Principals

☞ White House: Biden plans to announce he is expanding access to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to DACA recipients, according to the AP. Vice President Harris and other administration officials will announce a combined $300 million in grants for bridge projects through the bipartisan infrastructure law today, including funding to repair the 14th St. bridge here in D.C.

☞ Senate: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and four other Democratic senators pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland to “use all available legal authorities” to investigate Tennessee Republicans’ expulsion of two Democratic lawmakers over a gun control protest to determine whether their constitutional rights were violated.

☞ House: Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio subpoenaed the Federal Trade Commission to turn over documents regarding an investigation into Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans preserved access to the abortion drug mifepristone, putting on pause a ruling from a judge that reversed the FDA’s decades-old approval of the pill. At the same time, the panel narrowed the time period of pregnancy during which the pill can be recommended and blocked it from being sent through the mail, overturning changes made since 2016. The 2-1 decision was backed by two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump. The case will likely end up being resolved at the Supreme Court.

The man believed to be responsible for leaking a trove of sensitive Pentagon documents to a Discord server told his acquaintances on the platform that he worked on a military base, according to the Washington Post. Members of the group, which was formed in the throes of the pandemic as a small “invitation-only clubhouse” for gun and military enthusiasts, also apparently called the person “OG.”

In Trump news: Federal investigators exploring the former President’s handling of classified information are looking into whether he showed a map to people that he apparently took from the White House after leaving office, the New York Times reports. The special counsel is also subpoenaing documents and testimony about Trump’s fundraising operation in the run-up to January 6, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Trump filed a $500 million lawsuit against his former attorney turned ubiquitous critic Michael Cohen, accusing him of breaching attorney-client privilege and a confidentiality agreement. Cohen is expected to be a key witness in the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Trump.

Democrat Justin Pearson has also been reinstated in the Tennessee House after Republicans voted to expel him for leading a gun control protest on the chamber floor. The Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to send Pearson back. The rules still call for elections to be held for Pearson’s seat and that of Justin Jones, who was similarly reinstated earlier this week.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. traveled to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and they brought along a special guest: country singer Brad Paisley. Paisley, a West Virginia native, sang the state’s official song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” in the streets of Kyiv. Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova underscored the importance of U.S. lawmakers traveling to Ukraine during her appearance at Semafor’s World Economy Summit. “It’s something that Ukrainian people value a lot,” she said, noting that it adds to the  “strategic friendship” between the U.S. and Ukraine.

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: House Republican leadership has started to “informally” assemble a package that would lift the debt limit until May 2024 and accomplish their goal of returning to fiscal year 2022 discretionary spending levels. According to Punchbowl, Republicans want to limit budget growth to 1% yearly over the next decade.

Playbook: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal today and will talk about the importance of economic assistance for Ukraine. She’ll say that the support is “an investment in democracy and global security” that comes with “important safeguards,” according to Politico.

The Early 202: Bill Barr is taking a job at a new trade group, the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, where he is expected to lead efforts to fight Biden administration regulations through lawsuits.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein tries to buy more time

Facing public calls from fellow Democrats to resign, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. moved to defuse growing criticism about her extended health absence from the Senate on Wednesday, vowing to return to the chamber “as soon as possible.” In the meantime, she asked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to try to replace her on the Judiciary Committee.

The 89-year-old Feinstein has been out since mid-February after being diagnosed with shingles, leaving President Biden’s judicial nominations stalled without her tiebreaking committee vote. As a Trump-appointed judge threatened to block access to abortion pills nationwide, a flurry of news stories popped up in recent days featuring Democratic grumblings about Feinstein’s extended leave and questioning when — and whether — she’d be able to return.

Those tensions broke into the open on Wednesday afternoon, when Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. called on Feinstein to resign from her position and allow Governor Gavin Newsom to appoint a replacement.

“We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people,” Khanna tweeted. Another Democratic House lawmaker, Minnesota’s Dean Phillips, said he agreed.

Other Democrats wouldn’t go as far, but said the senator should share more information about her plans.

“We obviously need to get our senators back to Washington and voting in committee so that we can clear this backlog of nominations and pass bills,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif. told Semafor. “That’s very important and even urgent right now. But before I would jump to something extreme like calling for Sen. Feinstein’s resignation I would want to give her the chance to tell us when she can get back to work.”

In her statement on Wednesday, Feinstein asked Schumer to tap a Democrat to stand in for her on the Judiciary Committee so it could advance President Biden’s judicial nominations. But it may not be so simple under Senate rules, which would require cooperation from Republicans.

“Per Sen. Feinstein’s wishes, Majority Leader Schumer will ask the Senate next week to allow another Democratic Senator to temporarily serve on the Judiciary Committee,” a Schumer spokesperson said late Wednesday.

Feinstein has already announced she will not seek reelection in 2024, which came after a similar campaign of colleagues expressing concerns in the press about her ability to perform day-to-day tasks. Before that, she surrendered her Judiciary Committee chairmanship after yet another series of stories about frustration with her performance in confirmation hearings.

A spokesperson for Rep. Adam Schiff, who is a candidate to succeed Feinstein in the Senate, said he wishes Feinstein a “speedy recovery” and that Schiff and Feinstein “both strongly believe the work of confirming judges is paramount, and he knows she’ll do everything to get back as soon as possible.”

In her statement later Wednesday, Feinstein said she intends “to return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it’s safe for me to travel” without offering a specific timetable. She said she originally planned to return in late March but that her return was “delayed due to continued complications related to my diagnosis.”

— Morgan Chalfant and Kadia Goba

Highlights from Semafor’s World Economy Summit

Semafor’s inaugural World Economy Summit brought together top White House officials with foreign officials and executives for a day of discussion about the day’s headlines and the globe’s future amid an intensifying U.S.-China rivalry. There was news. There was sparring. There were zingers. Here are some of the highlights.

White House National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard

Brainard dismissed concerns that the financial system might suffer more shocks following the collapse of two large regional U.S. banks.

“I think the banking system is very sound,” Brainard said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday. “It’s stable.”

Brainard cast blame on Silicon Valley Bank and New York Signature Bank for taking “unacceptable risks” with their balance sheets. But she declined to speculate whether more banks were at risk of collapse later this year.

She said that after taking “very targeted actions” against the collapsed banks, the government is studying other options to insure that depositors at all levels have their assets protected should another bank collapse in the future.

“I think we do have the same playbook that works very well, but it is relevant for banks that fail,” she said, adding that regulators are studying if deposit insurance should be changed.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss and Robert O’Brien

Auchincloss, a Democrat who sits on the House Select Committee on China, said autocratic leaders in both China and Russia are “salivating at the prospect of President Trump re-entering the White House in 2025.”

“January 6, 2021, was Xi Jinping’s best day in office because when the United States degrades its own democracy on the world stage for people all over to witness, it undermines the power of our example,” he said.

Auchincloss briefly sparred with former Trump national security advisor Robert C. O’Brien over Trump’s indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which O’Brien referred to as “the darkest day for political prisoners around the world.”

“How do we go to a dictator and tell them to release the opposition leader that they just jailed or release the missionary or the reporter, when America just indicted the former president and leading opposition candidate?” he asked.

Auchincloss shot back that “there is no journalist who thinks that Donald Trump is good for the freedom of the press” and accused Trump of “fan boying all over Vladimir Putin.”

Sen. Mark Warner on TikTok

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., pre-recorded an interview with Semafor’s Steve Clemons. He delved into bipartisan legislation he’s sponsored dubbed the RESTRICT Act, which could ultimately lead to a nationwide ban on TikTok.

Warner tried to diffuse criticism (much of it from the right) of the bill, insisting it would not punish individual users for accessing TikTok using a VPN. He called it “misinformation.”

“Nothing in this bill would ever go after any individual,” he said. “There is no expansion of government power.”

Former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker

Pritzker warned against the US severing ties with China as tensions escalate between the two superpowers, saying that “decoupling” is “very scary.”

“We need our governments talking to one another,” she said. “We stopped doing that in the last four or five years and that’s extremely dangerous.”

Ukraine Ambassador Oksana Markarova

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova mocked Russian propaganda for its efforts to frame Ukraine as a failed state, saying that corruption is more prevalent in Moscow.

“We have a fraction of Russian corruption always,” Markarova said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday. “And now we see in the army supplies how incapable their army is... God bless Russian corruption, of course, at this stage.”

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai

Tai argued that trade was a critical lever for the Biden administration to tilt the American economy to benefit workers.

“We’re looking for new approaches to help us navigate a very challenging economic time period right now,” Tai said. “And seizing the opportunity to try to set ourselves up for a more positive set of better outcomes from our trade policies working in tandem with our other economic policies.”

She also said the U.S. was “affirmatively embracing the [World Trade Organization],” mentioning that the administration ratified a WTO deal on Tuesday to slash subsidies that caused overfishing harmful to marine environments.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Diego Mendoza

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. has been trying to raise her profile this Congress as a leadership ally. Democrats have been trying to help her. It looks like their combined efforts are working, according to new polling from Democratic firm Navigator Research shared with Semafor.

Some 63% of respondents say they’re familiar with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. That’s not far off from the 69% who say they’re familiar with Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The results were based on a survey of 1,003 registered voters.

Both Republican lawmakers have negative favorability ratings, though Greene’s is much lower than McCarthy’s — 19% view her favorably versus 29% who say the same for McCarthy. She only has a net positive rating of plus-6 among Republicans while independents view her negatively by a 31-point margin. Overall, the Republican Party gets a 41% approval rating, which isn’t far off from recent polling on President Joe Biden’s approval.

The polling — which Navigator is releasing to mark 100 days into the new GOP-controlled Congress — comes as Greene accumulates more power among Republicans and is doing more outreach to traditional media. Democrats have also tried to elevate Greene as a face of the GOP to paint the party as “extreme MAGA.”

Greene’s familiarity rating has hovered around 60% in past polls, according to Navigator, but the new result is the highest it has been. Interestingly, a larger percentage of Democrats (69%) than Republicans (58%) responded that they are familiar with the congresswoman. And a larger percentage of independents said they are familiar with Greene (55%) than said so of McCarthy (51%).

— Morgan Chalfant

Jason Furman is an economics professor at Harvard University. He previously served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under then-President Obama.

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 coffee chain based in Portland is closing its downtown shop, citing safety concerns due to crime in the area.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Elon Musk suggested NPR should be “defunded” after the news organization left Twitter over the “government-funded” label put on its account.

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— Steve Clemons