Washington, DC

1. Senate $ battle
2. Trump’s intel threat
3. Diesel deal’s limits
4. Inflation report today
5. Iowa, Georgia, Maine debates
6. AI task force lobbied
7. Omar search fallout
8. Europe’s ‘blunder’

PDB: BofA to pay $1.2 billion fine

Trump appears in Arizona, Montana… Fed releases Beige Book … Hegseth hosts autonomous warfare panel

Top Dem super PAC spends big in MI, ME

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pouring nearly $7 million more into two major races, according to details shared first with Semafor. Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is adding $3.7 million to its campaign in Michigan, bringing the group’s total investment up to nearly $35 million in a must-win race between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers. The group is also spending $3 million more in Maine to beat GOP Sen. Susan Collins and aid Democrat Troy Jackson. The new spending comes as the group pauses ads in Georgia and North Carolina, states where Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Roy Cooper are favored to win. The group’s ad campaign this week offers a road map to the battlegrounds: New Hampshire, Michigan, Maine, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, and Texas.

— Burgess Everett

Trump mulls Ukraine intelligence-sharing

President Donald Trump is downplaying the idea of cutting off intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, telling reporters yesterday that the US is still sharing intelligence and that “we help them” — while emphasizing that his goal is to see an end to Russia’s years-long war on the country. But the idea is actively being discussed inside the White House, one Trump administration official told Semafor. And notably, there’s not yet consensus on what to do: CIA Director John Ratcliffe is said to be opposed to the idea. “Trump is pretty pissed off. He could order it,” the administration official said, suggesting that Trump should end its intelligence-sharing specifically for targets inside Russia instead. Last year, Trump briefly suspended intelligence-sharing with Ukraine after a tense Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said recently that Kyiv received no intelligence from partners on a Russian missile attack.

— Shelby Talcott

Diesel deal fallout eclipses price impact

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deal to deliver Russian diesel to global markets may be sending shockwaves through the GOP — but don’t expect it to do the same to prices. Already, multiple House Republicans; key GOP candidates; and two bipartisan groups of senators have pushed back on the move. The planned imports will “have very little, unnoticeable impact on domestic US diesel prices, even if it happens — and I think that’s a big if,” given legal complications and Russian constraints, Bloomberg economist Chris Kennedy, who served on the National Security Council during the Trump and Biden administrations, told Semafor. He said that the amount of diesel Russia has pledged to release for the month of November represents only “one day of US diesel demand.” The White House pushed back: One official insisted to Semafor that “massive amounts of supply will lower costs for American farmers, truckers, and workers.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Inflation expected to rise again

Republicans are facing hurdles ahead of the midterms due to inflation. A government measurement out today will show just how much prices rose in September as costs weigh on voters (and the Federal Reserve). Economists predict the consumer price index rose 0.6% last month, with oil prices driving up the cost of energy and other goods. It’s those prices that have spooked the White House, leading Trump to mull a diesel export ban and strike a controversial diesel deal with Russia. The government will also report producer prices and retail sales later this week, two other key measures of inflation and consumer spending. Big banks continue raking in profits, but even they warn that rising interest rates are taking their toll. “Hopefully we’ll enjoy this good environment for a while,” JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon said yesterday. “We just don’t know when it’s going to stop.”

Dems invoke Trump in close Senate races

Senate candidates covered familiar ground in Tuesday’s debates, with Democrats blaming high costs on tariffs and the Iran war and Republicans defending the president’s gambles. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose punchy first debate with Rep. Mike Collins rekindled speculation that he might run for president, said in Atlanta that he wouldn’t; Collins hit back when Ossoff said he’d been slow to support releasing the Epstein files, but refused to say Trump won in 2020. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek also hit GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson on not releasing the files more quickly. Hinson slammed “too liberal” Turek’s promise to vote to end the Iran war — but also said she opposed Trump’s “deal with Russia” to temporarily lower diesel prices. The third of four debates between Sen. Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson revisited her voting record and their dueling claims of fraud for financial gain.

— David Weigel

AI task force readies for first meeting

All eyes are on the first meeting of the White House’s AI task force this week as groups and members of Congress try to influence the newly formed body. Americans for Responsible Innovation, former Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Brad Carson’s nonprofit focused on federal AI safety regulation, is pushing the task force to “explore the need for Congress to develop new laws that provide for enforceable safety standards and public transparency” into AI development. Voluntary commitments will not be enough, the group argues, and the task force should make specific recommendations to Congress. Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., also wrote to the task force asking for more resources for the National Institute of Standards and Technology and its in-house testing lab. Meanwhile, the FBI arrested a Saudi national Tuesday for allegedly secretly recording conversations at the offices of his employer, OpenAI.

— Ashley Gold

Dems defend DOJ ‘blackout’ after Omar search

Don’t expect Democrats to escalate in response to the Justice Department’s search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s DC home, which many of them are condemning as a breach of longstanding DOJ practice. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the party’s top House Judiciary Committee member, said that future Democratic administrations should seek to maintain the preelection blackout period for DOJ investigations. “It definitely violates DOJ’s ban on overt prosecutorial activity within 60 days of the election,” Raskin said. “That is a rule all attorneys general should abide by rather than blatantly violate.” The search of Omar’s house came as part of a federal investigation into alleged immigration fraud, The Washington Post reported. Omar has denied any wrongdoing; still, conservatives have pushed the notion that Omar, a naturalized citizen, committed fraud in the immigration process. The 60-day rule “is an informal practice, not written policy,” said a DOJ official.

— Nicholas Wu

Europe erred on Trump tariffs: Canada official

Europe made a “historic” blunder by caving to the Trump administration on tariffs during Trump’s second term, the former Canadian trade minister who helped negotiate the US-Mexico-Canada deal during the first Trump administration told Semafor. “A real problem for the Western alliance has been the decision by the UK and by the EU to give in to the Trump bullying on tariffs,” Chrystia Freeland said. “People thought appeasement would win a reprieve for us all.” The EU and UK have each negotiated with the administration following the imposition of unilateral tariffs, and the former agreed to a pact that went into effect this year. US trade relations with Canada, meanwhile, have broken down, and Ottawa has announced counter-tariffs following US pressure. Freeland, who is out with a new book, said it’s “possible,” albeit difficult, for the US and Canada to return to a constructive relationship.

— Morgan Chalfant

Blindspot: AI

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets.

What the Left isn’t reading: First lady Melania Trump announced the 2027 AI competition for students, an annual event that she rebranded as the “Super Intelligence Challenge.”

What the Right isn’t reading: A new Democratic super PAC is dropping $4 million across four House races to hit GOP candidates over their support of the AI industry, Politico reports.

Behind closed doors, a new era of healthcare policy is taking shape. With US healthcare spending projected to hit $9 trillion annually by 2034, Medicaid cuts hanging in the balance ahead of the midterms, and increasing calls for regulation of clinical AI, the forces remaking healthcare policy are accelerating.

Introducing Healthcare from Semafor Washington, DC, your weekly briefing on the politics, policy, and business driving the industry. Delivered on Thursday by David Lim, each edition will provide essential reporting and analysis on the forces reshaping healthcare, and what comes next.