Washington, DC

1. Collins on Iran vote
2. New Iran ad in Maine
3. Iran deal could take months
4. Short FISA extension passes
5. Bannon’s rosy predictions
6. Zambia aid questions
7. China’s AI capabilities

PDB: Alabama Senate race update

Trump speaks at TPUSA event in Arizona … Acting ICE chief Lyons to step down … France, UK host summit to reopen Strait of Hormuz

Collins sees limit for Iran war authorization

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, thinks the US war in Iran will need congressional authorization once it hits a 60-day mark that past legislation established for military conflicts — and she doesn’t think she’d vote for it. “It is very likely that I would vote not to authorize further hostilities,” Collins said at Semafor World Economy. It’s a notable position for Collins, who has a habit of breaking with President Donald Trump but who has voted against resolutions constraining Trump’s war powers in the Middle East. Collins, who is facing a difficult reelection battle, told Semafor on Thursday that she “always wanted this operation to be brief but successful” and described deploying ground troops in Iran as “another red line.” Other Republicans are similarly hoping for a swift end to the war: Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., told Semafor it’s “time to wrap it as quickly as we can.”

Democrat group dings Collins on Iran

Democrats, meanwhile, are knocking Collins on the Iran war and rising energy prices. Majority Forward, a nonprofit affiliated with Senate Majority PAC, is launching a new $600,000 campaign on Monday dinging Collins for what the narrator characterizes as a vote “to give Trump a blank check for his war in Iran,” according to details first shared with Semafor. The ad, which will run statewide, urges Collins to “stop supporting Trump’s war, Mainers can’t afford it.” Collins told Semafor she voted against Democrat-sponsored war powers resolutions so far because she “did not in the beginning want to send a message to our troops or the Iranians that we were not for our troops or supporting our troops.” The ad makes ample use of B-roll footage showing Collins with the president; she told us that her relationship with Trump is “workmanlike” but that they have disagreements.

— Burgess Everett

Iran deal could take six months

Some Gulf and European leaders reportedly fear that it could take six months or more to negotiate a US-Iran peace deal, amid calls to urgently reopen the Strait of Hormuz to avoid severe food and energy supply shocks globally. Several leaders have urged an extended ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, according to Bloomberg, pressing for a deal that would ban Iran from enriching uranium or building long-range missiles. Trump said Tehran had agreed to hand over its “nuclear dust,” enriched uranium, but Iran has not confirmed the concession. There are some positive signs: A ceasefire took effect between Israel and Lebanon, bolstering truce talks between the US and Iran that could happen as early as this weekend.

House passes two-week FISA extension

The House voice voted an extension of the government’s warrantless surveillance powers until April 30 in the early hours of Friday morning. Conservative have dug in against extending the powers without more changes, and attempts to pass an 18-month clean extension and a five-year extension with some reforms both failed on the House floor. Trump has been pushing House Republicans to pass the 18-month extension, but his appeals haven’t moved the needle. Democrats have been reluctant to bail out Republicans, with many in the caucus unwilling to give Trump the surveillance powers without guardrails. “We were very close tonight,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters. “There’s some nuances with the language and some questions need to be answered, and we’ll get it done. The extension allows us the time to do that.” The Senate is now faced with taking up the renewal before the powers expire on Monday.

— Nicholas Wu

Bannon predicts GOP will hold House

Prominent MAGA commentator Steve Bannon on Thursday offered a rosy view of the populist right’s influence — and of Republicans’ fortunes, predicting they would keep the House this fall. “I feel better than ever,” Bannon told Semafor World Economy, touting the success of conservative Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Texas and polls showing that less than a majority of South Carolina voters approve of GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose hawkishness has made him one of Bannon’s frequent political punching bags. Still, Bannon acknowledged that, while populist- and nationalist-leaning conservatives such as himself “were ascendant” in the beginning of Trump’s second term, recent months have seen his wing’s interest “maybe not totally aligned” with the rest of the party. One Republican Bannon was less bullish on: Vice President JD Vance.

Rubio pressed on Zambia aid

Three Democratic senators are demanding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reject what they characterized as a scheme to withhold lifesaving HIV treatment from over a million Zambians, unless the African nation agrees to grant US businesses favorable access to its copper mines, Semafor’s Adrian Elimian reports. The senators, including Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter to Rubio that they are “alarmed by reports” about State proposing to condition both HIV funding and previously pledged economic assistance on Zambia agreeing to favorable economic reforms for US businesses. “We urge you to reject this tactic of economic coercion,” they wrote in the letter shared first with Semafor. A State spokesperson said the department is moving “from a foreign assistance paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.”

Could China develop a Mythos competitor?

Cybersecurity concerns about Anthropic’s new model Mythos raised a pressing question for policymakers and executives: Could China develop similar technology in the near future? The answer is yes, if you ask Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark. Within a year and a half, “there’ll be open-source models from China that have these capabilities,” Clark said at Semafor World Economy this week. White House cyber director Sean Cairncross agreed, telling Semafor that “it would be irresponsible” for the US “to assume that that wouldn’t be the case.” After raising concerns with Wall Street bankers about Mythos’ ability to detect cyber vulnerabilities missed by humans, the Treasury Department is now trying to get access to the model to search for weaknesses ahead of any wider release. Separately, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is set to meet with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles today, Axios reported, a possible breakthrough in the firm’s ongoing feud with the Pentagon.

On this week’s Mixed Signals, Patrick Radden Keefe joins the show to talk about page-turning journalism, his own celebrity, and the humanity behind his work. Patrick discusses his new book, London Falling, how he finds stories that pull readers in, and the balance between mystery and resolution. He also touches on his unexpected celebrity, the shift from page to screen, and why real people and messy emotions make the best stories.

Blindspot: Migration and NPR

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: Lawyers are helping migrants pretend to be gay in order to get asylum in the UK, a BBC investigation found.

What the Right isn’t reading: Philanthropist Connie Ballmer and another anonymous donor gifted NPR $113 million following federal funding cuts. 

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: “Does anybody actually know what the hell is in this thing?” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said of the FISA bill, after some proposed changes were written in by hand at the last minute.

Playbook: The battleground states of Nevada and Arizona are a testing ground for President Trump’s popularity with a key swing group: Latino voters, with one Republican strategist saying that whichever way they swing, “they will decide the makeup of the Congress.”

Axios: Of the Trump administration’s move away from dramatic publicity tactics on immigration, a former DHS official said that “cooler heads have prevailed,” including those of chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy, James Blair.

White House

• President Trump said he might visit Pakistan if US negotiators sign a peace deal with Iran.
• Trump