| | | |  | | By Eugene Daniels and Jack Blanchard | Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
| | | Good morning. This is Eugene Daniels in the driver’s seat on a consequential day for the House GOP, President Trump’s legislative agenda, American health care, the FBI, India and all of Europe. No pressure. Get in touch.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 14, 2025. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | BUDGET OR BUST: It’s do-or-die time for Speaker Mike Johnson. At 10 a.m., the House Budget Committee marks up leadership’s budget resolution as Johnson practically dares a small cadre of intransigent conservatives to sink his blueprint. Where things stand: The speaker emerged from hours of closed-door meetings yesterday refusing to make changes to his plan, “despite hard-liner demands for deeper spending cuts and other adjustments,” POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill reports. That presents a vote-count problem: As stands, the package has two major conservative holdouts: Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). Both serve on the Budget Committee, which means that if just one more Republican on the panel votes to block the proposal today, it’ll go down in flames, assuming all Dems vote against it. Complicating Johnson’s path: The White House is divided over whether to back the two-bill approach favored by Senate Republicans or the one-bill approach preferred by the House GOP. “Vice President JD Vance, White House policy chief Stephen Miller and budget chief Russ Vought are among those in the Trump administration pushing for a two-bill approach on reconciliation, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing for one,” POLITICO’s Megan Messerly, Victoria Guida and Dasha Burns report. Which means this: “White House officials … aren't cracking the whip,” as our colleagues at Inside Congress put it this morning. There’s also pressure in the other direction: The House GOP budget blueprint calls for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in order to offset some of the cost of enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda. At least $880 billion of those cuts fall to the Energy and Commerce Committee to find, and the “bulk of those savings would have to come from making changes to Medicaid, which currently insures more than 70 million Americans,” per POLITICO’s Ben Leonard. “The task could also expose moderate Republicans, many of whom have been working behind the scenes to avert significant cuts to Medicaid among other social safety-net programs, to Democratic attacks.” That’s not all, folks: “New York Republicans were noticeably angsty Wednesday that the new House GOP budget plan may not provide enough wiggle room to expand” the SALT deduction, POLITICO’s Benjamin Guggenheim reports. Waiting in the wings: While House leaders struggle and strain, “Senate Republicans easily pushed their budget resolution out of committee on Wednesday,” POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes writes in her walkthrough of the markup. Buckle in: “[I]t’s likely to remain unclear well into the day whether Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) can close the deal and send a budget resolution to the floor,” per Inside Congress. CONFIRMATION STATION: There’s a cascade of nominee news happening today. … ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: At 10:30 a.m., the Senate is expected to confirm Kennedy as secretary of Health and Human Services — a remarkable ascension, putting the controversial environmental attorney and anti-vaccine activist in charge of the nation’s health agencies. How confident are they? Leaders “inside the Department of Health and Human Services are already scheduling meetings for Secretary Kennedy,” WaPo’s Dan Diamond reports. “The path to stopping him has disappeared. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) this week said they will support him; Sens. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have signaled concerns over Kennedy but voted to advance his nomination Wednesday.” … BROOKE ROLLINS: After the vote on Kennedy, the Senate is expected to confirm Rollins as secretary of Agriculture, “with all Republicans and many Democrats likely to support her nomination,” POLITICO’s Grace Yarrow writes. Why the bipartisan support? Republican senators “are hoping she’ll be a voice for agriculture during Cabinet discussions about Trump's plans for tariffs and mass deportations,” Grace continues. “Several Democratic senators have also signaled they’re open to supporting Rollins’ nomination. They’ll have to work with her on farm bill negotiations, workforce issues and other USDA programs that their constituents rely on.” … KASH PATEL: The Senate Judiciary Committee meets at 9 a.m. to vote on whether to advance Patel’s nomination for FBI director. On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the panel’s top Democrat, sent a letter to the DOJ inspector general suggesting that Patel was “personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation” — an allegedly improper act for Patel to take “without having been confirmed as its leader,” as NYT’s Charlie Savage reported. Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) dismissed that as “nothing more than hearsay” in a post on X, and the allegations haven’t found traction with Republicans. Patel is expected to advance in a party-line vote. … LINDA McMAHON: The Senate HELP Committee holds its first hearing for the Education secretary-designate at 10 a.m. The task before her, AP’s Collin Binkley and Annie Ma noted overnight, is an unusual one: “she seeks Senate approval to lead an agency the president wants her to destroy.” Democrats are itching for a fight on this one. You can expect them to latch onto Trump’s ambitions to dismantle the Education Department. (“Oh, I’d like it to be closed immediately,” Trump told reporters at the White House yesterday, per CBS News. “Look, the Department of Education is a big con job.”) There have been reports that Trump is eyeing an executive order effectively shutting down the department, and “some of McMahon’s advisers pressed to delay it until after her hearing,” per the AP. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and former Education Secretary Arne Duncan are holding a press conference at Dirksen at 12:30 p.m. to bracket the hearing. … HOWARD LUTNICK and KELLY LOEFFLER: At 1:45 p.m., the Senate will move to invoke cloture on Lutnick’s nomination for Commerce secretary and Loeffler’s nomination to lead the Small Business Administration.
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Learn more at https://medicarechoices.org/ | | | AT THE WHITE HOUSE MODI OPERANDI: This afternoon, President Trump will host Indian PM Narendra Modi — his fourth bilateral White House meeting with a foreign leader since returning to office. Even for Trump, that’s quite the clip. The mechanics: The pageantry feels almost routine at this point. Modi will arrive around 4 p.m., likely coming down the White House drive, which will be lined with military service members holding American state flags. Modi will be greeted by Trump, and the two will walk straight to the Oval Office for a quick spray with reporters before heading into closed-door bilateral meetings. Afterwards, at 5:10 p.m., they’ll do a presser, side by side, in the East Room. And then — this one is new — they’ll sit down to a private dinner. The good news for Modi: The two leaders are not starting from scratch. “Modi and Trump forged close ties in the first Trump administration,” our colleague Phelim Kine notes in POLITICO’s China Watcher newsletter this morning. “Trump declared the Indian prime minister one of America’s ‘most devoted, and most loyal friends.’ On at least two occasions, the two leaders greeted each other with bear hugs rather than a diplomatic handshake.” The agenda: The most important part of the conversation, at least for the short-to-medium timeframe, will center on trade and tariffs. During his first term, Trump called Modi “the king of tariffs,” and has since knocked India for its high fees on U.S. products, with the (as yet) unspoken threat that retaliatory tariffs are on the table. Always bring a gift for your host: I’m told it’s likely that Modi isn’t coming empty-handed, and might even have tariff reductions to present to Trump so he can get that out of the way and move on to other topics. “India understands that it will need to bring something to the table to try to avoid the irritants of the relationship from overshadowing some of the natural areas of cooperation,” Elizabeth Threlkeld, the director of the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center, tells Playbook. One area of potential cooperation: China. Republicans and Democrats have long treated India not so much as an ally but instead as a defense partner — a subtle but meaningful distinction. China is at the center of that. Trump will likely try to juice that defense partnership in his meetings today, even as India looks for a closer relationship. The x factor: “For quite some time, the U.S. policy towards India has been described as motivated by ‘strategic altruism,’” Threlkeld says, characterizing the idea in recent years as “what’s good for India is good for the U.S.” But Trump’s America First strategy doesn’t really deal in altruism, strategic or otherwise; it’s about power and dominance globally with the idea that it accrues to America’s benefit at home. The question for Trump is in part whether he can play the long game here by embracing a strategic altruism that’s good for India — and doing so because it provides a hedge against China’s power in the Indo-Pacific region. AMERICA AND THE WORLD PANIC STATIONS: Much of Europe is in panic mode today after the brutal reality check delivered Tuesday by President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A continent which for the past 80 years has relied — some would say over-relied — upon the U.S. military umbrella has rarely felt so exposed following Hesgeth’s stark warning that European security is now of secondary importance to American interests. The sight, just a few hours later, of Trump treating Vladimir Putin — a clear and present danger to European security — as an equal negotiating partner and seeming ready to hand over Ukrainian soil sent yet more ice through the veins of European capitals from Warsaw to London. Rarely has the post-war settlement felt as fragile as it does today. First read this: POLITICO’s Paul McLeary and Jacopo Barigazzi spell it out in their just-filed report from Munich, where Europe’s defense chiefs will tomorrow hold their first meetings with the new Trump admin at an annual summit on Western security. “European allies are bracing this week for the answer to a question they’ve been dreading to ask,” Paul and Jacopo write. “Can they really count on the United States?” Nope: The language from both the president and Hegseth was blunt, crystallizing what many of America’s allies in Europe had seen as a worst-case scenario following Trump’s reelection. “The rules of the game have changed,” François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, told POLITICO. Pulling the plug: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was putting a brave face on things last night, praising his own “good and detailed discussion” with Trump and insisting that “America’s strength is enough to pressure Russia and Putin into peace.” But but but: John Bolton, Trump’s hawkish national security adviser turned arch-enemy, was a little more frank in his assessment of this latest edition of “The Art of the Deal.” “It is unconscionable to allow Russia to assault Ukraine’s sovereignty, recruit enemies like North Korea to aid in their fight, and then sell out the Ukrainians by conceding the loss of their territory and NATO security guarantees or membership,” Botlon wrote on X. “By making these and other concessions before negotiations even started, Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin on Ukraine.” Get real! Such pleas, of course, are falling on empty ears. Hegseth’s long-held view — expressed again yesterday — is that Ukraine’s hopes of winning back its sovereign land are “illusionary.” Trump is in full agreement and keen to be seen to striking a peace deal, especially with MAGA world cheering him on (here’s Charlie Kirk). Trump’s simple message is that it’s time for the fighting to end. The American people are split right down the middle — check out this Gallup poll from the end of last year. What’s clear is that no one is coming to Ukraine’s aid this time. The stand-in? As VP Vance holds court at the Munich Security Conference, he has “his first major chance to present himself as Donald Trump’s proxy on the world stage,” POLITICO’s Irie Sentner, Dasha Burns and Jack Detsch write. “But he faces the perennial question: Can anyone really speak for Trump?” Vance will face one round of that test tomorrow, when he meets with Zelenskyy. Appointment viewing: Tune in tomorrow and Saturday as POLITICO broadcasts live from the Munich Security Conference. We'll have exclusive interviews with key lawmakers, including Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.). More details here. HOPE FOR PEACE: Even as the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas teeters on the brink of collapse, WSJ’s Anat Peled and Summer Said report that there is reason for some hope today in a very fluid situation: Yesterday, Hamas “said it would release three hostages as scheduled on Saturday after receiving guarantees from mediators that medical equipment would be allowed into Gaza on Thursday, mediators said.” BUT PREPARE FOR CONFLICT: Israel is “likely to attempt a strike on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities in the first six months of 2025,” WaPo’s John Hudson, Michael Birnbaum and Ellen Nakashima report, citing multiple highly classified U.S. intelligence reports spanning the waning days of the Biden administration and the early days of the Trump White House.
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| | | IN THE DOGE HOUSE THE FORK IN THE ROAD RETURNS: Score one for Elon Musk. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole decided to allow the Trump administration to “move forward with its plan to downsize the federal workforce by offering employees the option to resign now but stay on the payroll through September,” POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports. Originally, the program had a deadline of Feb. 6 for workers to accept the deferred resignation offer. Last week, O’Toole put that on ice, temporarily blocking the administration from enforcing that deadline. Now, it’s back in force. That’s a lot of forks: About 75,000 federal workers agreed to resign under the program, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott scooped, or “around 3.75% of the workforce.” Worth noting: That is far short of the projected 5-10% of federal workers the White House reportedly expected to take the deal. Layoffs are coming: Musk’s team of DOGE apparatchiks have “initiated sweeping layoffs of federal employees,” WaPo reports in a five-bylined piece. “An official with the Office of Personnel Management, which is now run by Musk allies, emailed staff Wednesday morning stating that widespread layoffs — known as ‘reductions in force’ — have begun and are already overwhelming the small agency that functions as a human resources department for the government.” Their target: “White House officials are eyeing cuts to agency budgets of between 30 and 40 percent, on average, across the government — centered on significant staff reductions,” the Post reports, cautioning that its sources caveated that “those plans are not yet finalized and could change.” Up next for DOGE: NASA’s payments are coming in for scrutiny, acting administrator Janet Petro told reporters yesterday, per Bloomberg’s Loren Grush and Sana Pashankar. Musk, of course, is the CEO of SpaceX, which remains both one of NASA’s biggest contractors and the potential beneficiary if the agency’s in-house capabilities are hobbled — though Petro said that NASA has strong “conflicts of interest policies” that will be enforced for DOGE advisers. Presumably not on DOGE’s target list: Trump’s State Department is set to purchase $400 million worth of “armored Tesla,” Drop Site’s Ryan Grim scooped. More from NYT BEST OF THE REST INCOMING FROM THE DOJ: Attorney General Pam Bondi faced reporters yesterday for the first time since her swearing-in last week, hurtling through a frenetic, 14-minute press conference that seemed Trumpian in its bombast and atmospherics, Josh Gerstein writes in. The crux: Announcing a lawsuit against New York over one of its sanctuary laws, Bondi vowed relentless legal pressure against states and localities that seek to protect undocumented immigrants from the feds. “You will be held accountable if you do not follow federal law,” Bondi said. “It's over, it ends, and we’re coming after you.” The suit: At the outset, Bondi got a bit carried away, suggesting that Gov. Kathy Hochul and state AG Letitia James were being arrested on criminal charges. An aide later clarified it was only a civil suit. The photo op: Bondi used an unconventional backdrop to underscore her message: FBI, ATF and DEA agents in stark, black raid jackets. And she brought a speaker to tug at the heartstrings: the mother of a young woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant. The exchange lacked some of the tension with the press often on display at Trump’s photo-ops, but that may come soon enough. The presser: The affiliations of those chosen to question Bondi captured the new reality for the mainstream press and more ideological competitors in the Trump era. Fox News led off, with the other questions going to the Associated Press, Newsmax and Daily Caller. INCOMING FROM THE ACLU: A group of civil rights lawyers backed by the ACLU is suing the Trump administration for access to detained migrants who’ve been shipped to Guantanamo Bay, claiming that their clients are being “held there without being able to consult lawyers or speak to relatives,” AP’s Michael Kunzelman reports. The administration disputes those allegations. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have a new joint op-ed that just posted at Fox News: “Cap credit card interest rates at 10%” WATCH THIS SPACE: Yesterday, Louisiana AG Liz Murrill signed a form seeking to extradite New York-based physician Dr. Margaret Carpenter for prescribing and shipping abortion pills to the state, reports Lorena O'Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. The case is believed to be the nation’s first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
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| | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Donald Trump was elected the new chairman of the Kennedy Center by its hand-selected board of trustees. Ted Cruz is a big fan of annexing Greenland. Bernie Sanders is mounting a new campaign targeting “the oligarchy.” IN MEMORIAM — “North Carolina Democratic activist and onetime US Ambassador Jeanette Hyde has died at age 86,” per the AP: “Hyde and her late husband, Wallace, were a political power couple, opening their home to state and national Democratic candidates. … Hyde was also involved in Democratic political strategy, particularly efforts to boost women’s influence in politics, as well as pushing for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.” OUT AND ABOUT — Last night, BGR helped Russian opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky launch his new think tank, the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, at the Willard Hotel. Khodorkovsky did a fireside chat with CNBC’s Eamon Javers. Kurt Volker moderated a panel of experts discussing the future of Russia’s war in Ukraine emceed by Andrea Kendall-Taylor. SPOTTED: Andreĭ Illarionov, Nino Japaridze, Mark Simakovsky, James Carter, Ia Meurmishvili, Peter Scaturro Jr., Shaun Tandon, Bo Peard, Jooeun Kim, Michael Kimmage, Philip Wasielewski, Nikos Sapountzis, Karl-Gerhard Lille, Marius Florescu-Ciobotaru, Jean-Robert Jouanny, Kiryl Sukhotski, Karolina Rankovic, Natalie Rouland, Charles Sills, Joja Iulia-Sabina, Maya Seiden, Hunter Strupp and Frank Ahrens. TRANSITIONS — Sarah Schakow is now director of public affairs at Cisco. She most recently was deputy assistant secretary for media relations at DHS and is a Gary Peters and Joe Donnelly alum. … Michael Chirico is joining American Water as director of legislative and external affairs. He previously was VP of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and is a Carol Miller and Evan Jenkins alum. … … Abby Kohlman is now senior counsel in Akin’s white-collar defense and government investigations practice. She most recently was a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Fraud Section. … Joseph Ciccone is now senior legislative representative for the County of Los Angeles' D.C. office. He most recently was deputy chief of staff and legislative director for former Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.). ENGAGED — Robert Donachie, VP of ATHOS PR and a Chip Roy and House Freedom Caucus alum, proposed to Carson Steelman, VP of comms at the Sentinel Action Fund and a Greg Steube and Mark Walker alum, on the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening. They met through work. Pic WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Keely Sullivan den Bergh, senior producer at France 2, and Jesper Sullivan den Bergh, legislative manager at Issue One and a Don Beyer and Joyce Beatty alum, welcomed Fiadh Johanna on January 29. Pic — Joshua Baca, founder of the public affairs firm Resilient Partners, and Jen Corey Baca, co-founder of the events management company CurentCo, welcomed Elijah James Baca on February 5. Pic … Another pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) … Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) (5-0) … Betsy Ankney … former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon … Chip Smith … former Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) … Lila Nieves-Lee … Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center … George Kundanis … NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson … Bill McCarren … Bloomberg’s Stacie Sherman … i360’s Brian Szmytke … Jeanne Mancini … Mae Stevens … Fox News’ Cailin Kearns … Reuters’ Mike Spector … SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein … Alex Hinson … Blackstone’s Elizabeth Lewis … Camille Johnston … Raven Reeder … Meta’s Alex Burgos … Megan Becker … Mark Cohen … POLITICO’s Daniel Payne and Paul Repola … Emily Minster of Rep. Yassamin Ansari’s (D-Ariz.) office … Kirby Eule of Touchdown Strategies … Dave Dorey … Peter Laudeman of U.S. Wheat Associates … Sven Erik Holmes … Bryson Morgan … Matt Miller of SK Group … Samantha Slater … Jill Barclay Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. Correction: Yesterday’s Playbook misspelled Marko Elez’s name.
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