Principals

☞ White House: President Biden will spend today talking about the need to raise the debt ceiling and railing against cuts proposed by “MAGA Republicans” in Valhalla, New York, which a White House official noted is a district represented by a Republican in Congress, Rep. Mike Lawler (who said he plans to attend the speech). Biden also spoke with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador yesterday in preparation for the lifting of Title 42 later this week. Asked whether the U.S. is prepared for an expected surge in migrants at the southern border, Biden acknowledged that the situation would be “chaotic for a while.”

☞ Senate: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. flew back to Washington on Tuesday evening, an aide confirmed, ending her two-month long absence as she recovered from shingles — and likely putting to rest talk of her stepping down, at least for now. The Judiciary Committee should have an easier time moving nominations now.

A handful of Republican senators are expressing concern about the Trump jury verdict. “You never liked to hear that a former president has been found — in a civil court — guilty of those types of actions,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. said, according to NBC News.

☞ House: It’s a busy day for Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.: at 9 a.m., he and other committee members will hold a press conference to discuss his months-long probe into the Biden family’s “influence peddling to enrich themselves.” Afterward, he’ll welcome a group of attorneys general to Capitol Hill for a hearing on ESG investing and its influence on corporate behavior — one of the GOP’s great bugaboos of the moment.

Federal prosecutors have filed charges under seal against embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. in the Eastern District of New York. A source close to Santos said he drove to New York City from Washington, D.C. late last night and will meet with prosecutors today. It’s not clear what particular crime Santos is alleged to have committed, according to CNN, which was first to report on the existence of the charges, but Santos had been under investigation for financial and campaign finance activities.

Donald Trump will appear on CNN for a much-discussed town hall tonight, where all eyes will be on his response to the federal jury in Manhattan that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming, but not raping, the writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s as part of a civil suit. Trump’s lawyers are expected to appeal.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, will visit the U.S. Capitol next week to brief members on artificial intelligence, the latest attempt by House leadership to get lawmakers up to speed on the rapidly evolving technology. “We’ll continue this to make sure we educate everybody on it,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Semafor on Wednesday.

Tucker Carlson announced plans to start a new show on Twitter and Semafor’s Max Tani and Ben Smith have the inside story. One former Twitter employee is skeptical of the audience’s appetite for longer videos based on the company’s prior experiments with TV-style formats: “It’s doomscrolling versus doomstaying.” Their verdict on Carlson’s new effort to build a business there: “Stupid.”

Mike Gallagher, the chairman of the House select committee on China, will attend a breakfast event today on the collapse of press freedom and democracy in Hong Kong alongside Sebastien Lai, the son of imprisoned and pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, according to a committee aide. In a statement shared with Semafor, Sebastien Lai called on the British government to do more to secure his father’s release. “My father is a British citizen, yet he has received more robust support from Washington than his own UK Government. This is shameful,” he said.

— Kadia Goba and Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: During yesterday’s White House meeting, McCarthy read out loud past quotes from Democrats — including Biden himself — expressing support for negotiating around the debt ceiling. Biden also accused the House Republican plan of cutting veterans funding, which McCarthy responded was a lie (the Republican bill includes broad discretionary spending cuts, but does not specify where).

Playbook: CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins has been “steadily prepping” for the town hall with Trump later tonight, including with sessions where a senior CNN staffer played the former president.

The Early 202: A group of House Democrats are pressing Biden to end Trump-era sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela. In a letter obtained by the Washington Post, the lawmakers — led by Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas — say the sanctions “have battered those countries’ economies and contributed to a surge of migrants at the southern border of the United States.”

Axios: Tech leaders who recently met with administration officials at the White House on AI warned them about an “imminent explosion” of fake videos and stories ahead of 2024.

The optimistic take on Tuesday’s big debt ceiling meeting

THE NEWS

There was no public sign of a major breakthrough on Tuesday after President Biden finally sat down with Congressional leaders to discuss the debt ceiling. Democrats and Republicans both emerged from the White House gathering pointing fingers at each others’ intransigence.

“Everybody reiterated the positions they were at. I didn’t see any new movement,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters after leaving the Oval Office.

“We explicitly asked Speaker McCarthy, would he take default off the table. He refused,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer complained during his own presser.

But despite the outward headbutting, there were also subtle signs of progress. Biden called the meeting “productive,” and the leaders all said they would come together again on Friday. Meanwhile, both sides noted areas where there may be room for potential compromise, including on the budget, the fate of unused COVID relief spending, and energy permitting reform.

JOSEPH AND JORDAN’S VIEW

Call us Pollyannas, but if you gaze hard enough, it’s possible to see the landing strip for a possible deal through all the storm clouds.

Biden and the Democrats have consistently said they are willing to negotiate over the federal budget, which is appropriated annually, but not under threat of default. That process now seems to be getting under way. If budget talks succeed, there may be a way for Republicans to declare victory and raise the debt limit while Democrats claim they never negotiated over raising it in the first place.

Schumer told reporters that Republican and Democratic Hill leadership staff are meeting with the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday or Wednesday to start hammering out details on a spending proposal. “Those discussions should begin soon and I’m hopeful maybe we can come to some kind of agreement there,” he said, calling it “good news.”

Meanwhile, both Biden and McCarthy sketched out other areas of negotiation. McCarthy said Biden had expressed openness to permitting reform, a top GOP priority that also has drawn significant support among Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. For his part, Biden said he was open to rescinding unused COVID aid, something that Republicans have also demanded. “We don’t need it all,” he said.

There’s been fairly noisy speculation around Washington that a final debt ceiling agreement would probably involve some combination of limits on discretionary spending, rescinding some COVID funds, and permitting reform — so the fact that those three issues all came up as areas for negotiation seems notable.

“There’s a bipartisan deal staring both parties right in the face,” Brian Riedl, a budget expert in touch with Hill Republicans, told Semafor.

Biden did say during his press conference that he has “been considering” whether the constitution’s 14th Amendment would allow him to simply ignore the debt ceiling, as many liberal legal scholars have argued. But he spent more time explaining its potential downsides, including a drawn-out legal battle that might still end in a catastrophic default if the Supreme Court strikes it down.

“The problem is it would have to be litigated,” he said. “And in the meantime, without an extension, it would still end up in the same place.” 

That Biden appears to be playing down workarounds suggests that he’s settling into deal making mode.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Pulling off a complicated dance around simultaneous budget and debt ceiling talks won’t be easy, especially after McCarthy poured cold water on a temporary extension that buys more time. “I don’t think a short-term extension does anything,” he said Tuesday.

And of course, it’s still a question how many GOP hardliners will be willing to accept any sort of debt ceiling compromise that’s less sweeping than the partisan bill Republicans passed through the House.

“If anyone thinks that Republicans are prepared to cave, they need to get their head examined,” Jim Manley, a former Senate Democratic leadership aide, told Semafor. “There’s a core group in the House that aren’t going to cave without significant concessions, and the concessions they’re demanding are unacceptable to most Democrats in both the House and Senate and in the White House.”

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2024 Republicans are still not touching Donald Trump’s legal woes

“The irony,” a Republican strategist mused to Semafor on the day a jury found former president Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, “is that Trump would absolutely use this against anyone else.”

But Trump is Trump, of course, and the rules are well established. “Imitating his tactics is unwise,” the strategist said. “I mean, can you imagine someone heckling him on stage with this?”

Much of the presumptive 2024 field — including former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former Ambassador Nikki Haley — remained silent or declined to comment.

Vivek Ramaswamy defended the former president, telling Semafor in a statement the verdict was a “part of the establishment system’s anaphylactic immune response against its chief political virus, Donald Trump” (the virus was a good thing in this metaphor).

One 2024 candidate did issue a sharp rebuke in the wake of the verdict: “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump,” former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.

And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — another rare opponent unafraid to directly target Trump — plans to address the news later this morning on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show.

The 2024 field’s response (or lack thereof, in most cases) to the guilty verdict underscores a larger issue that presidential hopefuls are grappling with: Can you go after Trump — on any issue, big or small — without alienating a large swath of Republican voters?

Republicans who spoke to Semafor expected Trump would easily parry any attacks over his latest legal travail. He remained defiant after the verdict, writing on Truth Social that he has “ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS.”

“Trump has a base that will stick with him through thick and thin, and trying to use these court proceedings against him will only strengthen the resolve of Trump supporters,” another GOP strategist told Semafor.

Can’t attack him for being arrested, can’t attack him for losing a suit involving heinous allegations, can’t attack him for being investigated over classified documents, or efforts to overturn the election  — the list of topics that candidates are reluctant to bring up is a long one at this stage in the race. His 2024 rivals and critics are still figuring out which aspects of his record and post-presidency are safe to touch.

“This should give Trump’s rivals more ammo to say that Trump has too much chaos and drama to win,” former RNC communications director Doug Heye said. “But we’ve said that before and it hasn’t happened.”

In this case, Trump’s opponents are operating from direct experience. Trump won the 2016 election despite backlash over comments he made on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape bragging about how celebrities can grab women by their genitals — which he defended in a deposition in the Carroll suit as “largely true, unfortunately, or fortunately.”

Even Pence refused to defend Trump after the tape’s release in 2016. But after Trump’s upset victory, those who broke ranks faced attacks in primary campaigns. DeSantis even made a point in his latest book of noting that he kept knocking on doors for Trump through election day.

“I would tell you, in my four-and-a-half years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature,” Pence told NBC News on Tuesday ahead of an event at the Center for Christian Virtue.

— Shelby Talcott and Morgan Chalfant

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Ritchie Torres is a Democrat representing New York’s 15th congressional district. He was elected in 2020 and has been a vocal critic of fellow New York Rep. George Santos.

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: Orange County, New York is declaring a state of emergency over an influx of migrants that have been bussed in from New York City.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: GOP megadonor Stephen Schwarzman is reportedly holding off on giving any money to DeSantis after meeting with him in Tallahassee. Bloomberg reported that the meeting left him “unconvinced” of the Florida governor’s presidential prospects.

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— Steve Clemons