Principals

1. What’s left for Congress
2. Arizona’s shock abortion vote
3. US sends weapons to Ukraine
4. TikTok’s legal battle
5. SCOTUS hears Trump arguments
6. Mike Johnson’s Columbia visit

PDB: Trump allies charged in Arizona in 2020 election case

Biden to announce billions for Micron on New York trip … Commerce to release GDP data … Politico: White House, NYT feuding

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

What’s left for Congress with Ukraine aid done

The most chaotic Congress in memory somehow managed to raise the debt ceiling, fund the government, and pass Ukraine aid. Now what do they do? While the most high-profile fights are behind them, there’s still a slate of must-pass bills to get through before they hand the baton to the 119th Congress, Semafor’s Kadia Goba and Joseph Zeballos-Roig report. Tasks include reauthorizing the Farm Bill, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Defense Authorization Act, all of which have so far proved contentious. And the end of one year’s budget battles simply means the start to the next: Speaker Johnson is already working on passing a FY2025 budget and appropriators are eager to follow up with spending bills, with hopefully less drama this time after last year’s funding fights precipitated Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. “We need to get them done on time,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont, told Semafor. “I don’t like to worry about the House because the House is crazy.”

Arizona House votes to repeal 1864 abortion ban

The Arizona House of Representatives voted 32-28 to repeal its newly reactivated 1864 abortion ban after three Republicans crossed party lines. The measure was initially viewed as a long shot in the face of Republican opposition. But GOP Rep. Tim Dunn, who sided with Democrats on Wednesday, said it was “the most pro-life vote I could possibly make,” arguing that the near-total, pre-statehood ban threatened to stir a political backlash that would lead to even further rollbacks of abortion restrictions. The state’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said she was “thrilled” by the result, which will head to the Republican-led senate for a vote that could come as soon as next week. A repeal would still leave the state’s more recent 15-week ban in place, although a voter initiative to guarantee abortion access could potentially override it if it gets on the ballot and passes in November.

Ukraine gets ammunition — and already got long-range missiles

Ukraine is getting its U.S. weapons — and some are already in the country. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that Ukraine has the long-range version of US missiles called ATACMS, following a Politico report that the material quietly sent in March had already been used to strike behind Russian lines. “We will send more,” Sullivan said. After President Biden signed the mammoth national security package, the Pentagon announced plans to send $1 billion worth of artillery rounds, missiles, armored vehicles and other equipment to Ukraine. Shipments will go out “in the next few hours,” Biden said on Wednesday, crediting congressional leaders in both parties with doing “the right thing.” Ukrainian soldiers facing Russian attacks on the frontlines are anxiously awaiting ammunition in particular. “They can shell a tree line just for fun,” one Ukrainian soldier in the eastern city of Chasiv Yar told The Wall Street Journal. “We can only respond when we’re 100% sure of the target.”

TikTok gets ready to fight possible ban

TikTok’s future is uncertain, but one thing’s for sure: The company isn’t going down without a fight. “We aren’t going anywhere,” said CEO Shou Zi Chew after Biden signed a law that would force parent company ByteDance to sell off the app or face a ban on national security grounds. It’s unclear who might buy TikTok, and China could try to retaliate by moving to block “the sale or export of the technology,” The New York Times notes. Under the law, a ban would go into effect in 270 days if TikTok is not sold off, with an option by the president to extend the window for 90 days. Wednesday’s signing puts that decision point on Biden on Jan. 19 — a day before the presidential inauguration — meaning a new administration could have a say over the decision (Donald Trump has reversed himself and come out against the idea of a ban). But TikTok is first expected to challenge the law on First Amendment grounds, setting up potentially years of legal battles. University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told Semafor the issue would “very likely” end up at the Supreme Court.

— Morgan Chalfant

The Supreme Court’s season finale: A Trump case

Well, that’s one way to go out: The Supreme Court will hear the final oral arguments of its current term today when the justices consider former President Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results while president. Trump attorney John Sauer argues that presidents cannot be criminally charged unless impeached and convicted by Congress, while special counsel Jack Smith contends that absolute immunity does not exist because no one is “above the law.” The justices are likely to be skeptical of Trump’s argument, but the case has already helped Trump achieve a significant delay in the trial — potentially pushing it past Election Day. According to The New York Times, Trump could further benefit if the ruling is not definitive, thereby injecting “additional legal complications into the case” that could eat up even more time (earlier this week, Trump critic and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney implored the court to rule quickly).

Mike Johnson gets a Bronx cheer in Manhattan

Facing a crowd of hecklers at Columbia University, Speaker Mike Johnson demanded the school’s president resign “if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos” and crack down on Israel protests. Johnson sounded “uncharacteristically irritated,” the Washington Post reported, as he traded verbal jabs with protestors who told him he and his fellow visiting Republicans were not welcome. “Enjoy your free speech,” he said at one point. Johnson’s visit followed a similar appearance by several Jewish House Democrats on Monday, who also pointed to safety concerns expressed by some Jewish students around the protest encampment on campus, which has attracted additional protests outside the school’s gates and inspired similar movements at other elite universities. At the University of Texas, mounted police and state troopers in riot gear broke up a peaceful protest on Wednesday and arrested more than 20 people, drawing condemnation from free speech group FIRE.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso has voted against most of the big bills that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has helped shepherd through the Senate this Congress, putting him in an unusual position as he runs to be GOP whip.

Playbook: Jeff Zients, Janet Yellen, Rosario Dawson, Chris LaCivita, and John Hamm are some of the faces who will sit at tables hosted by various news outlets at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

The Early 202: McConnell is eager to step out of leadership and into a role as a rank-and-file member. “After 18 years of kind of getting beat up and defending everybody else, I’m kind of looking forward to pursuing what I want to pursue and saying what I want to say,” he said.

Axios: About half of Americans say they would support “mass deportations of undocumented immigrants,” according to a new poll.

White House

• President Biden will spend the day in Syracuse, N.Y. to tout a new $6.1 billion grant for Micron to expand facilities producing advanced memory chips through the CHIPS and Science Act. The money will fuel the construction and expansion of semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Clay, N.Y. and Boise, Idaho. A senior administration official said the announcement represents the last of the major leading-edge chips awards under the program. Biden will also attend a campaign reception in Westchester County.
• Biden pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of 16 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.
• Biden met with Abigail Edan, a four-year-old American held hostage by Hamas in Gaza before she was released last year.
• A US Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Harris’ detail got into a physical altercation with other agents at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday before she arrived there. — Washington Examiner
• This morning, Harris announced plans to headline a nationwide “economy opportunity tour,” which will kick off with an event in Atlanta, Ga. on Monday.

Congress

• Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., died Wednesday after experiencing a heart attack on April 6 that put him in a coma for more than two weeks. He was 65.
• House Ways and Means Republicans announced the creation of 10 tax teams composed of GOP committee members to study expiring provisions of the 2017 tax cuts ahead of next year’s tax cliff. The groups are tasked with crafting legislative measures to address areas like manufacturing, domestic innovation and supply chains. “The mission of these Tax Teams will be to build on the success of the Trump tax cuts to provide a pro-America, pro-worker vision for the future,” Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith said in a statement.

Courts

• Eleven Arizona Republicans and seven former Trump aides have been charged in the fake electors scheme in Arizona that played out during the 2020 election. Among them: Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani. Trump is referred to as “unindicted coconspirator 1” in the indictment. —Arizona Republic
• Conservative Supreme Court justices on Wednesday voiced skepticism that federal law can require hospitals to provide emergency abortion care in states with strict laws against the procedure, the latest legal battle over abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned almost two years ago.
• An investigator working for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in court that prosecutors consider Donald Trump and other former aides “unindicted co-conspirators” in the fake electors plot being investigated by the state.
• The Justice Department may decide by early June whether to proceed with criminal charges against Boeing over two fatal crashes of two 737 Max jetliners that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. The latest mishap for the plane maker – the midair blowout out of a door plug in January – has sparked a criminal probe of its practices and the tearing up of the deferred-prosecution agreement over the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
• The Justice Department is investigating the firm McKinsey for possible criminal wrongdoing related to its work advising opioid manufacturers and has empaneled a grand jury. — WSJ
• Business groups are suing over the FTC’s rule banning noncompetes.

Economy

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested new tariffs on Chinese-made cars were in the offing in remarks at a campaign event in Germany ahead of European Parliament elections.

Polls

• President Biden and Donald Trump are in a dead heat for the presidency nationally according to Quinnipiac — even when the poll is adjusted to include independent and third party contenders.
• Trump is up over Biden by two percentage points in Florida, according to a survey from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab out this morning. The Biden campaign has set its sights on the state because of the state’s six-week abortion ban.

On the Trail

The Trump campaign will host a donor retreat next week in Palm Beach, Fla., that will feature prominent Republicans widely viewed as possible running mates. – Politico

National Security

The Center for Strategic and International Studies is launching a new program focused on critical minerals. The think tank’s director Gracelin Baskaran told Semafor that they view “minerals security as a national security issue, not just an economic or energy issue.”

Foreign Policy

• Hamas released video footage of an Israeli-American hostage who was badly wounded during the Oct. 7 attack (the film is undated).
• Pope Francis is pleading for worldwide peace amid the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, telling CBS News that “a negotiated peace is better than a war without end.”
• Russia vetoed a UN resolution calling on nations not to place nuclear weapons in space.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a level playing field for US companies in China as he began his trip in Shanghai. — Reuters

Technology

California Sen. Laphonza Butler is warning that a ban on TikTok would jeopardize thousands of jobs in the US — Politico

Media

• Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and former California congressman, is pushing House Republicans to investigate “anomalous trading” by professional market participants betting on declines of stock of the Truth Social parent.
• NPR chief Katherine Maher says the network should be open to criticism but defended it against allegations from longtime editor Uri Berliner that it has allowed liberal views to influence its coverage. – WSJ

Big Read

The United Auto Workers’ next target for unionization in the South is Mercedes-Benz’s plant in Vance, Ala. Some workers are hopeful, according to NBC News. Others aren’t ready to join. “We’ve got the lead,” says a measurement machinist at the Alabama factory, adding that he and other workers have been required to watch videos critical of union membership while management has limited group discussions of the issues. Meanwhile, a worker at a Honda plant in Ohio remains wary of the UAW due to his father’s experiences at a GM supplier in the 1990s. “Maybe if there was an offshoot of another [union] that was created, but I don’t necessarily trust the characters and actors from that organization,” he says. UAW chief Shawn Fain this week reached out to members who question the union’s Southern strategy, saying, “This ain’t charity, this is power.”

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: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., claimed the House Sergeant at Arms threatened to fine him over a video he took on the House floor of members celebrating the Ukraine aid vote this past weekend.

What the Right isn’t reading: The Gateway Pundit is filing for bankruptcy amid defamation lawsuits.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

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

Pete Aguilar is the House Democratic Caucus chair and a Democratic representative from California.

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