Washington, DC

1. House to advance funding bill
2. Senate Dems’ hard line
3. Econ data quality at risk
4. Netflix-WBD scrutiny
5. Trump, Petro meet
6. US-India deal reverberates
7. US-Africa trade doubts

PDB: Clintons agree to depositions in House Epstein probe 

Witkoff in Israel … Prosecutors raid Paris offices of Elon Musk’s X … Bloomberg: Turkey to host US-Iran talks on Friday

House set to advance spending deal

House Republicans are poised to advance the Senate’s government spending deal today after President Donald Trump quashed a conservative rebellion over voter ID. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said that she and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., “feel very comfortable” voting yes after Trump assured them at the White House that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is weighing a “standing filibuster” to force a vote on the GOP’s proposal to require proof of citizenship to cast a ballot. “We want a vote on voter ID in the Senate, and I think we’re going to get it,” Luna said. Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Semafor that White House officials would pitch the full House Freedom Caucus on “a path forward for” the voter ID bill on Monday night. Thune said a vote on it would occur “soon enough,” but his office had no further guidance on Luna’s comments.

— Eleanor Mueller and Burgess Everett

Senate Dems could tank DHS stopgap

Senate Democrats say they might not support another short-term Homeland Security appropriations bill when the next tranche of funding expires on Feb. 13 — even as Republicans warn they may need more time for an immigration enforcement deal. Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s top Democrat, told Semafor she won’t support another stopgap, while Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said it’s “tough to imagine moving forward without some real movement.” And Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said it would be “wrong” to ask Democrats “to ignore the two-week deadline.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the use of body cameras nationwide, but Democrats want more than that. “The de-escalation in Minnesota is table stakes, that is a prerequisite to a negotiation,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. “The negotiation is about a statute. Executive action at this point gets you in the room.”

— Burgess Everett

BLS pauses data release amid shutdown

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release January employment data this week due to the ongoing shutdown. More concerning: the agency’s pause on collecting February inflation data, which “has greater potential for lasting damage,” David Wilcox, an economist with Bloomberg Economics and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Semafor. “Price collection for the CPI should be happening right now and isn’t.” He added that “if that persists more than a few days, the reliability of the February reading will be compromised.” That matters for the Federal Reserve, where policymakers will lean on the data when they meet in March — and for trust in government data, which is already diminished. The inability to “release that data consistently” feeds a “growing cynicism,” the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Emerson Sprick told Semafor.

— Eleanor Mueller

Execs to defend WBD-Netflix merger

Top Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix executives will defend the competitive merits of their $83 billion merger before a Senate antitrust committee today. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner’s top M&A executive are expected to argue that they are seeking to compete head-to-head with Alphabet’s YouTube, and that comparing their combined business to other “conventional” streamers is fallacious. It’s an argument that has yielded strenuous pushback from Paramount, which is seeking to beat back Netflix in its own bid for WBD. “The Board and Shareholders were told they compete with TikTok, Facebook and YouTube — I guess I will go to TikTok next time I want to watch Game of Thrones, Landman and the Sopranos,” Paramount’s top lawyer wrote on LinkedIn. Netflix and WBD face an uphill battle — committee chair Mike Lee, R-Utah, has already raised “grave doubts” about the proposed merger.

— Rohan Goswami

Trump and Petro to meet at White House

Trump is sitting down with Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the White House today in a potentially contentious meeting focused on drug trafficking. The two leaders have traded barbs over the last few months, setting the stage for a tense encounter. Last month, Trump suggested Colombia could be a US target following the administration’s capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump at the time described Petro as “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the” US, and warned that he wouldn’t “be doing it for very long.” And while there was a brief reprieve after the two countries set up today’s meeting, Petro recently argued that the US “kidnapped” Maduro and criticized the administration’s treatment of migrants. Still, Trump expressed optimism on Monday, saying Petro “has been very nice” lately and predicting it would be a “good meeting.”

— Shelby Talcott

US-India trade pact pressures Russia

The trade truce struck between the US and India raises pressure on Russia. Trump announced Monday that the US had agreed to slash tariffs on India from 25% to 18%, saying that New Delhi had agreed to “stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela,” in addition to reducing trade barriers and investing $500 billion in US industries. The development represents a win for New Delhi, which is hot off a trade breakthrough with the EU. Still, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s post on X did not mention a commitment about oil purchases, and while Indian imports of Russian crude have slowed, they may not halt entirely. “One must be cautious in the absence of deal text, but the word ‘potentially’ could end up doing a lot of work,” one energy consultant told the Financial Times.

US-Africa trade relations in doubt

The fate of trade relations between the US and Africa is reaching a tipping point, Semafor’s Adrian Elimian writes. While the Senate sent the House a short-term extension to revive AGOA, the US-Africa trade program, as part of a funding package approved last week, there are jitters among African policymakers, manufacturers, and exporters that the relationship will be fractured for some time. The Trump administration argued a one-year extension gives time for stakeholders to work on a deal “to modernize and align the program, or any future trade program with African trading partners, with the America First Trade Policy,” an administration official told Semafor. But Witney Schneidman, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, called the proposed renewal “at best a holding pattern,” noting that firms are unlikely to make long-term commitments without greater policy certainty.

Blindspot: Warsh and Mace

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: Gary Cohn, IBM’s vice chair and a White House economic adviser during President Trump’s first term, praised the selection of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair.

What the Right isn’t reading: Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., directed staff to bring her booze and push her name on Reddit forums about the “hottest women in Congress,” according to a New York Magazine profile.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: A disagreement among Democrats in Virginia’s legislature has thrown plans to redraw the state’s congressional map into disarray.

Axios: “Don’t be surprised if [Elon Musk’s merger of xAI and SpaceX] is a prelude to a merger with Tesla.”

WaPo: Republicans could be in trouble this year if they take the antiabortion movement for granted, one activist said. “The Republicans can’t afford to lose their pro-life base and still win the midterm, so they need to wake up.”

Playbook: “Increasingly violent threats toward and harassment of public officials — from county clerks up to the president — are driving more and more of those figures out of their jobs.”

White House

• President Trump told former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino that Republicans should “nationalize” and “take over” voting in certain states.
• Trump is launching a critical minerals stockpile with $12 billion in seed money from private capital and an Export-Import Bank loan, with the aim of reducing reliance on China for the materials. — Bloomberg

Congress

• Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify in depositions in the House Oversight Committee’s probe into Jeffrey Epstein, seeking to avert contempt of Congress charges.

• Rep. Christian Menefee, D-Texas, was sworn in, narrowing the GOP House majority to one seat.
• Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to disavow her association with President Trump.

Outside the Beltway

• President Trump said he is seeking $1 billion in damages from Harvard, hours after The New York Times reported the administration was dropping its demand for $200 million from the university.