Principals

1. Fourth House try on FISA
2. Kishida urges Ukraine support
3. Gallup polls Ukraine aid views
4. SEC climate fight
5. The “no landing” scenario
6. A vision of human-free war

PDB: Biden cancels more than $7 billion in student debt

Harris in Arizona … Trump and Johnson to meet at Mar-a-Lago… WSJ: Israel expects Iran attack in two days

After messy setbacks, the House gets closer on FISA

Speaker Mike Johnson finally looks like he might be on track to put a bill reauthorizing one of the government’s key spy tools on the House floor, Kadia Goba writes. The Rules Committee gave a thumbs up to legislation renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Thursday evening, after the measure was tweaked to only extend the government’s intel gathering powers for two years, instead of the original five. That gesture was meant to appease hardline conservatives who tanked the bill earlier this week, by ensuring they’ll have another chance to reform the law under avowed FISA foe Donald Trump if he wins back the White House. The bill now heads for a key procedural vote this morning, which will mark Johnson’s fourth attempt to bring FISA reauthorization to the floor. Not every Republican holdout is on board yet (Rep. Ralph Norman told Semafor was still a no.), but several said they’re now ready to advance it. One potential motivation: If the House fails to pass its own bill, it might end up getting jammed with a clean FISA reauthorization passed by the Senate.

US Ukraine support is ‘indispensable,’ Japanese PM says

Pass Ukraine aid: That was an overarching message of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s address to a joint session of Congress yesterday that emphasized the U.S. role abroad. Kishida forcefully made the case for international support for Kyiv against Russia’s “unprovoked, unjust, and brutal” invasion, while implying that if Washington wavers on Ukraine, China might interpret it as a green light to turn East Asia into the next war zone. “The leadership of the United States is indispensable,” he said. “Without U.S. support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow? Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?” Kishida won over the crowd with some warm recollections about his childhood in Queens, where his family rooted for the Mets and the Yankees, and ate hot dogs at Coney Island. And his lines about Ukraine received some standing ovations despite the fact the Republican party is fractured over the war. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has threatened a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson if he brings Ukraine aid to the floor, sat out of the applause. 

The US divide on Ukraine

To understand the impasse over Ukraine aid on Capitol Hill, look no further than the latest polling from Gallup.Thirty-six percent each say the U.S. is doing too little or too much to help Ukraine, while 30% say the U.S. is doing the right amount. The share who say the U.S. should do more is up from October, driven in an increase in those views among Democrats and independents. The poll was conducted soon after the Senate approved a multibillion dollar foreign aid package — including $60 billion for Ukraine — that has been sitting on the House side, where House Speaker Mike Johnson has been trying to figure out the path forward. Meanwhile, Americans by a slim margin prefer congressional Republicans’ response to the war over that of President Biden.

An oilman takes on SEC’s climate rule

House Republicans are drawing attention to a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would require publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. Testifying on behalf of industry opponents earlier this week before the House Financial Services Committee: Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, a relatively small — by oil standards — $3 billion company. He spoke to Semafor’s Liz Hoffman about his case against the rule, which he argues is too difficult and “subjective” to easily meet. “We don’t know exactly what fuel source our suppliers use, exactly what the combustion efficiency of this was,” he said. “You could have the tuning of an engine change and the emissions are different. It’s just a rat’s nest. That’s extra compliance costs and more opening for people to sue us.” The proposed rules have already been watered down after pushback from businesses, but SEC chair Gary Gensler insists some disclosures are necessary to provide information that “a reasonable investor finds significant.”

What if the economy doesn’t land?

The U.S. appeared to be on the verge of a rare economic “soft-landing” by the end of last year, as inflation fell while the job market stayed strong. Now, that outcome is very much in doubt. After three months of unexpectedly rapid consumer price increases, Wall Streeters and economists are starting to wonder whether we might instead be facing a “no landing” scenario — where growth chugs along, and inflation hovers above the Federal Reserve’s target. That situation “might feel pretty good to the typical American household,” Jeanna Smialek writes in The New York Times, but could force the central bank to keep interest rates higher for longer than it had planned (which would be a blow to investors). And as The Wall Street Journal’s resident Fed whisperer Nick Timaraos reports, stubborn inflation “could scrap the case for cuts altogether” this year.

US vision of human-free warfare

Northrop Grumman unveiled an unmanned submarine capable of long-range, silent, undersea missions. The Manta Ray, which takes design ideas from its namesake, is designed to be low-energy, able to hibernate anchored to the sea bed for long periods before “delivering payload capability from the sea.” The U.S. is increasingly investing in a human-free vision of warfare: The air force secretary is soon set to fly in a modified F-16 piloted by artificial intelligence, a high-profile test of its capabilities. Washington plans to retrofit older aircraft such as the F-16 as unmanned drones, with several acting as “loyal wingmen” to a single piloted jet, each costing a quarter to a third of a new F-35 and not having a valuable pilot to lose.

— Tom Chivers

We’ve got some exciting additions to the list of speakers at the World Economy Summit, including Jeremy Hunt, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer; Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Join us in Washington, D.C. next week, on April 17-18, to hear from some of the world’s most influential economic and business decision-makers on the future of global economic growth, the rising middle class, digital infrastructure, AI, and much more. RSVP for the World Economy Summit here.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Senior GOP aides have been “been stunned by the lack of progress internally” on Ukraine aid and it’s unclear whether Speaker Mike Johnson will unveil his proposal next week.

Playbook: Vice President Harris will blame Donald Trump for causing a “health care crisis” over abortion during her speech in Arizona today. “We all must understand who is to blame. It is the former president, Donald Trump. It is Donald Trump who, during his campaign in 2016, said women should be punished for seeking an abortion,” she will say.

The Early 202: Trump’s ideal vice presidential pick is attractive, good on TV, Black or female, “and they are most certainly not taller than Trump himself.”

Axios: The Democratic National Committee paid $1.5 million in legal bills for President Biden during the special counsel investigation of his handling of classified documents last year.

White House

• President Biden will give virtual remarks at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention this after.
• Vice President Harris will spend the day in Tucson, Ariz., where she’ll give a speech on abortion rights following the state Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the enforcement of an 1864 abortion ban.
• Biden is canceling another $7.4 billion in student debt for more than a quarter million Americans under his administration’s SAVE program.
• Biden said the U.S. commitment to the defense of the Philippines and Japan is “ironclad” following a first-ever trilateral meeting between the leaders of the three countries. The three leaders also expressed “serious concerns” over China’s “dangerous and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.”

• The White House is practically daring courts to block recent executive actions on gun control, student debt, and possibly the border. – Axios
• The administration has yet to bring back a fair housing rule Trump rescinded in 2020 and HuffPost quotes an anonymous senior official complaining the delay is due to fear of conservative backlash.

Congress

• Republicans want to talk about House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul’s Afghanistan investigation, seeing it as more effective than other probes. — Axios
• Speaker Mike Johnson raised more than $20 million during the first quarter of 2024. While not a bad total, it’s still short of the $35 million Kevin McCarthy raised over the same period in 2023. — Politico
• House Democrats have launched a widespread whip operation to persuade progressive stragglers to back a discharge petition to force a vote on the Senate aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. – Axios
• A group of 43 Senate Republicans wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanding he hold an impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (six Republicans didn’t sign on).
• The Senate passed a resolution calling for the release of Ryan Corbett, an American detained by the Taliban.
• The House’s bipartisan artificial intelligence task force will hold its third meeting today to discuss President Biden’s AI executive order, the administration’s “AI Bill of Rights,” and risk management framework from the National Institute of Standards Technology.

Outside the Beltway

The longest-serving justice on Wisconsin’s state supreme court is retiring, teeing up another battle over the makeup of the court two years after it tilted liberal.

Economy

The Fed might be rethinking its interest rate cuts. But over in Europe, monetary policymakers are signaling they’ll be ready to lower rates by June to help the EU’s struggling economy. — WSJ

Courts

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s trial is set for May 6, while his wife’s trial will be pushed to July 8 as she undergoes surgery.

Polls

On the Trail

• The Biden campaign plans to attack Donald Trump on abortion with ads featuring testimony from “ordinary American women who have suffered from restrictions” on the procedure — Politico
• Trump, meanwhile, “is considering naming a former rodeo cowboy turned bomb-throwing Texas agriculture commissioner to lead the Agriculture Department if he wins the White House.” — Politico
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign manager says New York campaign staff member Rita Palma has been fired after telling Republican voters in a meeting last week that stopping President Biden’s re-election was her “number one priority” and urged them to volunteer for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania.

National Security

• An Afghan migrant on the terrorist watchlist was released by the Border Patrol last year and spent almost a year in the U.S. He was apparently taken into U.S. custody again on Thursday. — NBC
• The Treasury Department updated authorities for CFIUS, the government body that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for potential national security concerns.

Foreign Policy

• Famine is already occurring in parts of Gaza, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power told Congress.
• European diplomats in Washington are reaching out to allies of Donald Trump, in preparation for his possible return to the White House. — CNN
• Ukraine’s parliament approved a new controversial law that Kyiv hopes will make it easier to mobilize forces during a critical shortage of manpower.
• Meanwhile, Russia has filled its gaps more quickly than expected, the top U.S. commander in Europe told lawmakers, and its army is actually larger now than it was at the start of the Ukraine invasion.
• The Biden administration is becoming increasingly frustrated with House Republicans for their delay in passing aid and European allies over their hesitation to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine. — Bloomberg

Media

Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader, wrote a memoir called “Patriot” while in prison that will be released in October. — NYT

Big Read

The New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik looks at how the late O.J. Simpson’s rise and fall played out as popular entertainment: “The trial was all TV. It was every kind of TV. It was a soap opera. It was a legal thriller. It was an interactive whodunit before the age of murder podcasts. It was a social drama that exposed racial chasms and the flaws of the legal system. It was a dark comedy with buffoons, villains and comic-relief figures. It was a tragedy too, of course, and viewers could not agree which part of it was a tragedy, and that too was the tragedy.”

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: Latino Americans are more supportive of building a wall at the U.S. southern border than they were in 2021, according to an Axios-Ipsos Latino poll.

What the Right isn’t reading: Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the Gerald Ford foundation board after former Rep. Liz Cheney was passed over for its annual award.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Xavier Becerra is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is among the speakers at Semafor’s World Economy Summit next week and will appear on April 18. Sign up here.

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