Principals

1. Trump tariff backlash
2. Dems win in Wisconsin
3. Republicans punt priorities
4. Dems make case on taxes
5. Bipartisan pressure on Houthi strikes
6. Musk exit ramp?
7. Rahm to Wall Street
8. House panel stablecoin vote

PDB: Trump meets group of Senate Republicans today

Tesla to report first-quarter sales … CBS: Trump weighs final TikTok deal … WaPo: White House studies cost of Greenland takeover

Trump faces tariff rebellion

President Donald Trump will lay out his plans for dramatically reshaping US trade policy today — and he’s facing backlash at home and abroad. The “Liberation Day” levies will strain the US’ relations with its closest allies and largest trading partners, and will put Trump on difficult footing with US businesses and with Wall Street, though the White House at least yielded to investors’ pleas that he hold the announcement after markets close. The administration maintains they’re having the desired effect: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately told House Republicans that officials are already hearing from countries willing to cull their own tariffs. In the Senate, Tim Kaine’s resolution trying to stop the national emergency declaration underpinning Canadian tariffs will likely get a vote today — and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., expects at least four Republicans to support it. (Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she’s inclined to.)

— Morgan Chalfant, Eleanor Mueller, and Burgess Everett

Dems’ anti-Musk campaign pays off in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Democrats retained the state supreme court’s 4-3 liberal majority on Tuesday, a defeat for Elon Musk and conservatives, who’d tried to rally the MAGA base with heavy spending and cash giveaways. Judge Susan Crawford won the court’s open seat after the most expensive election of its kind in history. Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin told Semafor that the election showed the “power of the people to take on billionaires — and win.” Meanwhile, Republicans triumphed in two Florida congressional elections, bringing their numbers in the House to 220. Still, they won by smaller margins than Trump did in both districts last year. Democrat Josh Weil, who ran against GOP state Sen. Randy Fine in Florida’s 6th district, called his loss a “warning sign to Donald Trump, Randy Fine, and the unelected oligarchs taking apart the government.”

— David Weigel

House chaos postpones GOP policy action

Several Republican policy goals will wait until next week, after nine GOP lawmakers allied with House Democrats to bring down a rule for voting on them. Among the now-postponed bills: one on voter ID requirements and another that would end nationwide injunctions by district judges — a response to federal rulings that have impeded Trump’s agenda. Also delayed are two proposed reversals of Biden-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules. It’s unclear whether those bills will still be caught up in the intraparty fight that prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson to end the workweek early. He suffered a defeat orchestrated by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., over her push to reintroduce proxy voting for new parents. Over in the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he’ll look at a similar (but not identical) injunctions bill from Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

— Kadia Goba, Eleanor Mueller and Burgess Everett

Tax cut fight reaches fever pitch

A bipartisan meeting with the Senate parliamentarian over whether the GOP can use a “current policy baseline” to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent was abruptly canceled on Tuesday, Democrats said. That’s in part because Thune believes “the law is very clear” that the Senate Budget Committee chair can set the policy baseline for a budget resolution — and a Republican source said no such bipartisan meeting is needed or was ever scheduled. That GOP strategy might just avoid an imminent parliamentary ruling ahead of a budget vote, which is still slated to see action later this week. Democrats are making the argument that Republicans can’t wave away growing deficits from extending the expiring tax cuts; the budget panel’s top Democrat, Jeff Merkley, called it “absolutely inappropriate under the law” in an interview on Tuesday.

— Burgess Everett

Senators warn Trump over Houthi strikes

The White House dismissed a warning from a bipartisan group of senators that recent strikes on the Houthis in Yemen could embolden the Iran-backed group. In a letter first reported by Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant, Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote that similar military campaigns “only served to embolden the Houthis and rally their recruiting base” and demanded the administration “explain to Congress and the American people its expected path forward given the failure of previous such efforts and statements” about potential military action against Iran. They also suggested that Trump flouted the law regarding congressional oversight of military operations with the strikes (yes, those strikes). But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the operation as “incredibly successful” and insisted that Trump is “well within his authority,” describing the strikes as “defensive.”

White House signals no deadline for Musk’s DOGE departure

Elon Musk recently hinted at a timeline for his departure from the Trump administration, but the White House is keeping things more fluid: Musk, a key player in the Department of Government Efficiency, told Fox News’ Bret Baier last week that he thinks DOGE will have “accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by” his goal of $1 trillion by the end of May — a timeline that would mark the end of the 130 days he’s allowed to work as a designated “special government employee.” But inside the administration, there doesn’t seem to be any formal plans for the expiration of Musk’s status yet, and many aren’t looking that far ahead. One official told Semafor there’s no set timeline for Musk to leave, though Trump himself said Monday that “at some point” Musk — who owns Tesla, X, and SpaceX — will return to his companies.

— Shelby Talcott

Rahm Emanuel rejoins investment bank

Rahm Emanuel has found his landing spot, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman reports. The veteran Democrat and former US ambassador to Japan is rejoining the investment bank Centerview Partners, where he worked from 2019 to 2021, counseling CEOs on mergers, regulation, and political matters. It’s a logical place for Emanuel as he weighs a potential 2028 White House bid. The investment bank is home to heavyweight Democratic fundraisers, including co-founder Blair Effron, and has a client list whose CEOs would be valuable allies in a centrist run. “I’m not done with public service, and I hope public service isn’t done with me,” Emanuel told Liz. He joins the likes of Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff, whom Centerview brought on last month.

House Dems weigh stablecoin bill support

A House Financial Services Committee vote today on a bill that would create rules for stablecoins — a type of cryptocurrency pegged to assets like the dollar — will serve as a key test of Republicans’ effort to build bipartisan support for digital assets legislation in the face of concerns over the Trump family’s crypto ventures. After ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., backed out of talks following the Trumps’ decision to issue their own stablecoin, chair French Hill, R-Ark., acknowledged the announcement had “made our work more complicated.” But he insisted Waters’ opposition didn’t “have anything … to do with the text of the bill.” So far, key committee Democrats seem to agree. Lobbyists expect as many as eight Democrats to vote “yes” — including Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who told Semafor there are “still a few T’s to cross,” but he’s “pretty happy with what I see.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Blindspot: Guns and museums

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: A staffer for Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was arrested for carrying a pistol on Capitol grounds, NOTUS reported.

What the Right isn’t reading: The little-known federal agency responsible for awarding grants to museums and libraries put its entire staff on leave.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Republican leaders are looking at giving the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee each roughly a $1.5 trillion ceiling for spending on the compromise budget resolution they’re hammering out, which would hand them a “good amount of room to work with in order to cut taxes.”

Playbook: Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is hoping President Trump plans to use tariffs as a cudgel to get other nations to pull back their own. “In the long run, [it] will probably work,” he said. “The problem is that in the long run, we’re all dead. And so the short run matters.”

WaPo: Privately, House Republicans say they’re “nervous about the lasting repercussions if Trump keeps the tariffs in place for longer than a month.”

White House

• President Trump meets a group of Senate Republicans today ahead of potential votes on the Senate budget resolution and his agenda, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and members of the Senate Budget Committee.
• The law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where former second gentleman Doug Emhoff is a partner, cut a deal with Trump to ward off the kinds of punishment he’s dealt to other firms.

Congress

• Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., broke the record for the longest Senate floor speech on Tuesday, lasting for more than 25 hours. His secret for staying on the floor so long: He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since Sunday.
• Republicans are quietly working on a measure to increase the state and local tax deduction to as much as $25,000 per person. — Bloomberg

Outside the Beltway

• Mallory McMorrow is running for US Senate in Michigan.
• Princeton is the latest Ivy League university to be targeted by the Trump administration.

Economy

• The number of job openings fell slightly in February, a sign of a slowing — but healthy — job market.
• Tariff anxieties are driving gold prices to record highs.

Courts

• Attorney General Pam Bondi said federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.
• A federal judge in Maryland ruled that the Trump administration improperly fired thousands of probationary federal workers, and a California judge found the administration had wrongly terminated a contract to provide undocumented children with legal aid.

National Security

• During his confirmation hearing, President Trump’s nominee for Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, disputed the president’s account of him wearing a MAGA hat when the two met in Iraq in 2018. He also criticized the use of Signal by top Trump administration officials to discuss Houthi attack plans.
• Members of the White House National Security Council, including Mike Waltz, used Gmail for official communications. — WaPo

Foreign Policy

• The office of the US Trade Representative is arguing that a Canadian law making French the official language of Quebec counts as an unfair trade barrier. — CTV
• The former president of Costa Rica said the US government had revoked his visa after he criticized President Trump.

Health

• The Trump administration began widespread layoffs at federal health agencies.

Technology

• Mark Zuckerberg wants help from Trump administration officials in fighting back against forthcoming EU ruling that’s expected to undercut Meta’s ad business. — WSJ
• Meta’s head of AI research is stepping down next month.

Media

• The White House’s first ever “Podcast Row” is being billed as a success by the administration: A White House official told Semafor’s Shelby Talcott the 30+ interviews of various aides and officials, conducted over the course of two hours, have so far garnered almost 10 million views.
• Some Trump-friendly media personalities, like Joe Rogan, are increasingly critical of his immigration policy. — NYT

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

And Graph Massara, copy editor

Contact our reporters:

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

Brittany Pettersen is a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado.