Washington, DC

1. Senate passes war powers
2. Stocks sink
3. Mamdani’s socialist picks
4. SCOTUS’ full plate
5. Trump’s solar blowback

Nasdaq ▼ 2% as the tech selloff deepened.

Trump defends Iran deal as criticism mounts

President Donald Trump is defending his peace deal with Iran as he faces critics on the left and right, in Iran and across the globe. “They’re wrong. They’re wrong. They know they’re wrong,” Trump said today, responding to Tehran’s claim that negotiators had not blessed the return of nuclear inspectors. “They told us inside and we have it down 100%.” US and Iranian officials have sparred this week over what’s been settled, including Iran’s nuclear future, its role in the Strait of Hormuz, and reconstruction funds. Adding to the pressure, Republicans who backed the war are increasingly questioning the way Trump ended it. And today four Republicans again joined all but one Democrat in the Senate to support a war powers resolution, passing the symbolic rebuke on the 10th try, as two Republican “no” votes were out.

AI doubts fuel US stock slide

US stocks fell again today on global fears that the artificial intelligence boom has reached its limit. The proximate cause was a selloff of tech stocks in South Korea. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix recently hit $1.35 trillion in value, surpassing chip giant Samsung Electronics as Korea’s most valuable company. But when Korean regulators warned that the tech sector may be overheating, investors pulled back, and the Kospi fell 10% in a single session yesterday. Because SK Hynix and Samsung sit at the center of the AI ecosystem, global markets saw a signal about AI, not a Korea-specific event. Wall Street had already grown wary of the AI boom. With the threat of interest rate hikes looming, the selloff in Korea confirmed existing fears and sparked a wider response.

Mamdani bets big on democratic socialism

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is ineligible to run for president, but he’s still picking a fight over the future of the Democratic Party, Semafor’s David Weigel reports. It starts with three deep-blue House Democratic primaries today, where he’s backing state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, former city comptroller Brad Lander, and fellow Democratic Socialists of America organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier — only one of whom, Lander, has clear momentum. Mamdani is doing so down-ballot, too, backing DSA candidates for the state legislature in a bid to boost the power of a left-wing faction that plenty of local Democrats see as a foreign, gentrifying force. Mamdani is betting, as he did last year in his own race, that the 14,000-odd Democratic Socialists of America members who live in the city could out-organize the party’s rickety machines.

Supreme Court leaves major decisions for final stretch

The Supreme Court released five opinions today, leaving over a dozen major cases to be decided before the end of the term, likely within the next two weeks. Still on the docket are cases with some of the highest-profile implications for Trump’s agenda and the midterms, including decisions on birthright citizenship, the president’s power to fire independent agency officials, and mail-in voting. Today’s rulings were comparatively lower-profile: The court ruled that a Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards could not sue state officials for violating his religious beliefs; that members of the Falun Gong movement could not sue an American technology company for allegedly aiding the Chinese government; and that ExxonMobil could sue Cuba’s government over confiscated property. Another round of opinions is expected Thursday as the court continues its push ahead of its summer recess.

Solar industry leader criticizes White House

The White House has “underappreciated” the role solar energy will play in addressing the challenges of energy affordability and reliability amid booming power demand, Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota Republican governor and now the country’s top solar industry lobbyist, told Semafor. Despite the rollback of renewable energy tax credits and a federal government that routinely casts doubt on its efficacy, solar, combined with batteries, remains by far the fastest-growing energy source in the US, accounting for 91% of new power added to the grid in the first quarter of the year. Pawlenty’s priorities, he said in his first interview as CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, include pushing for a permitting reform bill to pass Congress this year and for sustained tax credit support for US solar panel manufacturing. The US is overseeing “a golden age of solar,” he said.

— Tim McDonnell

Wall Street fell in love with your life insurance. Should you be worried? Anant Bhalla had a front-row seat to Wall Street’s transformation of the life insurance industry. Now, he believes it has gone too far. On this week’s Compound Interest, presented by Amazon Business, the former CEO of American Equity joins Liz and Rohan to discuss the rise of “zombie” insurers, ratings shopping, and what comes next as life insurance has evolved into a multi-trillion-dollar investment engine.

White House

• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is flying on Air Force One with the president tonight as she eases back into her duties after going on maternity leave in April.

Campaigns

• Maryland’s 5th Congressional District is home to a Democratic primary unlike any other this cycle: Three candidates with direct African roots are among the leading candidates competing for a single seat, Semafor’s Adrian Elimian reports.
• President Trump visited Pennsylvania today, returning to the campaign trail for the first time in two weeks.

Media

• The Daily Wire is looking to raise $100 million in investment, Semafor’s Max Tani and Rohan Goswami scoop.
• The Justice Department sought to force national security reporters from The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to testify before a grand jury but backed off after the news organizations challenged the subpoenas.

Courts

• A Texas federal court sentenced eight protesters involved in a 2025 armed attack on an ICE detention center to prison terms of 30 to 100 years, some of the harshest penalties ever imposed in a US protest-related case.
• A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can expand expedited deportations nationwide for migrants unable to prove that they have lived in the US for at least two years.

Congress

• Senate Democrats are calling for a hearing on a $500 million investment made by a member of the Emirati royal family in the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. —WSJ
• Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., says the Trump administration is still sitting on $95 billion in immigration enforcement funding from last year’s party-line spending bill, in addition to the $70 billion law the GOP Congress just passed.

Energy

• Officials from Oman and Iran met today to discuss the “administration” of the Strait of Hormuz and associated “costs,” a signal they may intend to charge fees to traverse the waterway. That’d be a nonstarter with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said no tolls or fees would be tolerated.
• The Energy Department will put $17.5 billion behind low-cost loans to boost nuclear power. — WSJ

National Security

• The US fighter pilot shot down over Iran and rescued by special forces said he saw Iranian drones moving in a “jellyfish” formation. — CNN

Business

• Top CEO pay is surging, with more crossing the $100 million line than in any year since 2021. — WSJ
• Teamsters president Sean O’Brien is using his relationship with President Trump to try to end 35 years of federal oversight of the union. — NYT

Health

• The Justice Department unveiled charges against 450 defendants for over $6.5 billion in alleged healthcare fraud. — WSJ
• The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any previous outbreak, per the WHO.

— Senate Majority Leader John Thune on President Trump.