Principals

1. Implosion impact
2. Trump’s Senate lobbying
3. Breakup fallout
4. The media challenge
5. Travel ban pushback
6. Data clash looms
7. US-China trade talks
8. BlackRock’s Texas play

PDB: Top Republican worries about cost of Trump Army parade

Trump attends UFC in Newark … Harvard gets relief on foreign student ban … NATO nears agreement on expanding spending target

Inside the Trump-Musk implosion

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s messy breakup could have long-term ramifications for the GOP’s congressional primaries and damage the administration’s relationship with Musk-aligned companies and allies. But lawmakers are confident the drama won’t impact Trump’s megabill, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying they just have to keep their “heads down.” The Trump-Musk feud burst into the open on Thursday after the world’s richest man spent days attacking the president’s “big, beautiful bill,” but tensions had been building. “Totally predictable,” one person close to the White House said. Another person close to Trump likened the spat to the classic movie Clash of the Titans. That drama is the last thing the administration had wanted, though, and Musk’s tweets Thursday invoking the “Epstein files” caught officials off guard. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “an unfortunate episode,” arguing Musk is upset because Trump’s bill doesn’t include provisions he wants.

— Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett

Trump’s big, beautiful tug-of-war

Undergirding the Trump-Musk beef is the president’s signature piece of legislation — and the president is fully focused on getting his megabill out of the Senate after spending his first few months in office focused outside the Capitol, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. He’s making headway with fiscal conservatives like Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, both of whom spoke privately with Trump this week. Scott told us that Trump “wants his deal closed,” and Johnson said he’s aware that Trump’s not too happy with his media tour trashing the bill. “I’m taking to heart that he’d like me to be a little more positive,” Johnson said. The only senator the White House is currently tangling with is Sen. Rand Paul. He shrugged: “They say you’re not over the target if you’re not getting flak.”

Ramifications of the Trump-Musk breakup

Is a Trump-Musk détente on the horizon? White House aides are expected to speak with Musk the phone today, Politico scooped. The two men should “make peace for the benefit of our country,” Bill Ackman wrote on X. One reason Musk might be persuaded to patch things over: Tesla shares are down a whopping 14%, though they rose slightly Friday morning on news of the White House-Musk call.

Trump has also threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts. The world’s richest man also has ways to make life difficult for Trump: The New York Times chronicles eight ways the two could inflict pain on one another. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley executives are picking sides, per Wired. The tech industry will feel pain for decades and the “biggest loser will be the average American,” Semafor’s Reed Albergotti writes. The winner, David Weigel argues, is the MAGA right.

Politics, when nothing’s behind the scenes

The public breakdown between Trump and Musk exposes a unique challenge for journalists in the Trump era: What to do when the biggest story is happening before the world’s eyes. “What, exactly, are journalists — with our sources, our access, our experience — supposed to do here?” Semafor’s Ben Smith writes. “The most plugged-in people in Washington are reading the same tweets you are, marveling. The persons-familiar who populate so much of the reporting about Trump are no more or less familiar with his Truths than you are, and are speculating on his plans and motives — Is this breach final? Will it heal soon? — just the same as many Americans. This is a feature of a presidency that sees itself as media: Journalists can become mere television critics.”

US, China set for more trade talks

The US and China are on track for more trade negotiations after Trump held his first call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping since retaking his office. Trump characterized the call as productive, saying they’d discussed issues related to rare earth mineral exports from China and had “straightened it out.” The Chinese readout didn’t mention rare earths, though, and noted that Xi encouraged Trump to “remove the negative measures taken against China.”

Trump said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — who recently had harsh words for Beijing — would meet with Chinese representatives soon. The call may be a sign of a thaw, but the markets aren’t convinced. Meanwhile, US imports fell sharply in April amid tariffs, while the May jobs report out today will offer clues about US economic health.

Republicans raise concerns over Palantir

Republican data-privacy advocates in Congress are pushing back on the Trump administration’s effort to merge agency data with help from tech firm Palantir, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reports. Their concern: that future presidents could abuse a trove of financial, medical and other information on Americans. “It’s dangerous,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, told Semafor. “When you start combining all those data points on an individual into one database, it really essentially creates a digital ID. And it’s a power that history says will eventually be abused.” Though Davidson is an outlier in his party, other GOP members and aides voiced similar concerns. Data privacy has divided Republicans before: Hardliners in the House derailed an effort by leadership to reauthorize a key surveillance law last year. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC Thursday that the company is “not surveilling Americans.”

Opponents weigh response to travel ban

Trump’s order banning travel to the US from a dozen nations triggered swift pushback from Democrats, civil rights groups, and some of the targeted countries. Chad, one of the affected nations, said it would suspend visas to US citizens, while Venezuela told its citizens being in the US is a “great risk.” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., predicted the ban would inspire court challenges. “You got to do what we did the last time he tried to do something crazy like this: rally the people, take it to court and challenge it,” he told Semafor, citing successful challenges to Trump’s first-term ban affecting Muslim-majority nations. Republicans were less critical: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said she supports the ban because “a lot of these countries are also guilty of human rights abuses.” But Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., called for Haiti to be left out.

— Morgan Chalfant and Eleanor Mueller

BlackRock’s playbook for the ESG backlash

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is back in business in Texas, after the state removed it from a blacklist of financial firms that Republican officials deemed to be prejudiced against the oil and gas industry, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell reports. The decision represents a victory for Republican officials around the US, who have argued that environmental, social and governance investment policies at firms like BlackRock have led them to put “woke” politics ahead of their fiduciary duty. But it’s an even bigger victory for BlackRock, which proved capable of navigating a high-profile political storm without making too many costly compromises to its core practices and offerings. “A lot of this was about gamesmanship,” Shivaram Rajgopal, a finance professor at Columbia Business School, told Tim. And Tim’s take: BlackRock’s response to backlash regarding its ESG policies “looks like an expert case of ‘greenhushing.’”

Blindspot: Counterterrorism and travel

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: CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who is British, likened traveling to the US as a foreigner to traveling to North Korea.

What the Right isn’t reading: A 22-year-old is overseeing the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorism prevention hub, ProPublica reported.

Top Chef, which airs its 22nd season finale next week, has been shaping how we think and talk about food for the past two decades. This week, Ben and Max talk to longtime judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons about how Top Chef has influenced the restaurant industry, how food media has evolved, and why the show has gotten nicer over the years. Plus, they share the social media food trends they hate the most. Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Trade groups representing international companies operating in the US are urging Senate Republican leaders to drop the “revenge tax” provision from the House-passed sweeping tax bill.

Playbook: Those in President Trump’s orbit are divided over whether he should seek a truce with Elon Musk. “We’re going to go to f*cking war, and I’m going to rip your f*cking face off,” Steve Bannon said.

Axios: White House personnel director Sergio Gor may have been the man behind the pulling of billionaire and Musk ally Jason Isaacman’s nomination to head NASA.

WaPo: Republican fans of Bruce Springsteen are compartmentalizing their love of the star’s music from their antipathy for his politics.

White House

• The Trump administration is paying more than $13 million in rent for three houses near Mar-a-Lago — far more than the going rate for commercial real estate nearby — and has not said what they’ll be used for. — Bloomberg

Congress

• Senate Republicans are working on saving a tranche of funding for NASA programs the White House has targeted for cuts.

Outside the Beltway

• A fight over land use and zoning laws is brewing in Starbase, the newly formed city in Texas populated with SpaceX employees. — WaPo
• California returned 73 square miles of the Yurok people’s ancestral lands to Indigenous ownership.

Courts

• The Supreme Court announced a pair of high-profile, unanimous decisions on Thursday: The judges swatted down an effort by the Mexican government to hold US gun manufacturers liable for gun violence south of the border.
• And the court ruled in favor of a heterosexual woman who argued she’d lost out on jobs because of her sexual orientation, striking down a lower court ruling that required her, as a member of a majority group, to meet a higher burden of proof when claiming illegal discrimination.

National Security

• Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker is getting worried about the price tag of President Trump’s Army parade, which is also expected to ground flights at Reagan National Airport in DC.

Foreign Policy

• Israeli forces conducted several airstrikes in Beirut, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha.
• Israel says it recovered the bodies of two Israeli Americans killed during the Oct. 7 attacks.
• Russian missiles and drones hit Kyiv, killing three.
• The State Department sanctioned four International Criminal Court judges as payback for their probes into the US and Israeli militaries.

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

Stephen Lynch is a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.