Washington, DC

1. Louisiana Senate fight
2. Fed probe alternative
3. Trump eyes Spirit
4. Iran war standoff
5. UAE currency swap
6. Musk’s UBI support
7. Deportees to Congo?

PDB: Trump’s Putin outreach

U Michigan reports on consumer sentiment … Trump prepares for first WHCD as president … Trump to hold meme coin conference

Louisiana Senate race drives wedge in GOP

Louisiana is home to Mardi Gras, Cajun cooking, and Republicans’ most awkward Senate race, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s reelection run pits him against Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow — and is putting his colleagues in an unusual position. In interviews, GOP senators from John Cornyn to Rick Scott to Bernie Moreno said they aren’t taking sides in the race given the push and pull between one of their own chairmen and President Donald Trump, whom Cassidy voted to convict during his impeachment trial. “Bill’s a good guy. I like him,” Moreno said. “Obviously, the president has a reason to feel the way he does.” Republican senators are also watching how much the GOP backs its incumbents. It’s “awkward, but I still think we can do more. He’s the incumbent. He’s been a valuable member of the conference,” one Republican senator said.

Trump opens door to alternative Fed probe

As Republicans urge Trump to scrap federal prosecutors’ investigation of the Federal Reserve’s ongoing renovation, Trump signaled he may accept a different probe. Asked by Semafor Thursday if someone outside the Justice Department could get the answers he sought, Trump said: “[They] could. I mean, look, it’s pretty easy.” Senators — and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have floated congressional investigations in place of US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s in order for Sen Thom Tillis, R-N.C., to stop his blockade of Kevin Warsh’s nomination. “You have to find out what went wrong,” Trump said in response to a different question.“It was beautiful, and they ripped it down, and probably because it cost so much to fix it.” Though Trump didn’t mention Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s involvement with the project, he still took a swing: “On top of that, he’s been terrible on interest rates.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Trump ‘looking’ at buying Spirit Airlines

The US government will buy a stake in Spirit Airlines if it can “get it for the right price,” Trump said Thursday, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reports. “We’re thinking about doing it, helping them out, meaning bailing them out, or buying it — I think we’d just buy it, we’d be getting it virtually debt-free,” Trump said in response to a question from Semafor. “They have some good aircraft, some good assets — and when the price of oil goes down, we’ll sell it for a profit.” Officials are currently in talks to buy a stake in Spirit for as much as $500 million, The Wall Street Journal first reported. But it’s unclear what funds the Trump administration could tap for a purchase, since other deals the departments of Defense and Commerce have struck were focused on objectives like strengthening supply chains and bolstering tech leadership.

Iran war depletes US stockpiles

The Middle East conflict has evolved into a wary standoff after a series of ceasefires, but it has come at a considerable cost to US war readiness. Washington said an Israel-Lebanon truce would last a further three weeks, after earlier extending a ceasefire with Iran indefinitely. American forces have used thousands of missiles in attacking Iran while allies have powered through stockpiles in fending off Tehran’s assaults, leaving reserves low and forcing the Pentagon to rush hardware to the Gulf. The drawdowns have left the US underprepared for potential conflict with Russia or China; in particular, replacing stockpiles of air-defense missiles — critical to supporting Taiwan should China invade — could take six years, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Questions swirl over UAE currency swap

The United Arab Emirates’ request for a US currency swap akin to Argentina’s has a math problem, experts tell Semafor. Bessent recently endorsed the idea of a financial lifeline amid economic fallout from the war in Iran, telling lawmakers at a Tuesday hearing it “would both benefit the UAE and the US.” But experts say the UAE’s reserves are far larger than Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, which would facilitate the swap. That would make them a better candidate for the Fed facility known as FIMA Repo, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Brad Setser told Semafor. “They maybe were wanting to just, by making an ask, alert Secretary Bessent to the scale of their estimates of the cost of US and Israeli action,” Setser said. Said CFR’s Jon Hillman: The “back-of-the-envelope math is a little challenging.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Tech billionaires’ UBI support draws skeptics

House progressives are looking askance at the recent embrace of universal basic income by tech billionaires like Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Musk has lately posted about the need for a “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government” as “the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.” And Altman has voiced some support for universal basic income proposals or even a “Universal Basic Compute” plan to give Americans a share of AI productivity. But as the left grows increasingly distrustful of Big Tech companies, progressives aren’t convinced of the moguls’ sincerity. “It’s always that the devil’s in the details where that comes from,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “I am skeptical about their willingness to pay or incur the taxes necessary to sustain such proposals, which would have to target AI.”

— Nicholas Wu

Trump mulls sending deportees to Congo

The Trump administration is increasingly targeting the Democratic Republic of Congo as a location to send deportees. The US deported 15 South American migrants to the DRC this week under a third-country expulsion deal, while reports say the State Department is separately discussing relocating more than 1,100 Afghan allies in Qatar to the Central African nation. The DRC has courted the Trump administration through mineral agreements and joins a growing list of African nations that have signed third-country deportation deals with Washington. “These kinds of third-country deportations raise serious legal and humanitarian concerns,” said the American Immigration Council’s Jorge Loweree. A State Department spokesperson defended plans to relocate the Afghans, calling it “a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security” of Americans.

— Adrian Elimian

Blindspot: Kabul and NATO

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: The US military upgraded valor awards given to Marines who defended Abbey Gate at Kabul International Airport when a suicide bomber attacked during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What the Right isn’t reading: EU officials are planning table-top war games and other exercises amid worries about a declining US commitment to NATO under the Trump administration, The Associated Press reported.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: House Speaker Mike Johnson’s team is “hell-bent” on passing a FISA Section 702 reauthorization bill, with Johnson prepared, if necessary, to put the bill on the floor under a rule which requires a simple majority for passage, House Republican sources said.

Playbook: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is scheduled to have her second child, a baby girl, next week; while no one is set to formally fill in for her during maternity leave, Vice President JD Vance is expected to be among those briefing reporters.

Axios: Some House Democrats are urging fellow party members to begin building a case to impeach President Trump should they retake control of the House next January.

White House

• President Trump plans to invite Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the G20 leaders’ summit at his resort in Miami in December. — WaPo
• Trump plans to nominate executive David Cummins as TSA administrator. — CBS

• Now-former Navy Secretary John Phelan appealed to Trump directly to keep his job. — WSJ

Congress

• Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., “stayed out until the wee hours of the morning partying at a club” in Colombia last year, despite a “credible threat to his life.” — NOTUS

Outside the Beltway

• Citadel’s Ken Griffin is “appalled” that his Manhattan penthouse is the poster child for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax. — WSJ

Economy

• US jobless claims rose to 214,000 last week, though that is consistent with low layoffs.