Washington, DC

1. Return of tariff maximalism
2. Trump eyes Iran escalation
3. Saudi nuclear deal
4. Arizona primary results
5. Dems’ healthcare debate
6. Rising political threats
7. Liberal lexicon attacks

PDB: Trump’s rapid turnover

Trump in Georgia … Senate Dems wargame responses to possible Trump election threats … Rubio to meet Lavrov in Manila tomorrow

Trump flirts again with tariff maximalism

President Donald Trump is toying with a return to tariff maximalism, deploying a legally dubious negotiating tactic against Canada that promises to again spike Republican lawmakers’ blood pressure, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller and Nicholas Wu report. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed “to intensify negotiations,” as Carney told reporters yesterday, before the US president imposes threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian autos, dairy, and alcohol next month. “What the administration is trying to do here is to amp up pressure on Canada to get them to make more concessions” on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, said Peter Harrell, an attorney who served as former President Joe Biden’s senior director of international economics. “What this might just as easily do in Canada is force them politically to dig in despite the costs.” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is set to testify this morning in the Senate.

Trump eyes Iran escalation as GOP frets

Trump is eyeing more escalation in Iran, even as he is set to attend the dignified transfer for four fallen soldiers today. Yesterday, Trump indicated that the US will strike the underground complex Pickaxe Mountain “pretty soon,” as his Cabinet lobbied for war funding that’s mired in congressional uncertainty. Republicans, meanwhile, are increasingly concerned that the unpopular war will hurt their standing with voters, and are asking more probing questions about how much the war might cost and what options the president has to end it. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told top Trump officials on Tuesday that “the question that the American people have is when the difficult decision comes. Because I don’t think diplomacy is necessarily working.” Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio maintained today that talks with the Iranians remain possible: “If they’re serious, we’re serious.”

— Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett

Saudi nuclear deal would face opposition

The White House is said to have agreed to a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that could allow the kingdom to enrich its own uranium. US companies would have a central role in Saudi nuclear infrastructure, including building the enrichment facility, The Wall Street Journal reported. The agreement aims to restore US-Saudi relations, which have been strained by the Iran war, per The New York Times, but it may face opposition in Congress and abroad: Many US lawmakers and Israeli officials are concerned such an agreement could give Riyadh the means to develop nuclear weapons. The Saudi crown prince has said he would develop the bomb if Iran does, which has become an increasingly pressing concern globally after the collapse of the Obama-era nuclear deal.

Biggs’ big night in Arizona

Arizona Republicans nominated Rep. Andy Biggs for governor on Tuesday, as conservative candidates with Trump endorsements prevailed in their primaries. Biggs defeated Rep. David Schweikert in a landslide, while former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely, also supported by Trump, won the nomination to replace Schweikert. In the red 5th District, Trump-backed, scandal-battered Mark Lamb won the GOP nod. On the Democratic side, Amish Shah, a former state lawmaker who nearly beat Schweikert in the 2024 race for his Scottsdale-based seat, led early returns against Marlene Galán-Woods, an ex-TV anchor backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. A victory for Shah would be the third setback for the DCCC this year in a primary it invested in. The national party had fewer problems in the Mesa-based 4th District, where Rep. Greg Stanton won easily over left-wing activist Kai Newkirk.

— David Weigel

Center-left Dems distance from Medicare for All

The center-left Searchlight Institute is urging Democrats to abandon Medicare for All legislation and instead work toward universal healthcare in other ways that wouldn’t disrupt private insurance. The Health Care Unity plan, shared first with Semafor, endorses a bigger role for government in healthcare — negotiating drug prices and breaking up medical monopolies — but cautions that sunny polling on Medicare for All obscures the fact that most people with private plans want to keep them. “Every Democrat should be able to say that we want universal healthcare in this country,” said Searchlight Institute President Adam Jentleson. “But any time you talk about healthcare, you either fall in the Medicare for All lane, or for incremental reforms. That is not the path forward.” This morning, the Congressional Progressive Caucus will hold a hearing with National Nurses United, again making the case for the full Medicare for All bill.

— David Weigel

More Americans see danger in US politics

Americans are more likely than those living in any other nation to name politics as a leading risk to their safety. One in 10 US adults identified politics as the “greatest source of risk” to their daily safety, according to new Gallup polling, up from 6% who said so in 2023 and 2021. The average proportion of people who said politics pose a safety risk across 140 countries is just 1%. In the US, the numbers are similar across party lines, though Democrats’ and Republicans’ reasons for citing politics as a safety risk differ; Republicans blame Democrats and Democrats point to the Trump administration, though respondents from across the ideological spectrum say partisan polarization is a factor. Overall, Americans say road accidents pose the biggest threat to their safety, followed by crime and violence.

How Dems came to embrace land acknowledgments

Democrats’ land acknowledgment custom hasn’t drawn the same intraparty scrutiny as other academic language that’s crept into their lexicon, like “Latinx” or “birthing people,” but it’s emblematic of a broader trend toward lofty parlance that draws mockery from the GOP and occasionally raises questions from Democrats who want to keep it simple. Take Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor, who is running to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa. In 2020, she offered an anecdote about a university professor who talked about Native American tribes in the region, saying that “the land that is stolen that we’re sitting on.” Only a few dozen people have replayed the segment on YouTube since then. But Republicans hoping to hang onto the critical swing-seat House race have found it. They’re asking whether Cognetti stands by the view that her district is “stolen.”

Blindspot: Fraud and fuel

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 Treasury Department said that new controls prevented nearly $100 million in government payments from being sent to deceased individuals, the New York Post reported.

What the Right isn’t reading: The Freedom Fuel Network of convenience stores promoted by the White House is run in part by a “New Jersey entrepreneur who this year was ordered, along with his brother, to pay civil damages for unlawfully taking more than 200,000 gallons of fuel,” The Associated Press reported.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Some Republican leaders are warning the Pentagon could face serious funding problems if Congress doesn’t pass a war supplemental soon. “They’re going to have to spend any money they have discretion over for training and maintenance to fill that for the balance of the fiscal year,” said House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

White House

• Turnover during Trump’s second administration has surpassed that of his first term, according to a new analysis from the Partnership for Public Service. According to the tally, 27 Senate-confirmed administration officials have already left, compared to 11 at this point during the first administration.
• Trump’s Cabinet chiefs are joining TikTok. — Axios

Congress

• The House passed a stopgap funding bill largely along party lines that would forestall a shutdown until at least December.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson said he supports a ban on lawmakers having sexual relationships with aides.
• Senators on both sides of the aisle are increasingly criticizing Trump Media and Technology Group’s reported plans to sell real-time access to the president’s Truth Social posts.

Outside the Beltway

• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged that city officials have no authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the mayor’s pledges.

Campaigns

• Betting platform Kalshi is launching a “midterms hub” ahead of the November elections.
• The Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor was so badly scrambled by candidates quitting and then reentering the race that state Democrats are asking Wisconsin’s election commission to let absentee voters recast their ballots.

• Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., will not seek reelection after his state redrew its congressional maps.

Business

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scrapped rules requiring many private-sector employers to record and submit demographic data on their employees.
• OpenAI is