Washington, DC

1. El-Sayed needs $
2. Leavitt’s replacement?
3. Hormuz closure fears
4. Higher ed politics
5. Bosnia lobbying war
6. AI adoption gap

PDB: Fed official warns Americans are struggling

US releases producer price index … Zambia holds elections … Israel launches strike on Gaza

Bernie has cash in the bank. Will he use it?

Bernie Sanders got his guy in Michigan, but he’s going to have to do more if he wants to successfully shepherd Abdul El-Sayed through the general election, due to the huge spending disadvantage Democrats face. Sanders has more than $22 million in his campaign account, and he didn’t rule out using some of that to help El-Sayed when asked if he’d considered transferring that money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “I’m going to do my best in every way to see that he’s elected to the US Senate,” Sanders told Semafor. “We’re going to do everything we can.” A Democratic strategist said that if Sanders wants to show he can win tough elections, “he needs to put his money where his mouth is and invest the millions he has sitting in the bank account in winning Michigan.”

— Burgess Everett

Race is on to find Leavitt’s successor

The search for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s successor is on, after the president announced that she’ll be leaving the administration at the end of August and shifting to an outside adviser role to spend more time with her family. Trump has not yet decided on who will succeed Leavitt, who will be hard to replace, several administration officials told Semafor. She’s worked for Trump for years and is one of his most trusted aides. Plus, there was never a real second choice when Trump gave her the job after the 2024 campaign, leaving no obvious fallback now. It’s a coveted job inside the administration, and there’s sure to be jockeying for the spot. Names are already circulating among administration officials, but it’s not yet clear whether any will actually be in contention.

— Shelby Talcott

Iran, US locked in standoff over Hormuz

Washington and Tehran again presented sharply contrasting narratives over the Strait of Hormuz, underscoring skepticism over the reopening of the waterway. Hours after Trump said his forces had “total control” over Hormuz, Iranian officials said his remarks “do not change the reality” of its closure. The Wall Street Journal said tracking data showed just 14 ships traversed it on Tuesday, barely a tenth of pre-war levels, though a leading Bloomberg columnist suggested that analysts were likely underestimating the volume of oil crossing Hormuz: He noted that visible oil spills pointed to a battle between Iran trying to keep the strait closed while others push to keep it open, “perhaps more successfully than we think.”

Republican students still trust their colleges

College students who identify as Republicans are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to trust their school to act in their best interests — even as confidence in higher education among conservatives sinks. Sixty-two percent of Republican students said their college’s leadership mostly acts in students’ best interests, compared with 55% of Democrats and half of independents, according to polling from Lumina Foundation and Gallup. As the Trump administration targets prominent universities with investigations, funding cuts, and other threats, the polling also shows that students across political parties prefer policies from their campus leaders over those from state or federal government leaders (though Republicans are much warmer to federal decisions). The data contrasts with polling released earlier this year that showed declining confidence in higher education across the political spectrum.

— Morgan Chalfant

Balkans’ Trump lobbying heats up

Bosnian Croat leader Dragan Čović has tapped Trump-linked firm Mercury Public Affairs to lobby for his party, according to Justice Department filings, in a first step toward competing with the country’s Serbian politicians who’ve continued to ply K Street with money. Bosnia’s Republika Srpska has signed lobbying contracts worth at least $9 million since Trump was inaugurated, according to a Semafor analysis of DOJ filings, in an effort to align itself with the administration, while leaders like former President Milorad Dodik agitate against sanctions and for independence. Dodik’s political apparatus has also received help from others, like Rudy Giuliani, who are not registered as lobbyists. Čović “might be a little alarmed that Dodik is buying up all these friends in Washington, and so he may just want somebody who can get his point of view across,” Jim O’Brien, former presidential envoy for the Balkans, told Semafor.

— Eleanor Mueller and Adrian Elimian

Gap widens between AI adopters, laggards

A new wave of haves and have-nots is emerging based on artificial intelligence use, Semafor’s J.D. Capelouto reports. The gap is widening between enterprises that have aggressively adopted AI and those that are taking it on more slowly, new data from OpenAI, shared first with Semafor, shows. Firms that ranked in the top 10% of AI usage in June consumed 8.3 times as many output tokens per user compared with companies in the middle of the pack. In January, the top firms utilized 2.6 times the median, according to the OpenAI report. The study also showed that collectively, OpenAI’s business customers are now using more tokens on the company’s coding platform, rather than on the traditional ChatGPT interface — suggesting businesses are shifting to embrace AI for “work that’s more doing rather than asking,” Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI’s chief economist, told Semafor.

On Tuesday, September 15, Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., Member, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, will join The Future of Health Forum. From breakthrough therapies and AI-enabled care to the investments and policy decisions shaping the next generation of medicine, on-the-record conversations will explore how innovation can expand access, improve patient outcomes, and build a more affordable, effective healthcare system.

Semafor journalists will sit down with Dr. Emily Aaronson, Chief Medical Officer, Walmart; The Honorable Alex M. Azar II, 24th Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services; and Chris Butler, Vice President & Head of Drug Discovery, Isomorphic Labs, to unpack access to US healthcare and innovation.

Sept. 15 | Washington, DC | Request Invite

Hong’s defeat shows left drifting from 2020

Over the last few days, as Francesca Hong’s Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign came undone over a tweet condemning the colonialist origins of Thanksgiving, I flashed back to September and a debate between two Democratic strategists. Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, argued that Democrats needed to change the way they talk, un-learning the elitism of John Oliver and college-town coffee shops. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive messaging guru, countered that Democrats were fighting a fascist threat and needed to say so. It was the post-Biden Democratic dialectic in one room. Did the party go too far left and alienate working-class voters? Or did it wimp out and convince those voters that it was too scared of Republicans to fight for them? This is a helpful way to think about the party’s argument about “wokeness” and the legacy of the social justice movements of 2020.

White House

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a few aides accompanied President Trump on his secret flight home from Türkiye on a military plane, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent flew on the “decoy” Air Force One flight. — CBS
• The CIA had “low confidence” in the threat to Trump’s life before the plane switch. — WaPo

Congress

• Ethics groups are calling on Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., to release the text of a bipartisan proposal on how cryptocurrency legislation should restrict elected officials’ ability to profit from digital assets, Eleanor Mueller scoops.

Campaigns

• Maine Senate Democratic nominee Troy Jackson’s then-partner told police he “pushed her around” and punched a man, records show; Jackson was 19, and the partner said she has no memory of the event. — Bangor Daily News
• Some self-identified progressives are quietly relieved that Francesca Hong didn’t win the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary. — Politico
• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul leads her Republican challenger by 10 percentage points, per a Siena College poll.

Business