Principals

1. Trump on Black America
2. Biden vows Ukraine support
3. Thomas-Greenfield defends UN
4. SCOTUS tosses mifepristone case
5. Trump’s Hill return
6. Saudi normalization talks

PDB: Trump conviction polling

Trump turns 78 … Hamas official: “No one has any idea” how many Israeli hostages are still alive … Pope to G7

Donald Trump’s take on Black America

Semafor’s Kadia Goba reached out to Donald Trump’s campaign for an interview about his appeal to Black men this election, who are trending Republican in some polls. She got one — along with a winding odyssey of calls and meetings with Black sports icons from the 1980’s backing Trump, including Mike Tyson, Lawrence Taylor, and Darryl Strawberry. “I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” said Trump. Regular voters they aren’t, but they do have a lot in common with Trump: They were all celebrities in the same era, they were often in the tabloids for the wrong reasons, and they all survived significant legal problems. What do their decades-long relationships say about Trump and Black masculinity in 2024? You’ll want to take your time with this one.

Biden, Zelenskyy sign security pact

President Biden vowed steadfast US support for Ukraine “until they prevail in this war” as he and G7 leaders agreed to loan Kyiv $50 billion that will be repaid using the profits from frozen Russian assets. Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also signed a 10-year bilateral security pact framed as a “bridge” to Ukraine’s eventual NATO membership. The agreement, similar to ones Ukraine has signed with other Western allies, would strengthen defense cooperation between the two countries and commits the US to helping Ukraine improve its air defense capabilities. The combined moves were meant to signal to Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he “cannot wait us out,” as Biden put it. The worry for Ukraine, writes the New York Times’ David Sanger, is that “the accords themselves may not survive the outcome of the American election and Europe’s recent one.”

Biden’s UN ambassador defends Gaza casualty count, criticizes the media

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield defended the credibility of UN casualty figures in Gaza. The UN “makes every attempt to be reliable,” she said in an interview released Friday on Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast, adding that the institution “gets a bad rap.” Thomas-Greenfield, a member of the Biden cabinet, also defended the administration’s decision to cut off the aid organization UNRWA. And she pleaded with the media to devote more attention to the civil war in Sudan: “There’s a war raging now in which there are predictions and reports that genocide is happening. And yet this does not get the front page attention of the international press,” she said.

Supreme Court preserves broad access to abortion drug

Mifepristone will remain widely available — at least for now — after the Supreme Court unanimously denied a challenge to the FDA’s regulations of the abortion pill on Thursday. The decision didn’t touch the merits of the case; instead, the justices ruled that the group of anti-abortion doctors and medical associations behind the suit lacked standing. “A plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote. The battle may continue in the lower courts, however, where three GOP state attorneys general are attempting to intervene and keep the litigation alive. In Congress, Senate Republicans blocked a Democrat-sponsored bill that would have codified protections for IVF nationwide, after Democrats halted narrower GOP legislation that would cut off Medicaid funding to states if they ban the procedure.

Trump disses Milwaukee and talks up tariffs with Hill Republicans

Say what you will about Donald Trump’s first return to Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6 riot: It wasn’t dull. During his morning meeting with House GOP members — who serenaded him with a round of “Happy Birthday” — the 78-year-old presidential contender bashed Milwaukee, where the party is holding its nominating convention this summer, as a “horrible city.” He also appeared to float a 19th century style plan to eliminate the entire personal income tax and replace it with tariff revenue — though, as Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig reports, some members weren’t entirely sure that was his intent. “He talked about how we did our taxes up until World War One. It was all tariffs,” Nebraska Rep. Bacon told Semafor. “So he mentioned that but... I don’t know if he was suggesting we go back to that.”

Join us on June 18 in Washington, D.C., for newsmaking conversations with Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D), and Google Cloud’s Director of Risk and Compliance Jeannette Manfra. Semafor’s editors will lead crucial conversations on underlying security issues, explore innovative cyber resilience solutions, navigate the complex regulatory landscape governing cybersecurity, discuss trends across threat vectors, and highlight the education necessary to equip individuals with effective defense tools. RSVP for in-person attendance or livestream access here

Saudi-Israel talks are still alive, says Foreign Relations chair

Talks with Saudi Arabia about normalizing ties with Israel are “very much alive,” the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told reporters Thursday. Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin also echoed the White House by insisting that the US would not ink a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia without a separate agreement on normalization, contrary to what some reporting has suggested. “Normalization is a critical part of an agreement,” he said. The Wall Street Journal recently reported the administration had almost finalized the bilateral security agreement as part of an effort to push the Saudis and Israelis to normalize ties — an effort complicated by the Gaza war and Israel’s resistance to a separate Palestinian state.

— Morgan Chalfant

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise says he and the GOP don’t want to pass any “new heavy regulations” on AI.

Playbook: If Democrats try to move South Carolina out of its spot as the party’s first primary state in 2028, Rep. Jim Clyburn says he won’t fight it. “I never asked for South Carolina to be first in the nation,” he told Politico. “I’ve always asked for South Carolina to be first in the South.”

WaPo: Nancy Pelosi said that having Kamala Harris as vice president will be a “safeguard” for Democrats if Republicans try to challenge this election’s electoral college results.

Axios: A series of recent polls have shown President Biden leading Donald Trump with older voters. If the trend holds, it would make him “the first Democrat to win the demographic in over two decades.”

White House

• On his last day in Italy, President Biden will participate in more G7 leader meetings, hold a bilateral meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and meet with Pope Francis. He leaves in the evening for California, where he’s due to attend a fundraiser.
• Biden indicated to reporters he would not commute his son Hunter’s sentence on gun charges.
• He also didn’t sound confident about the prospect of a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but said he hasn’t “lost hope.”
• Vice President Harris spoke by phone with Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum about the root causes of migration, climate change, and other issues.

Congress

• The House continues work on the NDAA today.
• Microsoft president Brad Smith faced tough questions about security practices during House testimony.
• Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Mike Whitaker told the Senate Commerce Committee that the agency had been “too hands off” in its oversight of Boeing before the January midair blowout of a panel on a 737 Max.
• Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has a history of unsafe driving. — WaPo
• The bipartisan leaders of the House select committee on China, Reps. John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi, wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asking the department to regulate Chinese-made drones operating in the US.
• Legislation to give congressional members their first pay raise since 2009 was changed Thursday evening by the House Appropriations Committee to keep the pause in place. — The Hill

Economy

• Producer prices slid in May, another potential sign of cooling inflation.

Courts

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disclose three trips paid for by GOP donor Harlan Crow, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• “Trump too small” can’t be trademarked, the Supreme Court ruled.
• Meanwhile, the justices sided with Starbucks in a case brought by seven employees who were fired after trying to unionize in Memphis.
• Hunter Biden has agreed to drop his lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani’s former lawyer Robert Costello, which alleged the two violated his privacy over data taken from his laptop.

Polls

• It turns out that just about everybody in America actually was paying attention to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict: New polling from Blueprint, first shared with Semafor, finds that 94% of voters heard about his hush money trial in New York. More than half of voters also think the case was legitimate — though only 11% of Republicans do.

On the Trail

• The RNC is preparing for the possibility that Donald Trump doesn’t attend the convention in Milwaukee next month. — NBC
• Trump backed Larry Hogan’s Senate bid in Maryland. — Fox News
• Trump told some 80 chief executives at the quarterly Business Roundtable meeting they would see tax cuts and curtailed business regulations if he wins the White House again.

National Security

A US military ship arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after Russian military ships moved into the region for drills.

Foreign Policy

• Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will stand trial in Russia on espionage charges, Russian authorities said.
• Germany’s governing coalition of fiscal conservatives and tax-and-spend left-winger is fracturing over a $42.7 billion (€40 billion) shortfall in the upcoming budget, meaning all three of Europe’s largest economies face political upheaval.

Technology

Tesla shareholders voted to reinstate Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation plan.

Media

• The White House Correspondents’ Association issued a statement clarifying that “at a presidential press conference, at home or abroad, there are no preconditions regarding question topics” after President Biden grew frustrated that a reporter who asked about Gaza — not Ukraine — did not follow the “rules” during his press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Italy.
• Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis’ private meetings with groups of newsroom staffers have been full of apologies for his outbursts at a recent paperwide meeting, but short on details of his plans for the publication. — Daily Beast

Blindspot

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: Steve Bannon told Tucker Carlson he’s not afraid of going to jail.

What the Right isn’t reading: Donald Trump expressed surprise at the prospect of Taylor Swift endorsing President Biden during his meeting with GOP lawmakers.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

Reporters: Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Richard Fontaine is the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and the co-author of a new book, Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power.

• Immigration activists are starting to miss Bob Menendez.
• G7 agrees outline of $50B deal to fund Ukraine using frozen Russian assets.
• Renewable energy alone can’t save Ukraine’s faltering grid.