Washington, DC

1. Trump’s health care push
2. Dems’ ACA doubts
3. US, Ukraine talks advance
4. Congress readies defense deal
5. Securing subsea cables
6. G20 summit wraps up
7. Trump’s Hollywood influence

Washington View: Trump at the Predators’ Ball

Europe’s rebuttal to Ukraine peace plan released … Lutnick, Greer to meet with EU trade reps … Israel kills top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon

Trump eyes new health care push

President Donald Trump and his party are entering the holiday week short on reasons to be thankful. Democrats are clobbering them on health care costs, the administration is facing scrutiny of ongoing talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Trump’s friendly tête-à-tête with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have robbed Republicans of a new boogeyman. Pivoting to go on offense, Trump plans to unveil a proposal to lower health care costs as soon as today, per MS NOW; it would include a two-year extension of enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums, with new limits, Politico reported. “We believe health care is going to come down,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on NBC. The proposal may face an uphill battle on Capitol Hill, but at least will give Republicans an opportunity to show they’re coming with solutions.

Dems still have doubts on health care deal

Trump is entering the health care conversation late in the game. Up until now, his absence has depressed any hope for a deal. Key Democrats left Washington for the holiday break seeing little interest from Trump despite there being a significant faction of invested House and Senate Republicans. “Trump made it pretty clear he’s not considering getting rid of the premium increases. It doesn’t really matter unless we’re negotiating with the White House. So we’re stuck,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “They’ve got to want to do this.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said even GOP support in the Senate is shaky: “Whether there are 13 of them who will step up and work with us remains to be seen.” This week will test that interest.

— Burgess Everett

White House eases off Ukraine pressure

The Trump administration is, for now, dialing back its pressure on Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire proposal the US had quietly drawn up with input from Russia. The US and Ukraine cited progress in talks in Geneva on Sunday and agreed to update the proposal, which critics slammed as being too favorable to Moscow. A joint statement described the talks as “constructive, focused, and respectful” and said the two sides “drafted an updated and refined peace framework.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio also made clear that Thanksgiving is not a hard-and-fast deadline for Kyiv to agree. “Our goal is to end this war as soon as possible, but we need a little more time,” he told reporters. Doubting the path forward, some US lawmakers are more interested in passing crippling secondary sanctions on Russia, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Morgan Chalfant report.

Congress readies defense deal text

Lawmakers are expected to release the text of their annual defense policy bill when they return to Washington after Thanksgiving, keeping them on track for passage by the end of the year. Members last week resolved outstanding issues like Syria sanctions, which House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast agreed to fully repeal as long as lawmakers made some changes to nonbinding language passed by the Senate, a person familiar with the deal said. But they still have to reach consensus on a handful of other provisions, including language that would block states from regulating AI and a bundle of Senate Banking Committee priorities that includes some bipartisan housing proposals. House Financial Services Chair French Hill rejected the latter last week. “The shutdown put me a little behind on [housing],” Hill told reporters Wednesday.

— Eleanor Mueller

Bill to address undersea cable sabotage

The US would be compelled to impose sanctions on foreigners who sabotage undersea cables used in global communications under a new bipartisan proposal. The bill from Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., also calls for the US to devote more resources, and expand work with allies and international bodies, to secure and repair subsea fiber-optic cables, which are thought to be at growing risk of attack by Russia and China. The bill, the details of which were shared first with Semafor, would also mandate a report to Congress within 180 days on China and Russia’s efforts to sabotage these cables. “As the world witnesses an uptick in cable cuts such as in the Baltic Sea and the Taiwan Strait this past year, the United States must position itself to respond to these evolving threats,” Shaheen said.

— Morgan Chalfant

G20 hails success without US

South Africa’s president said the G20 Summit successfully pushed through a declaration showing a “renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation” in the face of a US boycott. Trump had pulled the US from the Johannesburg meeting over false claims the country’s government persecutes its white minority; he also rejected Pretoria’s agenda to support developing nations’ clean energy transition, addressing spiralling debt costs and adapting to climate change-induced weather disasters. Despite the setback, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa secured consensus from the countries present, aside from Argentina, which did not object. But Hannah Ryder, a member of South Africa’s G20-appointed Africa Expert Panel, warned of concerns that Washington might withhold South Africa’s invitation to preparatory G20 meetings in Miami next year, an exclusion that could see the group “cease to function as a collective steering committee for the global economy [and] instead risk becoming a forum shaped by bilateral political tensions.”

— Yinka Adegoke and Alexis Akwagyiram

Trump pushes for new ‘Rush Hour’ film

Trump has brought his cultural taste to politics, elevating professional wrestling to the Republican National Convention and inviting the 1980s icons Sylvester Stallone and Mike Tyson to the White House. Now, as David Ellison remakes Paramount and closes in on a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Trump is encouraging Ellison to revive the raucous comedies and action movies of the late 20th century. A person directly familiar with the conversations between Trump and Larry Ellison, David’s father and financier, told Semafor’s Max Tani that he has pressed Paramount to bring back the Rush Hour franchise — a series from Brett Ratner, the director behind an upcoming Melania Trump biopic. Jackie Chan is 71, but nobody in this town lets age stop them anymore.

The best guide to this last week in Washington is a slim book, published in France last year to great acclaim and released last month in English with little fanfare under the title The Hour of the Predator. The author, Giuliano da Empoli, has advised the Italian and French governments and walked the halls of power with their leaders. He observes without judgment that a new type of political figure has risen in this new era.

These new “predators” are not populists per se, but men of action who disdain laws and lawyers, who have fought their way to the top in a “digital Somalia, a bankrupt state on a planetary scale.” Their power is drawn in part from acting unpredictably toward a future that has become inherently unknowable and is shaped through force. Trump, obviously, is da Empoli’s central example.

In Washington, economic power no longer follows party lines. The old frameworks — left vs. right, House vs. Senate, Republican vs. Democrat — no longer fully explain how economic power moves in the Capitol. Today’s influence moves through a wide network, from traditional power brokers to ideological outliers, dealmakers, and policy entrepreneurs. Join us Dec. 10 for exclusive one-on-one conversations with leaders including Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.), as we map the people moving capital, shaping policy, and redrawing the blueprint of economic power.

Dec. 10 | Washington, DC | Request Invitation

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Several House Republicans are considering following Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lead and retiring in the middle of their terms, with one senior GOP member saying “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower.”

Playbook: “Georgia Republicans running to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff are avoiding talking about health care in their crowded primary, giving him leverage to tout his vote against the shutdown on the grounds that the deal did not address the loss of subsidies.”

Axios: Approval of President Trump’s handling of the economy has dropped 15 points since March, per a new CBS/YouGov poll.

WaPo: “This president views the pardon power as a personal tool that he can use when it benefits him personally, politically, or financially, without assessing whether the use of the pardon power benefits the American public,” former senior Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Oyer said.

White House