Washington, DC

1. Senate rules change?
2. Trump vs. media
3. Dems pitch Latino voters
4. Iowa Senate debate
5. Senate HELP questions
6. Businesses get political

PDB: Trump to bestow medals on tech execs

Trump hosts science event … EU trade commissioner in Beijing … Oil tops $104 on report White House weighing Iran strikes

Daines, Merkley seek changes to Senate rules

A lot of people want to change the Senate rules … to make it easier for partisan bills to pass. Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., have a different idea, they told Semafor’s Burgess Everett in an interview. The bipartisan duo wants to push through a change to the body’s rules to make bipartisan bills easier to pass, save time, and give committee chairs more power to move popular legislation to the Senate floor. “More bills passed, more votes taken, less time wasted,” Daines said. Their ideas include a suspension calendar for popular bills, eliminating empty floor time, and giving bipartisan spending bills a fast-track to the floor. Merkley said there’s a reason we saw four sitting senators run for governor this cycle: “Because states are not paralyzed the way the US Senate and House are.”

White House digs in on media restrictions

The Trump administration is digging in on its press restrictions targeting CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. While the media outlets’ access to the White House was temporarily restored by a judge, the White House has since restricted their ability to travel with President Donald Trump on Air Force One. There’s no sign of that changing, barring a court order. “Many outlets including CNN, Politico, and MS NOW are granted access to attend and cover presidential events unilaterally, but traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One is a privilege, not a right,” a White House official told Semafor, likely previewing the administration’s argument later today in court. The media restrictions have served as something of a distraction ahead of the midterms. The affected outlets are hoping that the judge today will rule to indefinitely preserve their access to the White House.

— Shelby Talcott

How Democrats can win the Latino vote

Democrats are hoping to persuade Latino voters to get out and vote for their candidates in droves in the midterms. A Latino organization says they’ll have the best chance of doing that by presenting solutions to the economy, housing, and abuses by ICE. Polling by Voto Latino shared first with Semafor shows 40% of Latinos backing Democrats on the generic ballot, while just 21% support Republicans. The group argues that bringing more Latinos into the Democratic fold will require running on solutions to pocketbook issues: Latino voters rank the cost of necessities as their top frustration, and view food and housing costs as most unreasonable. “This is where Democrats really have an opportunity to really bring Latinos back to their corner,” said Beatriz Lopez, Voto Latino’s executive director. “It’s going to be even harder in ’28.”

— Nicholas Wu

Iowa Senate hopefuls face off

The candidates for Iowa’s open Senate seat raced for the center in their first debate, which came after public polls put Democratic Rep. Josh Turek ahead of Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson. Turek emphasized his votes for Republican legislation, and said he supported components of the 2025 GOP tax bill; Hinson, he said, had driven up costs for Iowans by voting “seven times” not to end the Iran war. Hinson said that she could “push back” on Trump if she disagreed with him, but that Turek would “vote like an East Coast liberal” if he won the seat. The two candidates got personal only when Turek repeated his attacks on Hinson’s wealth; the eastern Iowa congresswoman explained that her husband had sold his business, and they’d both sold their stocks, when she came to DC in 2021.

— David Weigel

Blue Owl has been the face of private credit’s rise over the past decade, and more recently, the face of its troubles as investors ask for their money back from funds that can’t always return it quickly. In the season two premiere of Compound Interest, presented by Amazon Business, Blue Owl co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz join Liz and Rohan to discuss the surge in investor withdrawals, whether we need a new word for “semi-liquid” funds, and why they haven’t taken the company private. Plus, Blue Owl’s role in the data-center boom as a growing financier.

Will GOP lead future Senate health panel?

Tight polls for Republicans are throwing future GOP leadership of the Senate health panel into question. With Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, fighting difficult reelection battles, it’s unclear who will replace Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy as the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is the next most senior person, but he would have to give up leading the Homeland Security Committee to helm the health panel. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, another member, could be in line to be the top GOP appropriator if Collins loses her reelection bid. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., would be next up after Paul and Murkowski, but he already leads the Senate Banking Committee. It’s not impossible that Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a staunch abortion opponent, lands the role opposite Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the committee.

— David Lim

Drop in support for firms taking stances

Fewer Americans are keen on businesses taking public stances on issues than they were a year ago, a decline largely driven by Democrats. Forty-seven percent support businesses taking stances on current events, per Gallup — down from a high of 51% last year, as the Trump administration engaged in high-profile fights with law firms, private universities, and other organizations. While 62% of Democrats now say that businesses should be taking public stances, that has declined nine points since 2025. Just over a quarter of Republicans say the same, down five points. Majorities back businesses taking stances on free speech, climate change, DEI, mental health, and healthcare, while far fewer support positions on abortion and religion. Corporations that have cozied up to the Trump administration are likely to be on Democrats’ target list if they win a House majority next year and take over investigative powers.

The takes that will define this midterm campaign

Prick up your ears, and you can hear it — the sound of many different kinds of Democrats grabbing credit for midterm victories that aren’t official yet. There’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., assessing that when (not if) Abdul El-Sayed wins his Senate race in Michigan, the left will “break open the entire political calculus in America.” There’s Pete Buttigieg, making sure we know how many states he’s campaigned in (37) and how many candidates he’s endorsed (more than 100). At this time in any campaign cycle, groups, candidates, and strategists pepper reporters with early claims that they were right. These takes aren’t immaculate. I’ve never deleted the October 2017 email from a strategist who was ready to explain why Ralph Northam lost the election for governor of Virginia. As preposterous as it is, though, the pre-spin cycle matters.

After four decades at Honeywell, Vimal Kapur was an unlikely CEO to break up the 140-year-old conglomerate, even with the activist investor Elliott at its gates. But he concluded that no common strategy could hold together a group serving such diverse markets, he tells Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson on The CEO Signal.

Kapur spun off his company’s aerospace and chemicals divisions to leave himself in charge of Honeywell Technologies, which focuses on mission-critical automation. But he says the acquisitions he made through that process were every bit as important as the process of simplifying an overly complex corporate structure. A focused business won’t work without scale, he says — “and we need to scale from here.”

White House

• At today’s science-themed White House event, President Trump plans to award national honor medals to Tesla’s Elon Musk, Google’s Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Dell’s Michael Dell, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. — Fox News
• He is also going to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to pitcher Roger Clemens.
• A holding company for Trump’s trademarks applied to register the .trump internet domain.

Congress

• A bipartisan group of Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans are seeking “written pledges” from colleagues that they’ll accept election results in November. — WSJ
• The House Energy and Commerce Committee is probing allegations of sexual abuse in Amateur Athletic Union sports. — NBC