Principals

1. NY shooting
2. China trade talks
3. Economic data
4. Senate sprint to recess
5. Netanyahu faces blowback
6. NY Dems on Israel
7. EPA move looms
8. Senate housing test

PDB: Trump moves up Russia deadline

Trump attends opening of Aberdeenshire golf course … Fed meeting begins … Dow futures ⬆️ 0.19%

Shooting inflames gun control debate

The US is grappling with another mass shooting, after a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle killed four people in a New York City office building before turning the gun on himself. The attack hit a Manhattan building occupied by the private equity giant Blackstone, the professional services firm KPMG, and the National Football League. Shane Tamura, 27, who police identified as the gunman, is said to have been targeting the NFL but ended up on a different floor. The tragedy will revive a familiar debate about gun control in Washington. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called mass shootings a “plague” and called for “decisive action.” “We don’t need more gun control, we need more idiot control,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said on Fox News. President Donald Trump, who is still in Scotland, has yet to weigh in. The shooting — which took place a short walk from where UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson was gunned down — also raises questions about security in the city.

Pressure on US-China talks

US and Chinese officials meet again for talks today as they look to extend a trade truce beyond Aug. 12. There are signs that Trump really wants a deal: He has reportedly frozen export controls on China and blocked Taiwan’s president from making a New York stopover, per the FT. The US worried the visit would compromise trade talks and planning for a potential summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to Bloomberg. Trump, who overnight denied seeking a “summit” but said he “may go to China” at Xi’s invitation, is under enormous pressure to ink trade deals with remaining countries before higher tariffs kick in on his self-imposed deadline Friday. The US-EU trade deal announced over the weekend was hailed by the Trump administration but spurred frustration and resignation within the bloc.

US on cusp of clearer economic picture

Fresh economic data this week may finally bring a bit of the clarity that policymakers and investors have been desperately seeking. Numbers on unemployment claims, new hiring, consumer sentiment, and US GDP should sharpen an economic picture that has so far been a partisan Rorschach test, with the White House and its critics clinging to their masts and investors, unable to discern much, continuing nervously to buy. Quarterly results from tech giants may provide some ballast for the AI hype, the IMF’s global outlook will set a consensus backdrop for continued trade talks, and Census Bureau data will give an updated picture of America’s trade balance and corporate inventories ahead of Trump’s Aug. 1 tariff deadline. Who is buying what, at what price, and why are questions that have remained puzzlingly hard to answer in the four months since “Liberation Day.”

— Liz Hoffman

Seeking 100 senators’ agreement

Senate Republicans want to fuse together three spending bills while confirming as many of Trump’s nominees as possible — a process that’s testing the chamber’s boundaries of “unanimous consent.” Republicans want a deal with Democrats on confirming nominees quickly, and though Senate Majority Leader John Thune hasn’t “ruled anything out” in terms of workload ahead of the summer break, recess appointments are probably not in the cards. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins met with Thune on Monday about tacking two more spending bills onto the Veterans Affairs spending bill the Senate is considering, though that too requires everyone’s agreement to do quickly — which is always tricky. Collins and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., are working to clear out objections to combining the bills. Collins also talked to House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., over the weekend — a sign of bicameral coordination.

— Burgess Everett

Dam starts to break on Netanyahu

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces international furor amid the starvation crisis in Gaza. Trump publicly broke with the Israeli leader on Monday, telling reporters that there is “real starvation” in Gaza and vowing to set up food centers. On Capitol Hill, prominent liberal supporters of Israel are sounding more critical by the day: Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, called for a vote on suspending US support for Israel “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.” Still, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., stood by his support for the Israeli government. “Some people blame Israel but for me, for this tragedy, I blame Hamas and Iran for the conditions there,” he told Semafor. Netanyahu’s favorability rating among US adults is lower than it has been since 1997, and approval of Israel’s Gaza military campaign has reached a nadir, according to Gallup.

— Morgan Chalfant and Burgess Everett

NY Dems side with Mamdani on Israel

A supermajority of New York City’s Democratic voters agree with Zohran Mamdani’s views on Israel, including his support for arresting the country’s prime minister, according to a poll shared first with Semafor. Seventy-eight percent of voters who participated in the June mayoral primary, which Mamdani won by 12 points, agreed that Israel was conducting a “genocide” in Gaza; 79% wanted to “restrict taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel” until the country ends its bombardment. The survey, by Data for Progress for the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, was the latest to find that Democratic voters are more pro-Gaza than their leaders — a trend also seen in polling by Gallup and other public pollsters. “The dam has broken,” said Margaret DeReus, IMEU’s executive director. Progressives increasingly see the party as vulnerable to primary challenges on the issue.

— David Weigel

EPA greenhouse gas move looms

The EPA is expected to publish as soon as today a proposal that will make it much harder for future administrations to regulate greenhouse gases. The proposal would rescind the EPA’s 2009 legal basis for restricting carbon emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks. The immediate impact of the repeal would be limited, since the Trump administration already moved to toss Biden-era emissions regulations. The repeal, which is expected to face legal challenges, would require future administrations to go through a tedious process to reestablish the endangerment finding before they could even begin to work on restoring emissions regulations. Automakers and utilities, meanwhile, would face years of confusion about their emissions obligations. And the repeal would “really open the floodgates for what those companies are fighting in court on a daily basis,” said Charlotte Jenkins, energy analyst at Capstone, since the EPA’s current rules give them a layer of protection from environmentalists’ lawsuits.

— Tim McDonnell

Housing bill faces Senate test

The Senate Banking Committee is expected today to advance its first bipartisan housing bill in more than a decade — but members and aides told Semafor it’s not clear when it could get to the floor. Working in its favor: Trump’s fixation on housing as he pushes for lower interest rates, which fuels pressure on Congress to pass something, and the bill’s inclusion of several popular standalone bills, which means a lot of authors leaning on leadership. The legislation, which would revamp regulations on critical but small corners of the sector, is also relatively noncontroversial: As one economist put it, “it’s no game-changer.” Still, there are few guarantees as members’ priorities compete with Trump’s agenda ahead of the looming midterms. “It just depends on a lot of factors,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Monday night. “I’m certainly going to push.”

Blindspot: Florida and the Kennedy Center

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: A Florida county school board chair apologized after celebrating Hulk Hogan’s death on social media as “one less MAGA.”

What the Right isn’t reading: Republicans are trying to rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Senate Majority Leader John Thune is staring down his next test — balancing “a vengeful president, unhappy conservatives, worried GOP moderates and Democrats, all while seeking to protect the Senate’s institutional power and his own majority.”

Playbook: MAGA might be moving the Republican Party away from its usual party line on Israel. “It seems that for the under-30-year-old MAGA base, Israel has almost no support, and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s attempt to save himself politically by dragging America in deeper to another Middle East war has turned off a large swath of older MAGA diehards,” Steve Bannon said.

WaPo: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will visit Texas tomorrow to meet with Democrats and strategize about Republican attempts to redistrict the state.

Axios: Democrats are optimistic about winning back the House next year, despite historic levels of unpopularity.

White House

• The Office of Personnel Management released a memo encouraging religious expression among federal workers, including “conversations … including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their religious views.”
• President Trump is amping up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving him a deadline of 10 to 12 days to make a ceasefire deal with Ukraine before imposing additional sanctions.

Congress

• Sen. Dick Durbin demanded the Justice Department produce recordings and transcripts of recent interviews Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Epstein associate Ghislane Maxwell.

Outside the Beltway

• Twenty-one states sued to block the Agriculture Department’s collection of food stamp recipients’ personal information, such as their immigration status.

Campaigns 

• North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is officially running for Senate.
• Paul Dans, an author of Project 2025, is challenging South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in the GOP primary in the state. — AP

Business

• The Commerce Department may soon charge patent holders a sizable fee in order to raise government revenue. — WSJ

Economy

• A federal judge denied an attempt by a Trump-linked investment fund to force the Federal Reserve to allow the public to attend meetings of a committee that helps set interest rates.

Education

• Harvard University is considering offering the Trump administration up to $500 million to settle a probe into alleged civil rights violations and what the administration describes as antisemitism. — NYT
• The Trump administration is investigating Duke University and its law journal along similar lines. — CNN

Courts

• The Justice Department has filed a misconduct complaint against Justice James Boasberg, the jurist in charge of the Kilmar Ábrego García case.
• Ghislane Maxwell is appealing her sex-trafficking convictions to the Supreme Court.

National Security

• Pentagon employees are frustrated by a new rule banning them from participating in think tank events. — Politico
• The White House officially accepted an “unconditional donation” of a Qatari jet to be the new Air Force One; the costs to renovate it are classified. — ABC

Foreign Policy

• A federal trade court is allowing President Trump’s decision ending the “de minimis” tariff exemption to stand, at least for now — a blow to sellers of low-cost imported goods like Temu and Shein.
• Two senior EU Commission officials admitted Europe has no ability to force the $600 billion in private-sector US investment the bloc promised as part of its recent trade deal.

Media

• President Trump is seeking the deposition of Rupert Murdoch in his ongoing defamation case against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a risqué birthday letter signed by Trump and sent to Jeffrey Epstein.

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, Eleanor Mueller, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., fist-bumps Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., during a vote.