Principals

1. TikTok lobbying war
2. Biden’s post-SOTU blitz
3. Katie Britt’s rough weekend
4. Biden vs. Bibi
5. Biden releases budget
6. Americans feel disliked

PDB: Poll: 44% found Biden’s State of the Union “better than they expected”

Biden to New Hampshire … “Oppenheimer” wins Best Picture … Director Jonathan Glazer speaks out on Israel-Gaza conflict

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

The TikTok battle heats up

With a looming House vote on a bill to force ByteDance to sell Tiktok or face a ban, the pressure campaign is getting intense. One lawmaker told Semafor they’d been personally threatened that a “yes” vote could result in political retaliation: “They said that it would be bad for your future — you will get millions of dollars dropped on your head.” Republican leadership announced Sunday that they planned to move forward with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act later this week. In doing so, they shrugged off not only a flood of calls from TikTok users, but surprise opposition from Donald Trump, whose inner circle is increasingly intertwined with TikTok. Republican donor Jeff Yass, a major ByteDance investor who Trump has warmed to recently, is calling up members to lobby them against the bill, the New York Post reported (Yass denied the claim). Trump’s longtime advisor Kellyanne Conway is also being paid by Club For Growth to assuage lawmaker concerns about the app, Politico scooped over the weekend. House Democrats haven’t officially endorsed the bill yet as they wait to see if Republicans waver. But there are some progressive dissenters: Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. told Semafor that “scapegoating TikTok without talking about all of social media is problematic.”

— Kadia Goba

Biden steadies the ship

President Biden spent the weekend looking to build off the momentum from his State of the Union. He hit the trail; his campaign released a new ad directly addressing his age concerns; and his finance team announced raising $10 million in the 24 hours after his speech. There’s a long road ahead, but Biden appears to have calmed his most panicked supporters for now: New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who called on him to drop out last month, sounded encouraged. But Republicans are hoping they can pull attention back to the border. Biden apologized on Saturday for using the term “illegal” to refer to Laken Riley’s killer in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capeheart, drawing attacks from Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Katie Britt rebuts her rebuttal’s critics

The fallout from Sen. Katie Britt’s, R-Ala. widely panned State of the Union response continued over the weekend. On Sunday, she faced questions about a lurid sex trafficking anecdote she recounted after the journalist Jonathan Katz traced its timing to the George W. Bush administration and found it actually transpired in Mexico. Britt said on “Fox News Sunday” that she was not trying to imply the specific incident happened under Biden’s watch. “This is a story of what is happening now at an astronomical rate, and we have to bring attention to it,” she said. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah stepped in to defend her speaking style — which was parodied on SNL by Scarlett Johansson — and even touted her as the politician “who liberals most fear as VP nominee.” It may not be the most helpful endorsement, given skepticism on the right about her MAGA credentials.

Biden and Netanyahu clash as ceasefire talks fall short

The tensions between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spilled out into the open this weekend, as talks on a ceasefire in Gaza failed to pan out before the start of Ramadan. Speaking to MSNBC Saturday, Biden said he believed Netanyahu’s conduct in the war was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel,” and called a potential military operation in the city of Rafah “a red line.” There “cannot be 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” he added. Netanyahu waved those warnings away in a Sunday interview with Axel Springer, saying his only personal “red line is that October 7 doesn’t happen again.” The White House has recently been signaling a desire to sideline Netanyahu. After Thursday’s State of the Union, in which Biden pointedly criticized Israel, he was caught on a hot mic saying he’d told the prime minister they were about to have a “come to Jesus meeting.” Still, the biggest stumbling block to a near-term ceasefire appears to be Hamas; its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a speech Sunday that the group wanted a permanent truce, rather than the 6-week pause on the table.

It’s White House budget day

We’ll be honest: The annual White House budget is not usually essential reading. It’s mostly a messaging exercise with contents that are quickly forgotten. But we’d argue the stakes are a little bit higher with the 2025 budget President Biden is rolling out today, since he’s using it to detail the economic agenda on which he’ll be campaigning for reelection. He already offered a teaser during the State of the Union: It looks to cut the deficit by $3 trillion over a decade by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, including a new 25% minimum tax on billionaires’ incomes. It would also cut taxes on parents and middle-class families while taking steps aimed at lowering some living costs. One big takeaway: The administration is sticking with the formula it leaned on with the Inflation Reduction Act — making sure any new spending is balanced out with big enough tax increases to reduce the deficit. Fiscal prudence is in.

Americans feel less admired by the world

Americans are feeling less loved around the globe: In Gallup’s latest survey out this morning, just 42% say the country is viewed very or somewhat favorably “in the eyes of the world.” That’s down 7 percentage points from last year, and tied with the low from 2017. As is often the case, the answers to this question were sharply polarized by party: 65% of Democrats believe the U.S. is viewed favorably under Biden, versus 17% of Republicans and 41% of independents. They also didn’t necessarily track with global reality: In June, Pew found that out of 23 countries it surveyed, the majority of people had a positive view of the U.S. in all but one case. (That outlier was Hungary). Other countries were slightly more likely to have a net-negative view of the U.S. under Donald Trump.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Donald Trump’s opposition to the TikTok bill is a “big headache” for House Republican leadership — and some of them are working to get Trump’s allies, particularly those focused on national security, to lobby the former president on the bill.

Playbook: Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa is running for conference chair, the No. 3 position in leadership, against Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

The Early 202: Although the presidential race might get the most attention, the battle for control in state legislatures — especially in battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan — have the potential to be just as important.

White House

President Biden will deliver a speech to the National League of Cities in Washington D.C. He’ll then head to New Hampshire for a campaign event, where he’s expected to attack Republicans on health care.

Congress

• Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. said intelligence officials should “dumb down” the national security briefings Trump is set to receive as nominee in order to protect classified information.
• Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. accused ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos of “trying to shame me as a rape victim” after he asked how she could support Trump given a jury found him liable for sexual assault.

Outside the Beltway

Trump supporters say they have enough signatures to advance a recall campaign against Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. — Politico

Economy

• No, it’s not just Nvidia: The current stock market rally is being driven by a broad cross-section of companies that are riding the strong economy, rather than big tech firms alone. — WSJ
• Walmart is working on using generative AI to help users shop online. — CNBC
• The New York Times digs into Elon Musk’s “haphazard and largely self-serving” charitable foundation.

Polls

Among Americans who saw or heard about President Biden’s State of the Union, 44% found it “better than they expected” and 18% said it was “worse than expected,” an ABC/Ipsos poll found.

On the Trail

• After Trump-aligned candidates scored big wins in recent primaries, Semafor’s David Weigel writes that Democrats see President Biden’s State of the Union message as a winning playbook for downballot races as well.
• The Biden campaign is launching a new youth vote push, headlined by a “Students for Biden-Harris” group. — NPR

National Security

Ukraine could have 12 pilots ready to fly F-16 fighter jets by this summer, but as few as six of the planes may have been delivered by then. — NYT

Foreign Policy

• The nationalist Chega party was the big winner in Portugal’s legislative elections on Sunday.
• Ukraine is not happy about Pope Francis calling on leaders to show “the courage of the white flag” in peace negotiations. — BBC
• The Academy Awards’ “In Memoriam” tribute began with footage of Alexei Navalny, who was featured in last year’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Navalny.”

Media

• Cord Jefferson, who was well-known in D.C. as a blogger before his star screenwriting turn, won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “American Fiction.”
• Jimmy Kimmel read Trump’s Truth Social review of his Oscars hosting performance from the stage. “Thank you for watching. I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?” he quipped.

Big Read

The House member who waits hours for a moment with the president at their State of the Union is a time-honored position. In the Washington Post, Paul Kane profiles Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., who has been carrying the tradition by scoring an aisle seat to lobby Biden on highly specific constituent issues. This year’s ask: Speed up timber permits. “We gotta cut some trees,” LaMalfa told Biden. He already has meetings set up with White House and Interior officials to discuss it.

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 Texas judge rejected an attempt by the Biden administration to divert funding from a border wall.

What the Right isn’t reading: States with abortion bans are taking steps to clarify their exceptions, but largely avoiding tweaks to the law in response to complaints from doctors and patients.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Jimmy Gomez is a Democratic congressman from California.

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