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Axios AM: Vance in spotlight
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View in browser PRESENTED BY GOLDMAN SACHS Axios AMBy Mike Allen · Mar 27, 2026 Happy Friday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,581 words … 6 mins. Thanks to Zachary Basu for orchestrating. Edited by Eileen Drage O’Reilly and Bill Kole. New overnight: Around 3 a.m. ET, a Senate voice vote passed a deal to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, except for immigration enforcement operations. The funding package now goes to the House, which is expected to consider it today. Keep reading. President Trump said he’ll sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay TSA agents. Keep reading. 1 big thing: Vance’s big role  Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Brandon Bell and U.S. Navy via Getty Images Vice President JD Vance is preparing to take on the most important assignment of his career: steering U.S. efforts to end a war he’d been concerned about waging in the first place, Axios’ Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid report. Why it matters: Vance has already had multiple calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met Gulf allies about the war and been involved in indirect communications with the Iranians. He’s expected to be the top U.S. negotiator in potential peace talks. Vance was highly skeptical of Israel’s rosy prewar assessment of how the war would unfold, and currently expects the war to continue for another few weeks, according to U.S. and Israeli sources. Vance advisers think some in Israel are trying to undermine the VP, possibly because they find him insufficiently hawkish. Israeli officials deny that. President Trump made Vance’s role official in a Cabinet meeting yesterday, asking the VP to give an update on Iran, and noting that he was working with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on the negotiations.  Trump further delays strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. Screenshot via Truth Social. Zoom in: Vance’s seniority in the administration and his well-documented opposition to open-ended conflicts overseas, White House officials say, make him a more attractive interlocutor for the Iranians than Witkoff and Kushner, who oversaw the two previous rounds of failed talks. Partly for those reasons, Witkoff recommended Vance as lead negotiator.“If the Iranians can’t strike a deal with Vance, they don’t get a deal. He’s the best they’re gonna get,” a senior administration official said. Vance is prepared to “take his place onstage” — but only if and when direct negotiations commence, according to a White House official. State of play: Trump extended his deadline for negotiations with Iran yesterday, as Pakistani, Egyptian and Turkish mediators keep trying to organize in-person talks. Iranian officials told the mediators they’re still waiting for a green light from “top leadership.” If such a summit happens, Vance could sit across the table from Iran’s speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The administration is also considering a major military escalation if diplomacy fails. Between the lines: During the lead-up to war, Vance was one of the more skeptical internal voices, raising questions about its duration, purpose and impact on U.S. munitions stockpiles, sources say. Once Trump decided to go to war, though, Vance advocated for using overwhelming force to achieve victory as quickly as possible. Vance advisers say he’s supportive of Israel, but is concerned about potential gaps between the U.S. and Israeli objectives as the war continues. An Iraq War veteran, Vance told The Washington Post two days before bombs dropped on Tehran: “I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid over-learning the lessons of the past.”Share this story. 2.  Judge’s reprieve for Anthropic  Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios A federal judge paused the Trump administration’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, marking an early legal victory for the embattled company, Axios’ Maria Curi reports.The preliminary injunction gives Anthropic relief from ongoing reputational damage and provides greater certainty for commercial partners, the company says. Keep reading.  Scoop: Altman told staff he tried to “save” Anthropic in Pentagon clash As Anthropic’s negotiations with the Pentagon were collapsing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees he was trying to “save” his competitor, according to internal Slack messages seen by Axios’ Maria Curi and Zachary Basu.At the same time, Altman privately vented that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had spent years trying to undermine him. On Feb. 26, Altman sent an all-staff message saying OpenAI shared Anthropic’s red lines and wanted to help de-escalate — while making clear he still hoped to strike his own deal with the Pentagon. He acknowledged that the optics may not look good in the short term. But he stressed the nuance of the situation and said he was committed to acting on principle rather than appearances. On Feb. 27, Altman relayed to a core group of staff that negotiations between the Pentagon and Anthropic had taken a turn for the worse due to the perception that Amodei was playing to the press. Later that day, as the Pentagon’s 5 p.m. deadline approached, Altman told the group that the Pentagon believed it could offer Anthropic an off-ramp from the supply chain risk designation. Altman remarked that he found it strange to be working so hard to “save” a rival whose CEO had, in his view, spent years trying to destroy OpenAI.Share this story. |
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