Principals

1. Ukraine aid passes House
2. Johnson’s “transformation”
3. NATO upbeat
4. TikTok under the gun
5. Trump on trial
6. IDF sanctions

PDB: Columbia University moves to virtual classes as White House, Congress condemn protests

Biden marks Earth Day … Senate reconvenes Tuesday… Israel’s head of military intelligence resigns over Oct. 7 attack

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Johnson saves Ukraine aid — and maybe his job

Mike Johnson muscled through tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid despite fractures in his own party — and averted a challenge to his job, for now. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t bring up her motion to vacate following the Saturday vote. And while she demanded Johnson resign or else face a no-confidence vote during an appearance on Fox News, the Georgia lawmaker didn’t offer a timeline for her plans. Even if Greene acts, Democrats look inclined to work with Republicans to save Johnson. “He did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job until the end of this term,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said on ABC. Or as Rep. Dean Phillips told Semafor: “Johnson has handled himself much more appropriately” than his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy who refused to offer Democrats concessions to save his speakership and instead “berated” them on TV.

Meanwhile, Republicans are waging more ugly infighting as moderates grow incensed with the turmoil within the conference. During an appearance on CNN, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales called fellow Reps. Matt Gaetz and Bob Good “scumbags,” bringing up allegations about Gaetz sleeping with a minor (both voted to topple McCarthy; they have criticized Johnson over the foreign aid bills without joining Greene’s effort to oust him). “Members are tired, we’re exhausted. It has been a brutal Congress,” Gonzales said. “The way you take care of a bully is you bloody their nose.”

How Johnson embraced Ukraine

How did Mike Johnson get to yes on Ukraine aid? Through intelligence briefings, talks with the House’s national security chairs, weighing his son’s forthcoming attendance at the U.S. Naval Academy, and prayer, according to separate accounts from the Washington Post and New York Times. “He went through a transformation. At the end of the day, a profile in courage is putting the nation above yourself and that’s what he did,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said on ABC. Johnson, who voted against Ukraine aid before becoming speaker, was at odds with many in his party: More than half of Republicans cast votes against the $60 billion Ukraine package. But in his public comments, he’s made clear he believes backing Kyiv now is necessary to prevent a deeper conflict in Europe. “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said during an emotional press conference last week. “This is a live-fire exercise for me and for so many American families.” The foreign package now moves to the Senate, which will vote on Tuesday.

Ukraine can ‘prevail’ with U.S. support, NATO deputy says

Ukraine will be positioned to “prevail” in its war against Russia and “affirm themselves as an independent, sovereign country,” thanks to the U.S. aid package the Senate will soon approve, according to a top NATO official. “We are very happy to see the support coming in,” NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana told Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant in an interview Sunday in Washington. Geoana acknowledged that Kyiv faces significant military challenges but was relatively optimistic: “We have seen in the recent period a certain technical, logistical advantage for Russia but nothing in decisive dosage to really provoke a massive change of the situation on the battlefield,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, on NBC stressed Ukraine’s need for long-range artillery and air defense, and said the aid package “will strengthen Ukraine and send the Kremlin a powerful signal that it will not be the second Afghanistan.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner suggested Sunday the U.S. would soon send long-range missiles to Ukraine. But a Pentagon spokesman told Semafor that it was “premature to speculate on the contents of any package.” Meanwhile, European Union officials are discussing efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses today, and pressure is increasing on Greece and Spain to hand over weapons stockpiles to Kyiv.

TikTok divestiture bill to become law within days

Forced slightly below the fold thanks to this weekend’s Ukraine vote: a bill to force ByteDance to divest TikTok within a year is about to become law. It cleared the House 360-58, and will now head to the Senate as part of the broader national security package. Some Senators, like Rand Paul, may still try to derail the bill. But assuming the bill becomes law, attention will quickly turn to legal challenges. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who opposed the measure, said on ABC he didn’t believe the legislation would “pass First Amendment scrutiny.” Asked last week if the legislation would be able to withstand any court challenges, Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell, whose endorsement was key to fast-tracking the legislation, replied: “I guess we’ll see.” Meanwhile: Bloomberg reports that TikTok plans to remove its U.S.-based general counsel after he failed to address national security concerns associated with the app (the company denied the report).

Opening arguments begin in Trump’s Manhattan trial

The first ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president will officially begin today with opening statements, after 12 jurors and six alternatives were empaneled last week in Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush money case. David Pecker, the former chairman of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc., is expected to be the first witness. Pecker, who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony, was a key figure in the alleged scheme to buy adult-film actress Stormy Daniels’ silence in 2016 over an alleged affair with Trump, as well as a number of similar “catch and kill” schemes. “Though the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled a mountain of evidence, a conviction is hardly assured,” the New York Times writes. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers will seize on three apparent weak points: a key witness’s credibility, a president’s culpability and the case’s legal complexity.”

State Department says possible IDF sanctions won’t affect Israel aid package

The Biden administration’s plans to potentially sanction an Israeli military battalion over human rights violations won’t block the aid package for Israel now making its way through Congress, the State Department is assuring lawmakers. A spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson said he received a letter on Saturday from Secretary Antony Blinken “confirming that the State Department’s determination will have ‘no impact’ on funding and will not impede U.S. support for Israel’s ‘defense from attacks or threats from Iran, Hezbollah, or other proxies.’ In addition, the U.S. will continue to work with Israel on effective remediation for the one unit affected to become eligible for security assistance.” Blinken is expected to announce the U.S. will block Netzah Yehuda battalion from receiving American aid or training, Axios first reported, in compliance with the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S from using funds to assist foreign security forces with credible threats of “gross violations of human rights.”

– Kadia Goba

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: President Biden has mostly been the winner of the 118th Congress, despite it being under Republican control.

Playbook: Manhattan prosecutors are expected to use David Pecker and other witnesses to lay the groundwork for “rehabilitating the credibility” of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who will ultimately be a key witness in Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan.

The Early 202: The odd bipartisan coalition that has moved spending bills and Ukraine aid in the House harks back to the influential “conservative coalition” of Republicans and southern Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s.

Axios: Donald Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders like Argentine President Javier Milei are bothering Biden administration officials, some of whom have questioned whether they are appropriate.

White House

President Biden will deliver a speech at Prince William Forest Park in Virginia to mark Earth Day and unveil new grants for solar power under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Biden signed a bill on Saturday to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for two years, after the Senate passed the measure late Friday in a 60-34 vote.

Vice President Harris has found her footing as a top voice for Biden on key policy and campaign issues like abortion. She personally pushed for explicitly blaming Donald Trump for abortion restrictions enacted throughout the country. — CNN

Harris will spend today in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin to talk about long-term care.

Congress

The House is on recess. The Senate returns Tuesday.

Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla. is drafting legislation to ban foreign flags from being waved on the House floor after Democrats celebrated the passage of the national security funding bill with Ukrainian flags Saturday. As of Sunday night, she’d secured about two dozen cosponsors and hopes to have the entire Republican conference cosponsor, she tells Semafor.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has unveiled a TV ad to air in Alabama today where lawmakers are trying to criminalize transporting a minor to other states for reproductive care. Newsom is also working with state lawmakers on legislation to allow Arizona abortion providers to deliver abortion care to Arizona patients in California.

Outside the Beltway

The White House condemned “calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community” in response to ongoing protests at Columbia University. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., meanwhile, called on Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik to resign, accusing her of “abject failure to enforce their own campus rules and protect Jewish students on campus.” Columbia announced that classes would be virtual today as the campus grapples with the demonstrations.

Economy

Workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union, the first for the union in the South and outside of Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Courts

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a case that has made allies of rural towns and big cities on how far municipalities can go in barring camping on public property.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney writes in the New York Times that the Supreme Court should “rule swiftly” on Donald Trump’s claim he is immune from prosecution over Jan. 6. “If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for Jan. 6 to account,” she writes.

Polls

President Biden has narrowed Donald Trump’s lead among voters nationally to within the margin of error in a new NBC News survey that shows voter enthusiasm in the upcoming election near a two-decade low. The poll also suggests that third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would peel off more support from Trump than they would from Biden.

On the Trail

After a long week in court and (mostly) off the campaign trail, Donald Trump was forced to cancel a rally in North Carolina on Saturday due to inclement weather.

Former Vice President Mike Pence accused Trump of “betraying” the anti-abortion movement by saying abortion restrictions should be left to states to decide, in a New York Times op-ed in which the former vice president endorses a “reasonable” national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. “When our leaders aren’t firmly committed to life, others will waver too,” Pence writes of Trump. “Courage inspires imitation. So does weakness.”

A bank operated by Republican Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde faces a lawsuit over allegations of elder abuse and wrongful death at a nursing home that the bank seized in foreclosure years ago. — NYT

Foreign Policy

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed to China this week and is expected to threaten sanctions on Chinese companies over their support for Russia’s defense industrial base. — FT

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape isn’t happy about President Biden’s remarks about his uncle possibly being eaten by “cannibals” on the island during World War II. “President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Marape said in a statement. — AP

Technology

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is leading the implementation of the CHIPS and Science law, said the U.S. has “out-innovated China” on semiconductors, downplaying the Chinese-made chip used to power the Huawei smartphone that was unveiled last year. – CBS

Media

Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner facilitated a meeting between the nationalist Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and then-President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell, during a summit in Germany in 2019, Semafor’s Ben Smith reports.

Terry Anderson, the former Associated Press journalist, who was kidnapped in 1985 and held hostage for almost seven years, has died at 76.

Big Read

Chinese-American voters in San Francisco, a longtime reliable voting block for the left, have been helping to drive the recent backlash against progressive policies in the city. The Wall Street Journal says. Members of Chinese community, which is 20% of the city’s population of 810,000 and a slightly lower percentage of registered voters, say they angry about anti-Asian violence, school policies they feel have favored equity over merit, homelessness, and that property crime in San Francisco long has been higher than in most other big cities. Chinese-Americans were among the strongest backers of ballot measures last month to mandate drug screening for public welfare recipients and expanding police powers. In 2022, they helped to recall three school board members and the district attorney. This year’s mayoral race is seen as one of the toughest and may push the city further to the center, and the candidates, including incumbent London Breed, are heavily courting the Chinese-American community.

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: Maxwell Azzarello, the deceased protester who lit himself on fire during Donald Trump’s trial in New York on Friday, once worked for Long Island Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi.

What the Right isn’t reading: South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem says abortion laws should be determined by states.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Former spy and best-selling author Jack Beaumont is joining Intrigue Media co-founder and ex-diplomat Helen Zhang for a fireside chat this Wednesday, April 24, in Washington D.C. Don’t miss this opportunity for great food, great drinks, and even better company. Register now.

Marc Molinaro is a Republican congressman from New York.

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