Principals

1. Gabbard makes her case
2. Lake as Mexico ambassador?
3. Biden touts econ agenda
4. Shaheen’s new job
5. Latinos shift right
6. Dems quiet on Penny verdict
7. Somaliland hopes rise

PDB: Biden prioritizes judges, student debt relief, ceasefire talks in final days

Supreme Court hears major environmental case … Netanyahu testifies in corruption trial … WaPo: Hegseth prospects rise?

Gabbard not disqualified by Syria views

Republicans have plenty of questions about Tulsi Gabbard’s views on Syria and how they relate to her nomination as Trump’s director of national intelligence. But they’re not immediately deeming her past meeting with ousted leader Bashar al-Assad as disqualifying. She has explaining to do, a half-dozen Republican senators told Semafor’s Burgess Everett on Monday evening. “To a lot of people, and I would put myself in that position, she’s too undefined to really form an opinion [on], so she needs to get out” and meet with more senators, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a member of party leadership. Trump allies say all the fuss about Gabbard’s views on Syria and Vladimir Putin’s Russia are much ado about nothing — and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., spoke for others by saying Trump, and no one else, will set the new administration’s foreign policy.

Trump eyes Kari Lake for ambassador post

Kari Lake is a leading contender for the nomination as Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports. Lake’s potential opportunity in an incoming Trump administration comes after two unsuccessful bids for statewide office in Arizona: A former news anchor, Lake lost her 2022 race for Arizona governor, and lost her Arizona Senate bid last month. She’s a staunch Trump ally who has backed his unproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen and supported his immigration stances. If officially tapped for ambassador to Mexico, Lake would be responsible for engaging with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government on a host of contentious issues, including migration, counternarcotics, and Trump’s pledge to enact new tariffs on imports.

Biden seizes the bully pulpit

President Biden will seize one of his last remaining opportunities to champion and defend his economic agenda. Today’s speech at the Brookings Institution will emphasize his playbook for “growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” the White House said, and comes as a majority of voters continue to disapprove of the outgoing president’s leadership. Look for Biden — who has been relatively quiet as of late — to emphasize his legislative achievements and signs of the overall strength of the US economy. “I hope the president talks about just how awful things were economically when he took over and all he and congressional Democrats did to ensure we have the strongest recovery in the world from the pandemic,” Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., who will attend the speech, told Semafor. “I am confident President Biden will be remembered well by historians.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Democrats’ new foreign policy leader

Jeanne Shaheen is set to make history next year as the highest-ranking woman ever on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And she brings a unique approach to the job, she tells Burgess Everett. The New Hampshire Democrat is pragmatic, but you don’t want to end up on her bad side. She recounted throwing a “fit” when the panel nearly ignored her pleas to condemn the bombing of a girls’ school in Afghanistan. “Really tough,” is how incoming Chair Jim Risch described her. Shaheen brings a new perspective to a committee plagued by oscillating Democratic leadership due to Bob Menendez’s scandals — and she’s got strong views on everything from Ukraine to Israel. “We know that Israel is holding up humanitarian aid in northern Gaza. There are [thousands of] people that are on the verge of starvation,” Shaheen said. “It’s not acceptable.”

Texas Latinos shifted right

Anger at inflation and Biden-era immigration drove Texas Latinos to the right this year, according to post-election polling. The data collected by Lake Research Partners for the nonpartisan Texas Public Opinion Research showed Latino voters split 47-47 between supporting Donald Trump and Kamala Harris while they broke for Democratic Senate nominee Colin Allred over GOP Sen. Ted Cruz by 8 points, a shift toward Cruz since his last race. Forty-six percent of Latinos called “the cost of living” a top issue, while 45% named immigration. “They don’t like deportation, but they do want to see security at the border,” said pollster Celinda Lake. “We’ve seen that Mexican American Latinos are very resentful of some of the changes in the immigration system during the Biden administration — specifically, the Venezuelans being given preference over people who’ve been here, been working here, and been paying taxes for a long time.”

— David Weigel

Democrats quiet on Daniel Penny verdict

New York’s Democratic members of Congress had no reactions to the verdict in the high-profile Daniel Penny case, breaking with local progressive politicians and activists who condemned it — and Republicans around the country who celebrated it. By the end of Monday, none of New York’s Democratic delegation had commented on the acquittal of Daniel Penny, after a Manhattan jury did not find Penny liable for the chokehold death of Jordan Neely. Rev. Al Sharpton accused the court of legalizing “civilian vigilantism,” New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said that if the “roles were reversed,” a Black man would have been convicted, and the Working Families Party accused Penny of a “modern-day lynching.” Their representatives in DC stayed quiet, a shift after they frequently weighed in on high-profile cases involving Black victims.

— David Weigel and Kadia Goba

Trump may recognize the world’s newest country

Somaliland, a self-governing region within Somalia, will be much closer to being recognized by the US as the world’s newest country when Trump returns to the White House, Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke reports. Support for the region has grown strong among Republican US-Africa policy leaders on Capitol Hill, right-leaning DC think tanks, and likely Africa advisors of Trump’s incoming White House. Recognizing Somaliland could enable US intelligence to set up long-term operations to monitor the movement of weapons in a volatile region, as well as keep an eye on Chinese activity. China already has a permanent military base in neighboring Djibouti. It should allow the US to better monitor Houthi activity in Yemen. One former Africa envoy in Trump’s first term said Somaliland’s democratic process had “demonstrated its attractiveness as a partner for the United States and other countries.”

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: The crisis surrounding Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary has eased, but he still faces an uncertain road ahead as he looks to be confirmed. “He’s doing exactly what he needs to do,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. “The idea isn’t to put yes’s on the board. It’s to keep no’s off the board.”

WaPo: Democrats notched some wins in state legislative races in 2024 despite having a disappointing election cycle overall.

Axios: America’s top CEOs are feeling optimistic following Donald Trump’s election, according to the Business Roundtable’s new economic outlook index, which increased 12 points from the previous quarter.

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: Incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he has lost confidence in FBI Director Christopher Wray and called on him to step aside.

What the Right isn’t reading: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be on Broadway this week.

White House

• President Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients wrote a memo to staff laying out plans for the final 42 days of the Biden administration. He said officials would continue to implement Biden’s legislative accomplishments, work with Congress to confirm more judges, announce more student debt relief, and work to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Vice President Harris announced this morning that the Biden administration has finalized its $6 billion deal with Micron Technology under the bipartisan chips law.

Congress

• Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., warned Senate Republicans against entertaining Donald Trump’s push to install his nominees through recess appointments. “If Republicans adjourn Congress so Trump can make recess appointments, Democrats will unfortunately be far more likely to do the same at the next opportunity,” he wrote in Time.
• Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., is set to take over Michael McCaul as the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
• A coalition of LGBTQ advocacy organizations and other groups wrote to congressional leadership asking them to torpedo the Kids Online Safety Act, after Elon Musk’s X worked with senators on updates to the bill to assuage Republican concerns.

Transition

• Donald Trump recently spoke with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis about potentially filling the Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. — WSJ
• Trump said Mike Paoletta will return to the Office of Management and Budget, a post he held during the first Trump administration.
• Former California Republican Party vice chair Harmeet Dhillon was picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Outside the Beltway

• Manhattan prosecutors charged Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from Baltimore, with murder and other offenses in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week. Mangione remains in custody in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested earlier Monday and faces charges of possessing an unlicensed firearm, forgery, and providing false identification to law enforcement.

Business

• Chocolate maker Hershey might get bought. — Bloomberg
• Stellantis is making changes to its North America executive team. — WSJ

Courts

• TikTok asked a federal court to temporarily block an impending US ban while the company fights the law at the Supreme Court.
• The Supreme Court will not take up a case looking at whether Boston high schools unlawfully considered race in admissions decisions. The justices also rejected a challenge to a Wisconsin school district’s guidance on support for transgender students.

Campaigns

• Donald Trump is backing KC Crosbie to replace his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as the Republican National Committee’s co-chair.

Foreign Policy

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country “will respond” if Donald Trump imposes tariffs on its imports after he takes office.

Technology

• Chinese companies recently started limiting sales to the US and Europe of components used in drones, dealing a blow to Ukraine’s defense. — Bloomberg
• China opened an investigation into chipmaker Nvidia.

Media

• Former Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz is getting a show on One America News Network.
• Rupert Murdoch lost a bid to change his family’s trust to hand over control of his media empire to his son Lachlan when he dies. — NYT

Big Read

• The Trump Organization’s booming business in India is emerging as a big conflict of interest for the incoming president. — NYT

Principals Team

• Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant
• Reporters: Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Anupam Chander is a professor at Georgetown University law school and an expert on global tech regulation.

Syrian rebels stunned the world over the past 10 days, forcing a dictator out of power, Semafor’s Gulf editor Mohammed Sergie wrote, breaking down what happened and what could come next as Syrians navigate a new era.

“Will the weeks, months, or years ahead bring utopia? No. Will tyranny return? Perhaps. Could it be more brutal than what we’ve endured? Unimaginable,” he added.