Principals

☞ White House: The Biden White House is looking to turn recent comments from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. into a cudgel in its messaging battle over the debt ceiling, after Gaetz eagerly described himself and his fellow conservatives as “hostage” takers in an exchange with Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig. Later today, President Biden will announce plans to nominate Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biden is also fundraising off of DeSantis’ troubled campaign launch.

☞ Senate: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. got a boost from Hillary Clinton, who told Time that the senator should not retire. “I don’t know in her heart about whether she really would or wouldn’t, but right now, she can’t. Because if we’re going to get judges confirmed, which is one of the most important continuing obligations that we have, then we cannot afford to have her seat vacant,” Clinton said.

☞ House: The GOP leadership informed members that they can go home after votes today for Memorial Day weekend but should be ready to come back to Washington within 24 hours if the White House and Speaker Kevin McCarthy reach a deal to raise the debt ceiling. The House passed a GOP-authored resolution overturning Biden’s student loan relief plan, with two Democrats joining Republicans to vote in favor of it.

Fitch Ratings warned that it might cut the U.S.’s AAA credit rating, due to the debt ceiling brinkmanship in Washington. A White House spokesman said in a statement that it was “one more piece of evidence that default is not an option and all responsible lawmakers understand that.” The view from Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann: While it would carry a bit of symbolic weight, a downgrade wouldn’t have much practical consequence for the U.S., since its credit rating is based on widely known public information that investors already take into account. Remember, it’s happened before.

Microsoft discovered a Chinese state-sponsored hacking campaign targeting critical infrastructure in Guam and other locations in the U.S., leading U.S. and international cyber officials to issue a warning about the tactics of the hacking group, nicknamed “Volt Typhoon.” The malicious activity and the target raised concerns because Guam would be a launching pad for any U.S. response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, according to the New York Times.

Can Ron DeSantis get Republican voters to care that Donald Trump is a flip-flopper? DeSantis and his allies are already pointing out that Trump praised almost every policy they’re being attacked over, from raising the retirement age to a national sales tax. That’s no surprise: Trump has taken both sides on just about every issue throughout his career. So far nobody has been able to damage him much over it, though, and not for lack of trying. Read the full story from Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin and Shelby Talcott.

U.S. intelligence has picked up communications of Ukrainians officials blaming their government for a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in Moscow earlier this month, leading the U.S. to come around to the idea that Ukraine may have been responsible.

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: House Republicans are feeling good about the debt ceiling negotiations and expect a deal to be finalized sometime this weekend, according to Punchbowl, meaning a vote could be held as early as Tuesday.

Playbook: Some House Democrats vented their frustration at party leadership over their messaging on the debt ceiling at a closed-door Democratic whip meeting on Wednesday, Politico reported, and questioned why members aren’t staying the weekend to work toward a deal.

The Early 202: Lobbyists told the Washington Post that their clients aren’t yet panicking about the state of the debt ceiling negotiations, but that they might be if no deal is reached this weekend. “I think then you’ll start to see that anxiety level move from maybe three out of 10 quickly up to a seven or eight out of 10 or higher,” said Democratic lobbyist Andrew Rosenberg.

Axios: DeSantis’ “safe spaces” media strategy — sticking to friendly conservative outlets — will serve as a test for the right-wing media ecosystem, Axios argues.

Ron DeSantis gambled on Elon Musk and went bust

THE NEWS

MIAMI, FL — Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday that he was running to be the 47th president of the United States with a mission to end a “culture of losing” on the right, and overhaul a federal government that triggered “authoritarian” attempts to restrict Americans’ rights during the pandemic.

After some technical difficulties, that is.

The first 25 minutes of the much-anticipated event — co-hosted by Elon Musk and David Sacks on Twitter Spaces — were widely panned as a disaster, with glitches overtaking it to the point that Musk was forced to end the live audio stream and transfer it over to his co-host’s page.

The headlines were brutal, none worse than on Fox News, which seemed eager to highlight the governor’s misfortune on a tech platform viewed as an emerging rival for conservative news. The homepage’s top article afterwards: “Much-Hyped Ron DeSantis Presidential Announcement a Disaster on Twitter,” with a splashy photo of Musk captioned “AMATEUR HOUR.”

When DeSantis finally went on, he delivered a low-key speech to the diminished audience before joining a podcast-like discussion with his hosts and handpicked friendly guests on topics like education, immigration, Bitcoin, and Twitter.

Later that night, he appeared on Fox (at which point they transitioned to more friendly headlines). Host Trey Gowdy joked “Fox News will not crash during this interview” before jumping into a lengthy conversation. DeSantis said it was due to the large volume of listeners, while his campaign spokesman told reporters he “literally busted the internet” with his supporters’ enthusiasm.

SHELBY AND BENJY’S VIEW

There’s no sugarcoating the first leg of DeSantis’s launch: It was a train wreck.

Worse, it was a wholly predictable one. The governor was explicitly warned by many political observers ahead of the event that he risked ceding the spotlight to Musk on a buggy platform few Americans had experience using — and that’s exactly what happened, all on the most important day of his political career to date.

It was, one unaffiliated Republican strategist said, a textbook example of Roger Ailes’ “Orchestra Pit Theory,” which the late Fox News chairman detailed in a 1988 interview: The candidate who “falls in the orchestra pit” will always lead the evening broadcasts, no matter what substantive news happens at the same forum.

“I was surprised that Elon hadn’t failure-tested this before such an important announcement,” one DeSantis donor at a watch party at the Four Seasons in Miami said.

Donald Trump was predictably ecstatic, sharing joking memes (a DeSantis spaceship blowing up on launch), videos (one featured a Twitter Spaces with Satan, Hitler, and Dick Cheney), and a strange statement that referenced his own 2018 tweet taunting Kim Jong Un over his nuclear arsenal. Democrats had plenty of their own fun: “This link works,” Joe Biden’s account tweeted, with a donations page.

It was, however, one day. So what did DeSantis have to say that we’ll be hearing throughout the rest of his campaign?

His remarks across his Twitter and Fox appearances were largely consistent with what he’s been teasing for months, emphasizing his electability and success in delivering conservative victories on issues like abortion, immigration, and education.

“Every single day we put up big wins on the board, but we’re doing that while also enjoying major political success,” he said on Fox News.

There was no big pivot to the much-anticipated direct attack on Trump, but a lot of indirect jabs about getting things done certain others could not.

He pledged to declare a “national emergency” and shut down the border quickly by reinstating many of Trump’s policies and completing a wall. He repeatedly emphasized his plans to uproot the federal bureaucracy at every level, a.k.a.  the “deep state” Trump frequently railed against. Among other plans, he said he would fire FBI director Chris Wray — a Trump appointee — on day one. He claimed he could find “different leverage points under Article II” of the Constitution to bring “out of control” agencies to heel.

He did take a more explicit shot later in the night, saying on a little-noticed call with some media outlets and conservative pundits that Trump tried to trade “massive amnesty” for his wall as part of a deal with Nancy Pelosi.

Throughout the evening, there was plenty of discussion around the “anti-woke” politics that are more DeSantis’ natural language than Trump’s.

“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “At the end of the day it’s an attack on the truth. And because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke.”

It’s still a critical question for DeSantis whether this kind of talk will resonate with average voters, or whether the frequent references on Wednesday to acronyms like “DEI” and “ESG” will seem confusing to anyone but hardcore online conservatives.

But that challenge starts later, when he can get his message out at all without a server crash or chorus of mocking pundits drowning it out.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Eric Wilson, a Republican operative who specializes in tech, argued that DeSantis’ Twitter launch was the right move when going up against someone like Trump: “Beating him is going to take risks, not playing it safe with the standard template,” he tweeted.

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House members scramble Memorial Day plans as Congress awaits a debt deal

Many around Washington spent late Wednesday reshuffling Memorial Day plans, courtesy of a looming fiscal catastrophe.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told lawmakers they could go home for the holiday weekend starting Thursday. But he also put them on 24-hour notice to return and vote on a potential bipartisan deal to raise the debt limit. Among the members rearranging their vacation: Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

“I’m about to call my wife and get my orders,” Johnson told Semafor upon leaving the House floor. “We were going to go to Israel on a trip and that’s going to get blown up. There’s gonna be a lot of unhappy spouses.”

A House Democratic lawmaker told Semafor that a Congressional Delegation trip to Denmark was thrown in jeopardy (Coincidentally, Denmark is the only other advanced economy with a debt limit on its public finances).

Debt limit talks ground on with Reps. Garret Graves of Louisiana and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina serving as Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s emissaries at the White House. McCarthy told Fox Business that “things are going a little better.”

Behind the scenes, Republicans are still pleased with McCarthy’s negotiating performance, per two GOP aides.

“I think we are united,” one House aide to a senior Republican told Semafor. “There was so much workshopping on these ideas behind the scenes so I think we’ve all had months to digest this issue and we feel strong about the product we got passed.”

That unity seems likely to change, though, if McCarthy gives major ground to secure a deal. Already, some key conservatives are urging Republicans not to water down the party-line bill the House passed earlier this month in the name of compromise.

Progressives, meanwhile, are threatening a revolt if the final deal makes too many concessions to conservatives. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said at a news conference the “overwhelming majority” of her 102-member faction would deem a bipartisan deal with expanded work requirements on safety net programs “unacceptable.”

“We’ve been clear about what we will not be able to support, a bill that screws poor people,” Jayapal said.

It’s unclear whether Biden will need many progressives to sign on to a debt ceiling compromise. At the moment, the White House believes it may need to deliver up to 100 Democratic votes in order to move a deal with McCarthy through the House, per a person familiar with their strategy. With 213 Democrats in the chamber, that would mean Biden could in theory lose the entire progressive caucus without derailing an agreement.

Still, the party’s left-leaning members are arguing they shouldn’t be taken for granted.

“The reason why anyone is asking anyone on this stage about what we would vote for is because Kevin McCarthy needs our votes,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said at a news conference.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Kadia Goba

Just under three months after its first hearing, the new House panel convened to examine U.S. competition with China voted nearly unanimously to advance two reports containing policy recommendations to address Uyghur human rights abuses and Taiwan security.

Committee chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc. and the committee’s top Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. argued that the recommendations on Taiwan — which are mostly military-related — are meant to deter a Chinese invasion of the self-governing island.

“We must prevent a war. We must prevent a cold war and a hot war, any hostilities with regard to Taiwan,” Krishnamoorthi said during Wednesday’s business meeting.

The Uyghur report passed unanimously with no dissenting members. It contained various proposals for cutting off imports and investments from the Xinjiang region and countries profiting off workers facing human rights abuses.

Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J. was the sole member to oppose the Taiwan report, which he said was too focused on military issues and should have incorporated more input on economic and diplomatic tools.

“This is an enormously complicated issue that honestly this committee should have taken a lot more time to think through before putting together these types of findings,” Kim told Semafor in an interview after the markup.

— Morgan Chalfant

Brendan Boyle is a Democrat representing Pennsylvania’s 2nd congressional district. Earlier this month, he filed the discharge petition that would force a vote on a debt ceiling increase.

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: California lawmakers recently advanced a bill to ban allegedly chemicals found in Skittles, Hot Tamales, and other candies.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Richard “Bigo” Barnett, the man who was photographed propping his feet up on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the Jan. 6 riot, was sentenced to more than 4 years in prison after being found guilty on eight charges he faced.

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— Steve Clemons