Principals

1. More Democrat retirements?
2. Trump’s Putin pivot
3. Trade whiplash
4. Anti-woke identity crisis
5. SCOTUS Fed carveout
6. Dems’ cringe cycle
7. Global rundown

PDB: Trump’s latest Harvard threat

House, Senate out for the week … King Charles in Ottawa … Dow futures ⬆️ 1.30%

Dem caucus buzzes about potential retirements

Four Senate Democrats opted against reelection bids next year. Could there be more? There’s some buzz in the Democratic Caucus about two progressive senators’ futures — and we got two very different answers from them. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., 68, who won his seat in 2008, told Semafor that he’s still weighing whether to run and expects to make an announcement in the second quarter, which means within the next month. Then there’s Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., 78, who said last year that he’s running and defended his decision. He dismissed chatter that he might be reconsidering. “I’ve already announced,” he told Semafor. Both senators are steadily climbing the seniority ranks: Markey is the ranking member on the Small Business Committee and Merkley is the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, and both have upward opportunities if they serve an additional term.

— Burgess Everett

Trump shifts his tone on Putin

Just days after Donald Trump’s “excellent” call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the American president’s tone seems to have shifted: On Sunday, Trump wrote that Putin has “gone absolutely CRAZY” after Russia spent the weekend launching the biggest attack on Ukraine in the war’s three years. “Something happened to this guy and I don’t like it,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding that he’s “absolutely” considering issuing additional sanctions on Russia. The remarks are a positive sign for lawmakers and diplomats itching for more Russia sanctions. But it remains unclear whether Trump will officially back that lane — he also continued his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, writing on Truth Social that he’s “doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does.”

— Shelby Talcott

US allies grapple with trade whiplash

Europe is contending with another bout of Trump’s trade whiplash, after the US president threatened and quickly backed off new levies. The US and European Union now appear to be accelerating talks toward a trade deal, after Trump vowed to delay 50% tariffs on European goods — levies he threatened just Friday — until July 9. “There’s now a new impetus for the negotiations,” a European Commission spokeswoman said after Trump’s call with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. US stock futures as well as European stocks rose on the news. Trump’s threatened 50% tariff would impact $321 billion worth in trade and lower US GDP by roughly 0.6%, per Bloomberg. Talk of Trump’s trade strategy is also dominating a gathering of Southeast Asian nations in Malaysia, as they prepare to face the levies with a unified front.

Anti-woke media’s identity crisis

The collection of websites, podcasts and other media that captured a reaction to left-wing speech-policing is in the midst of an identity crisis in the Trump era, Semafor’s Ben Smith and Max Tani write. Libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan felt the shift on election night 2024, as he was cohosting a livestream for The Free Press and warning his peers about the dangers a second Trump term might pose for free speech. “This is one of those many moments when I realized that this wasn’t, shall we say, a stable coalition,” he told Semafor. Now, The Free Press and others in the “anti-woke” media sphere are reckoning with a president who has embraced their positions on issues like the traditional boundaries of sex and gender and the left-wing slant of American academia — even if he’s pursuing their goals with the illiberal tactics they’d abhorred.

Questions over SCOTUS’ Fed carveout

The Supreme Court last week stressed that the Federal Reserve was not affected by its decision to let Trump fire officials at some independent agencies — but not everyone is convinced, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reports. Some legal experts have interpreted the conservative majority’s comments as merely an attempt to avoid panicking investors after a series of disruptions triggered by White House efforts to rein in the central bank’s independence. That includes Trump’s comments about firing Chair Jerome Powell, which he later walked back. “The court is just trying to calm markets without necessarily telegraphing how it might rule in a future case involving the Federal Reserve,” Brian Knight of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom said. Todd Phillips, a law professor at Georgia State University, agreed: “They were clearly just putting that paragraph about the Fed in to ensure that markets don’t freak.”

Democrats face a cringey future

The 2024 failures of the Democratic Party remain one of DC’s biggest stories, days after the release of Original Sin, the tell-all book on former President Joe Biden’s decline by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. On Friday, The New York Times rolled out the first in a series of postmortems on the Biden campaign, reporting that the party spent $20 million on an initiative with the cringe-inducing name SAM, or “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” The mood is dark for Democrats, Semafor’s Max Tani writes, even in progressive spaces: “In Washington this week, I spoke with a few congressional staffers who said that they had tried using Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk, but they gave up after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.”

Global rundown

South Africa offered to buy US liquefied natural gas as part of a trade deal, hoping to restore fraying ties … Container bookings between the US and China rose to their highest level in more than a year this month … Germany’s chancellor blasted Israel’s latest offensive in the Palestinian territory, saying it “can no longer be justified.”

Uncommon bonds: Tougher Russia sanctions

US lawmakers are increasingly calling for more sanctions on Russia as Trump’s efforts to broker an end to its invasion of Ukraine remain unsuccessful, arguing that more pressure is necessary to force Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is leading a bipartisan charge in the Senate for secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia. “We have given Russia plenty of opportunity to find an honorable and just end to this war. They are not interested and they’re not going to change until we up the ante,” he said on the Senate floor last week. The legislation has about 80 cosponsors — a level of support virtually unheard of in the Senate. Thus far, GOP leaders have deferred to the White House for a green light to move the bill. But Russia hawks are growing more impatient.

Christiane Amanpour has been on the front lines of global media since the 80s, while her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin, held top State Department jobs in the Clinton and Biden administrations. Now, with Jamie freshly out of the White House, they’ve come together to make a podcast. Ben and Max talk to them about what it’s like to make a podcast with your ex, what the role of media is in shaping foreign affairs, how the information landscape has changed, and much more.

Beltway Newsletters

Playbook: President Trump’s Memorial Day weekend was the latest reminder that his actions are “unimaginably far from traditional presidential behavior.”

WaPo: Democrats are debating — again — what language to use to connect with voters: Are people in jail “prisoners” or the “justice-involved population?”

Axios: The White House is working behind the scenes to help Republicans keep control of the House, including by persuading Republicans in swing districts not to leave their seats or run for another office.

White House

• President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio moved to purge staff at the National Security Council. — Axios
• Trump pardoned a Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery.

Congress

• Longtime New York congressman Charlie Rangel, who served as first Black chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, died at the age of 94.
• Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., predicted Senate Republicans have enough votes to make changes to the House’s sweeping tax bill, as he and other conservatives eye ways to prioritize spending reductions. — NBC

Outside the Beltway

• Twenty-seven people were hospitalized after a car plowed into a soccer victory parade in Liverpool, England. Authorities do not believe the incident was an act of terrorism.

Education

• President Trump threatened to take $3 billion in federal grant funding revoked from Harvard University and give it to trade schools.
• Texas is poised to ban social media for those under 18 and require classrooms to display a copy of the Ten Commandments.

National Security

• The US military is telling allies in Africa to prepare to “stand more on their own.” — AP

Foreign Policy

• Israel’s military said it aims to capture 75% of the Gaza strip in two months.
• An announcement on an Iran deal could come in the “next two days,” President Trump said.
• New German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Germany and other pro-Ukraine European countries have lifted range restrictions on weapons they send to Ukraine, enabling the country to strike Russian territory.

Technology

• Apple CEO Tim Cook, once Silicon Valley’s Trump whisperer, has waning influence in the White House. — NYT

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

France’s President Emmanuel Macron was pushed in the face by his wife Brigitte Macron as the couple arrived in Vietnam to begin a tour of Southeast Asia.

SolarWinds is eyeing double-digit revenue growth in the Gulf as the Texas-based IT software company rebuilds following a cyberattack in 2020.

More than 80% of government entities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar already use its software, and the now privately held company aims to accelerate the rollout of new tools for the artificial intelligence age, SolarWinds’ chief technology officer told Semafor’s Kelsey Warner.