Principals

1. Dems’ health care strategy
2. Budget vote
3. Trump caps Gulf trip
4. State’s war on ‘woke’ language
5. Case against tariffs
6. Stock ban compromise
7. CA emissions rollback

PDB: Pushback to Gulf chip deals

Trump wants to meet Putin ‘soon’ … Japan’s economy contracts … Nikkei index ⬇️ 1.79%

How Medicaid cuts play in midterm fight

Democrats are finding a coherent midterm message off Republicans’ planned Medicaid cuts, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Eleanor Mueller report. In a revival of their 2017 strategy to organize against the Affordable Care Act repeal, they are going into overdrive against hundreds of billions in spending reductions to Medicaid. Take Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who nearly won a tough House race in 2017 and is defending one of the toughest Senate seats. “Deep cuts to Medicaid will be a political loser for any member who supports them,” Ossoff said not long after one of his potential opponents advanced the changes to Medicaid. Relatedly, numerous battleground state Republicans are expressing unease or are noncommittal about supporting the Medicaid language as currently written. “This is personal to people. This is not Washington bullshit. This is real,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Semafor.

GOP muscles ahead with committee vote

The House Budget Committee will proceed with a vote today on the combined pieces of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill,” despite vocal opposition from fiscal hawks on the panel. “I’m confident we will have the votes,” Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said. Pressing ahead will keep leaders on track to pass the legislation, which pairs tax cuts with money for immigration and defense, by Memorial Day. But even if the committee can approve it, the broader conference must still reckon with other treacherous fault lines. Conservatives are worried about costs, and purple-state Republicans are still pushing for a bigger boost to the state and local tax deduction. Some have also raised concerns over tweaks to how Medicaid benefits are structured: Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., told Semafor that he spoke at a conference-wide briefing Thursday about how he “would still like to see additional changes.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Takeaways from Trump’s Gulf tour

Weapons, planes, and chips have dominated the Gulf’s spending spree with President Donald Trump, who concludes his three-country swing through the region in Abu Dhabi today. UAE companies signed $200 billion worth of deals, as part of the $1.4 trillion President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed already committed over a decade. The headline was for a massive artificial intelligence campus planned for Abu Dhabi; with 5GW of power capacity planned by 2030, it is the world’s largest such project. The UAE’s relatively small population means it cannot directly compete with bigger countries, Tareq Alotaiba, a former Emirati official, noted in a Semafor column. “But it can outmaneuver them,” he wrote. “And AI is the solution.” Trump’s transactional approach and post-Imperial message (no “lectures on how to live,” he told a Saudi audience) was largely well-received in the Arab world.

— Kelsey Warner

State restricts LGBT-related terms

A State Department liaison office is instructing employees to restrict the use of identity- and gender-related terms, including common abbreviations like LGBT. In a new style guide seen by Semafor, the State Department’s Executive Secretariat directs employees to avoid using “they/them” as a singular pronoun, bars the use of “gender” to refer to people, and discourages the use of words like “bias,” “equity,” “ally,” “discrimination,” “diversity,” and “marginalized,” except in specific contexts. The guide also flags the phrase “Global South” for creating “unhelpful narratives” about development, and says staff should use “gay and lesbian” instead of “LGBTQI+,” “LGB,” or other acronyms. Across the government, the Trump administration has clamped down on language: Multiple agencies have ordered the removal of gender pronouns from email signatures, while the White House has said it won’t respond to journalists with pronouns in their bios.

— Mathias Hammer

Dems to Trump: Tariffs hurt alliances

Trump administration tariffs are harming US national security interests and potentially running afoul of US commitments to NATO, the top Democrats on three Senate national security committees warned in a letter to the White House. The Democrats wrote that the tariffs — specifically the 10% baseline tariffs on most countries — undermine US efforts to get allies to spend more on defense and to unite against China’s aggression and expansionism in the Pacific. “Strategic competition with” China “will be far harder to win alone,” the Democrats wrote in the letter to Trump, shared first with Semafor. The White House dismissed the concerns, saying that “two things can be accomplished at the same time: maintaining our alliances while asking our trading partners to compete on a level playing field.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Compromise near on stock trading ban

An architect of compromise legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks told Semafor Thursday that lawmakers “have agreements in concept” on key provisions “that we needed to iron out,” like how to handle cryptocurrency. Now, “we need to actually get it down on paper,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., who’s been working with Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and others to merge their respective proposals. He added that the talks have been “so far smoother than, frankly, I anticipated.” House Speaker Mike Johnson this week joined Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in expressing support for such a ban, “because I don’t think we should have any appearance of impropriety.” Magaziner pointed out that “there have been some unusual market movements over the last few months related to things like tariff announcements and rumors about … reconciliation.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Senate GOP to scrap Calif. emissions rules

Senate Republicans are on track to repeal California’s Biden-era emissions waivers next week after picking up some key votes, including Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “We’re moving ahead next week and we’re going to pass it next week,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told Semafor. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was still looking at the procedure, but that she supported the “underlying policy of overturning the rules.” Otherwise, Republicans said there’s a strong feeling they’ve got the 50 needed votes locked up. “I told my buddies on the other side of the aisle: ‘Dudes, those of you who voted to nuke the filibuster, please don’t come to me and tell me you care about the filibuster in general,’” Tillis told Semafor. “If we don’t vote this down, I’m going to be guilty of conveying even more power” to the executive branch.

— Burgess Everett

Chris Black has gone from managing a pop-punk band to becoming a fashion-world insider, podcast host, and brand consultant for labels like J. Crew and Thom Browne. This week on Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, Ben and Max bring on the How Long Gone co-host to talk about building a cult hit podcast, Substack fatigue, the surprising comeback of media gatekeepers, and why he still believes in the power of institutions.

Blindspot: Solar and Walmart

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: “Rogue communication devices” were discovered in some Chinese solar power inverters, sparking security concerns, Reuters reported.

What the Right isn’t reading: Walmart plans to raise prices despite the trade truce between the US and China.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Some House conservatives are pushing Attorney General Pam Bondi to more aggressively target President Trump’s political enemies, and want to see Dr. Anthony Fauci and New York Attorney General Letitia James arrested.

Playbook: Questions about Joe Biden’s mental acuity are quickly becoming the “first real litmus test of the nascent 2028 campaign.”

WaPo: The NRCC is advising vulnerable members to simplify their message on Medicaid cuts by arguing they are rooting out fraud and abuse in the program.

Axios: Steve Bannon says the next 100 days will set the stage for Trump’s long-term impact on the country and world. “What happens between now and Labor Day really defines — more than even the first 100 days of flood-the-zone — not just Trump’s second term, but Trump’s legacy.”

White House

• President Trump’s June military parade could cost up to $45 million. — WaPo

Congress

• Led by Sen. Peter Welch, Judiciary Committee Democrats are asking Chair Chuck Grassley to hold a hearing on the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García, according to a letter obtained by Semafor: “The Senate Judiciary Committee has a special responsibility to examine whether the Executive Branch has circumvented the Constitution.”
• The House Judiciary Committee is looking into an allegation that Pfizer waited to share results of the COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election. — WSJ

Outside the Beltway

• As many as 20 pilots flying into Denver International Airport on Monday lost contact with air traffic control in a communications outage that lasted multiple minutes. — Denver7

Business

• Staffers at the Kennedy Center are unionizing after President Trump’s takeover.
• Shein is leasing a warehouse in Vietnam in a bid to avoid Trump’s China tariffs. — Reuters

Economy

• In remarks Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned of “supply shocks” and said that interest rates are likely to be higher long-term, meaning that “inflation could be more volatile going forward” than in the 2010s.
• JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a recession.

Courts

• The Supreme Court appeared divided over whether it should scale back nationwide injunctions impeding President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship.
• A federal judge dismissed trespassing charges against migrants detained along the Trump administration’s new “national defense” zone at the southern border.
• A Wisconsin judge pleaded not guilty to charges she obstructed an immigration arrest.
• Longtime Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro was sworn in as interim US DC attorney.

National Security

• FBI Director Kash Patel moved to disband a squad that investigates fraud and corruption by lawmakers and federal officials. — NYT

Immigration

• DHS has requested more than 20,000 National Guard troops for “interior immigration enforcement.” — NYT

Technology

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the Trump administration for paving the way for AI chip sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• Officials within the Trump administration are divided over the push for AI deals in the Gulf, as “China hawks grow increasingly concerned the projects are putting US national security and economic interests at risk.” — Bloomberg
• Meta is holding off on releasing its flagship “Behemoth” AI model. — WSJ

Media

• C-SPAN is launching a bipartisan talk show, Ceasefire, an antidote to the fiery Crossfire of early CNN.

Principals Team

Edited by Morgan Chalfant, deputy Washington editor

With help from Elana Schor, senior Washington editor

And Graph Massara, copy editor

Contact our reporters:

Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper is illuminated with a projection of the American flag in honor of President Donald Trump’s visit.