSeek on government devices, a companion to a House measure.

Playbook: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer might get a positive reception from President Trump today, but that doesn’t mean the warm and fuzzy feelings will last. “The lesson for the U.K. and other countries? The wins rarely last, ” said former British embassy spokesperson Andrew Overton. “Your stock with Trump rises and falls with the latest news cycle. And his core beliefs stay the same: allies are ripping off the U.S. on trade and they are not paying their fair share on defense.”

WaPo: New York is weathering a chaotic political moment.

Axios: Jeff Bezos urged Trump to choose Doug Burgum as his running mate in a phone call last summer.

White House

• President Trump signaled he would delay tariffs on Canada and Mexico, after saying earlier they would move forward as planned next month.

Congress

• The Senate confirmed Jamieson Greer to be US Trade Representative. Five Democrats voted in favor of him, while Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against him. Today, the chamber will vote on advancing President Trump’s education secretary pick, Linda McMahon.

Outside the Beltway

• Tim Walz isn’t running for US Senate in Minnesota.
• Allies of Andrew Cuomo launched a super PAC as he gears up for a New York City mayoral campaign.

Economy

• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins laid out a plan to lower egg prices that includes potentially increasing egg imports. — WSJ

Courts

• The Supreme Court signaled it will make it easier to file “reverse discrimination” lawsuits.
• Three of President Trump’s Justice Department picks were pressed on whether they should be able to ignore court orders, prompting a fiery exchange between Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Josh Hawley, R.-Mo.

National Security

• The Pentagon revealed more details of its new restrictions on transgender troops in the military, saying in a court filing that transgender individuals cannot serve unless they meet a particular warfighting need.

Foreign Policy

• Democracy is receding around the world, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Health

• An unvaccinated child died of measles in Texas, the first known death connected to the outbreak in the state. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his department was following the outbreak but brushed it off as “not unusual.”
• The Trump administration is reconsidering a $590 million contract with Moderna for bird flu shots. — Bloomberg

Technology

• Nvidia’s earnings surged at the end of last year, beating analysts’ expectations but failing to match previous blowout results. The company also described “amazing” demand for its new Blackwell chip, which has faced issues in the past.

Media

• The White House prevented reporters from the AP, Reuters, and German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel from covering President Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, and kicked liberal outlet HuffPost out of the print pool rotation.
• The Washington Post’s top opinion editor David Shipley resigned after Jeff Bezos announced plans for the section to promote “personal liberties and free markets.”

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Semafor texted Will Lewis, the CEO of the Washington Post, about our summit this afternoon on restoring trust in the news. He has not replied as of press time, but we hope he’ll at least drop by the reception.