| | | |  | | By Jack Blanchard | | Presented by |  | | | | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine Good Thursday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, enjoying another quiet week at the office.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS: Donald Trump addresses the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington this morning, and you can expect him to loudly trumpet the achievements — both real and illusionary — of his extraordinary first 17 days back in office. The president addresses the grand surrounds of Statutory Hall at the Capitol at 8:15 a.m., before heading across town to the Washington Hilton for a second speech an hour or so later. Trump being Trump, the focus today will be partly on religion … but also partly — OK largely — on himself and his record in power. Which makes this a good moment to take stock of where we actually are.
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President Donald Trump speaks before Pam Bondi is sworn in as Attorney General, in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington. | Evan Vucci/AP | Reality check … 10 quick takeaways on Trump 2.0. He was ready: Has any incoming administration been better prepared for power? Never mind the first 100 days — Trump’s team had a battleplan for the first 100 hours, and they executed it with stunning efficacy. From the barrage of executive orders to DOGE’s all-out war on government, it has all been way bigger than anyone foresaw. Rudderless and bewildered, Democrats had no idea how to respond. This guy has energy: Trump might be the oldest president ever to swear the oath, but he’s not slowing down. The pace of executive action has been off the charts. And Trump has made public appearances and taken media questions almost every single day. Each EO signing turns into a press conference; every trip on Air Force One an impromptu gaggle with hacks. Trump has dominated every moment of the news agenda. Joe Biden he is not. He doesn’t care about the law: Hardly a new one. But any suggestion Trump 2.0 might be more bound by legal or historic norms now looks laughable. Pardoning violent rioters. Overriding Congress’ spending powers. Trying to ban birthright citizenship. Purging the FBI and DOJ. Firing government watchdogs. Unleashing Elon Musk on the government machine. It seems only the courts have the power to hold Trump in check. Will they? Right-wing dissent is gone: Witness Pete Hegseth sailing through as secretary of Defense. Witness other outlandish picks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard getting Senate committee nods despite GOP concern. (Kash Patel will likely join their ranks today; the Senate Judiciary panel meets to consider his nomination at 10:15 a.m.) Witness the Republican cheerleading of every Trump announcement. It’s hard to see a John McCain moment this time round. Musk has unprecedented power: Recall those hot takes when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was first announced — how Musk had a non-job; how he’d just be writing dull reports for Congress to ignore. Well, so much for that. Musk and his engineers have implemented a hostile takeover of the entire government machine in a few short days, and are burning through public contracts, staff and entire agencies with unremitted glee. Who knows where it ends? Trump’s echo chamber also has power: The hostile media environment of 2016 is no more. Trump is being taken seriously (if not literally) by the MSM. His cheerleaders across conservative networks, podcasts and social media are in the ascendancy. Republicans who voice dissent, like Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), are pressured into silence. Misinformation that supports Trump’s agenda spreads like wildfire, as even POLITICO discovered yesterday (read a note here from our editor and chief exec on that). Some ‘wins’ are largely spin: The “biggest deportation in history” has been more PR spin than reality so far. We’ve seen migrants in manacles and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in a stab vest — but the number of people being arrested is only at Obama-era levels. Tariff policy has underwhelmed, despite all the noise. And heated air wars with neighbors like Canada, Mexico and Colombia won only small concessions in the end. But Trump proclaims victory anyway, and supporters lap it up. Other ‘wins’ are very real indeed: The conversation around transgender rights and diversity in the workplace has been transformed in a few short weeks. Foreign aid is almost a thing of the past. The state is being peeled back like never before. Petty scores are being settled all over the place. Trump is winning, and his enemies are in retreat. Congress is a problem: The painfully slow progress on a spending bill is a big red flag, and a sign of more legislative trouble to come. The knife-edge numbers in both chambers — but especially the House — are going to be a nightmare for Trump through the next 18 months. And historically, things only get worse for incumbent presidents after the midterms. This might be as good as it gets. He still makes dumb mistakes: The federal funding freeze was the first major blunder, as evidenced by the repeated clarifications after the event. And Trump’s surreal plan for Gaza already looks ill-fated, with Arab nations swift to condemn it and MAGA supporters unsettled by more endless war. (Yesterday’s partial White House walkbacks again confirmed an unforced error.) Given Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip style, there will surely be more to come.
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Learn more about how others are building with open source AI. | | | THE MAGA REVOLUTION DEADLINE DAY: Tens of thousands of federal workers have until midnight tonight to decide whether to accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer — or to battle on in an increasingly hostile work environment. The White House has set a goal for 5 to 10 percent of federal employees to take the buyout, Holly Otterbein reports this morning, saving potentially $100 billion — but as of yesterday, only 1 percent had opted into the plan. Officials are expecting a last-minute flurry today, the WSJ’s Lindsay Ellis and Janet Adamy report. Should I stay or should I go? “Countless staffers in the government are now grappling with what to do,” Holly writes. “Some have accepted the buyout. But as the deadline quickly approaches, others are growing defiant and vowing not to take the offer because they fear it won’t be honored anyway.” To that point: “Top officials at the Education Department told staff members Wednesday that if they accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation package, the education secretary may later cancel it and employees would not have any recourse, potentially leaving them without promised pay,” NBC’s Tyler Kingkade and David Ingram report. Worth watching: A judge in Boston will this afternoon hear pleas from Federal employee unions for an emergency restraining order to be placed on the entire deferred resignation program, my colleague Josh Gerstein texts in to say. Snoop DOGE: The eye of Elon is now extending well beyond aid contracts and Treasury payments, a five-bylined WaPo story led by Dan Diamond notes. They reckon DOGE is already snooping on sensitive health payment systems at the Department of Health and Human Services, and on Wednesday got to work at the Labor Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, too. And there’s more: The admin is expected to place more than 100 workers in the Environmental Protection Agency on leave as soon as today, WSJ’s Scott Patterson and colleagues report. The NYT says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — long a target for Project 2025 — is next in line. DOGE has also penetrated the VA system, per Military.com. Move fast, but please don’t break things: ICYMI, Elon also pledged Wednesday to deploy his DOGE squad inside America’s air traffic control system, making “rapid safety upgrades” to its complex web of software, hardware and human resources, Sam Ogozalek, Chris Marquette and Oriana Pawlyk report. Not at all unnerving if, say, you’re currently nipping back and forth across the Atlantic every other week while your family relocates from London. Ty them in knots: “It’s a naked power grab consistent with what Trump’s advisers have persuaded him to do, which is to flood the zone with as much unconstitutional activity as possible, with the hope that they get away with some or all of it,” Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer during Trump’s first term, tells WaPo. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said yesterday that Musk has been empowered “far beyond what I think is appropriate.” The fightback: “This time, the resistance is unfolding in the courts rather than the streets,” WaPo’s Naftali Bendavid writes this morning. Workers and contractors at USAID are planning potential lawsuits over the destruction of the agency, NBC revealed last night. Employees at Labor are also desperately trying to block Musk in the courts, Lawrence Ukenye and Nick Niedzwiadek report. But these cases are not the slam-dunk some liberal opponents seem to believe. On Wednesday, a federal judge declined to immediately block Musk allies at the Treasury from sharing Treasury records with people outside the department, including Musk himself, our Josh Gerstein reports. Beyond the courts: Thousands of protesters took to the streets across the U.S. yesterday via an online #BuildtheResistance campaign, the NYT’s Sara Ruberg reports. In D.C., Democrats are increasingly focused on Musk and his activities as they search for a winning message to fight Trump, WaPo’s Maeve Reston and Hannah Knowles report. It’s an interesting tactic. Polling suggests Americans largely disapprove of Musk’s role — but also, conversely, that cutting the size of government is one of Trump’s most popular policies. Couldn’t give a Musk: Either way, Elon is still having the time of his life. “It’s almost like I’m good with money!” the world’s richest man giggled on X early this morning, as his team continues to scythe through government programs like butter. What a world. NOW READ THIS: Inside the Elon-Jim Jordan bromance. “Elon Musk has a critical ally in Congress as he tries to slash federal bureaucracy at a break-neck pace: Rep. Jim Jordan” (R-Ohio), our Hailey Fuchs reports. “The billionaire tech executive and the conservative hardliner have grown increasingly close since first being introduced by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy shortly after Musk’s takeover of Twitter.” Musk and Jordan, who chairs House Judiciary, talk roughly once a month and see clear ways of helping one another advance their agendas. NOMINATIONS LATEST ALL NIGHT VOUGHT: Dems held the Senate floor all night long as they drag out the nomination debate on Russell Vought to its 30-hour maximum. The showy if pointless display is designed to signal deep Democratic unrest at Vought’s appointment at OMB following last week’s bungled attempt to freeze all government grants and spending. Vought will nevertheless be confirmed once we get to the vote later today — that’s expected at 7 p.m. We want more: Despite the overnight session, there’s a rising wave of anger inside the Democratic Party that more powerful resistance to Trump does not seem forthcoming, Nicholas Wu, Daniella Diaz and Jordain Carney report. Left-wing activists want Dems to “shut down the Senate,” which is an interesting idea for a party which campaigned as pro-democracy. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) urges her Senate counterparts to “blow this place up,” and demanded “a halt on all Trump nominees.” Definitely not halted: Pam Bondi, who was confirmed as attorney general yesterday and is now embarking on a policy and media blitz. On her first day leading the Justice Department, Bondi issued a flurry of 14 “first-day” directives. Among them, she ordered the department to set up a task force to examine the “weaponization” of the DOJ and rein in investigations into foreign influence. She also warned career lawyers at her agency not to try to thwart Trump administration policies. Josh Gerstein and Erica Orden have the full rundown. Coming attractions: Bondi will be interviewed by Sean Hannity at 9 p.m. on Fox News. Upheaval at DOJ: WSJ’s Sadie Gurman, C. Ryan Barber and Aruna Viswanatha have a deep dive on the shakeup that has hit the Justice Department, where “expulsions have been swift and far-reaching,” resulting in dozens of longtime officials being pushed out or reassigned. “Some agents working on criminal or national-security investigations have been given a list of names and addresses of suspected illegal immigrants, a law-enforcement official said … One [FBI agent] who investigates child exploitation was recently directed to help the Department of Homeland Security with immigration work. A supervisor in counterintelligence received similar orders.” RETURN OF THE MAC: Newly installed HUD chief Scott Turner is also eyeing big changes: He told WSJ’s Gina Heeb, AnnaMaria Andriotis and Corrie Driebusch that a “cross-government effort to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be a priority as he takes the helm of the agency.” LORD, I WAS BORN A GAMBLIN’ MAN: “Long before he was Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary, billionaire financier Howard Lutnick got into the sports gambling business,” Daniel Lippman, Megan Messerly and Betsy Woodruff Swan write in a must-read on the new admin figure. “Lutnick wasn’t in it to make bets himself. He founded a Nevada company that allowed people to wager on their phones — a decade before mobile sports betting became a booming industry nationwide. But the company, Cantor Gaming, repeatedly violated state and federal laws, authorities said.”
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| | | CONGRESSIONAL VIBE CHECK RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: Could the world’s most painful budget talks finally be coming to a head? The tentpole moment to watch today is an 11 a.m. meeting Trump has set with GOP members to discuss the budget resolution. That’ll take place inside the Cabinet Room at the White House, and you can expect congressional leaders to hit the sticks afterward. Keep an eye on POLITICO’s essential Inside Congress Live blog throughout the day. Fingers crossed: Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a key member of the House Freedom Caucus, reckons enough progress has been made in the stalled House negotiations that a blueprint could be released by the end of the week,our own Meredith Lee Hill reports. “We're working on full text,” Norman said in a brief interview Wednesday. “But I will tell you, it's promising, what we're doing.” But but but: Frustrated Senate Republicans are preparing to leapfrog the House with a vote on a budget bill next week, Fox News’ Julia Johnson and Elizabeth Elkind report. “Ahead of a weekly lunch meeting hosted by Senate Steering Committee Chairman Rick Scott, R-Fla., a plan was unveiled by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to push for a committee vote next week on a first bill, with plans for an additional reconciliation bill later in the year.” Further reading: Our Inside Congress newsletter dropped an hour ago and has more juice on the Senate spending plan, which is expected to include roughly $150 billion for border security and a similar sum for defense. Republican senators gather at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow night for further budget talks with the boss. BEYOND THE BELTWAY CANAL CONFUSION: “The U.S. and Panama issued dueling statements Wednesday over access to the Panama Canal,” WSJ’s Vera Bergengruen and Costas Paris report, “with the State Department saying all fees would be waived for American vessels, and the waterway’s authority firing back that no deal had been reached. Wait, what? “U.S. government ships will access the waterway ‘without charge fees, saving the U.S. government millions of dollars a year,’ the State Department said in a post on X. … The Panama Canal Authority said late Wednesday that no such adjustment had been made to tolls or transit rights for U.S. government ships.” So that’s as clear as mud. The announcement comes three days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country to discuss U.S. shipping fees and Chinese influence in the region. INSIDE TRUMP’S GAZA SHOCKER: That was no off-the-cuff idea that President Trump unveiled on Tuesday — in fact, he’d been discussing his grand plan for Gaza with advisers for months, top colleagues Eli Stokols and Dasha Burns report. But the intent, those aides say, was for a negotiating ploy to give Israeli leaders more leverage over Hamas as they try to turn a fragile cease-fire into a lasting peace. “This was a ‘get your ass to the negotiating table’ message,” said a person familiar with the president’s thinking, comparing it to Trump’s threats of a trade war with America’s neighbors. None of which means … the idea was exactly thought-through. NYT’s Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman report the administration “had not done even the most basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea” and that there “had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon.” It also came as a surprise to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who learned of Trump’s idea just moments before appearing at the news conference alongside him, per the Times. How it’s playing: “Trump proposal to displace Gazans draws swift backlash in Arab world,” by WaPo’s Claire Parker and Susannah George in Jerusalem For the record: Yesterday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has “not committed” to sending American troops to Gaza, Ben Johansen notes. She also said the U.S. will not pay for rebuilding in Gaza, recasting Trump’s earlier comments that suggested a widespread nation-building effort. IMMIGRATION FILES: Here’s the next salvo in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The administration is “considering a move to repel asylum seekers at the southern border on the basis that they might bring measles or tuberculosis infections” into the country, WSJ’s Michelle Hackman and Liz Essley Whyte report. The deployment of Title 42, the emergency health law that was used during the Covid-19 pandemic, is seen by the White House as a way to override other laws that guarantee protections for migrants. At Guantánamo: U.S. defense officials said yesterday that the administration is “holding 10 migrants with suspected gang affiliations in the same prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that has housed men accused of being members of Al Qaeda,” NYT’s Hamed AleazizEric Schmitt and Carol Rosenberg report. The Pentagon said the held migrants are viewed as too dangerous to be part of the tent city that is being prepared.
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| | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | DCA CRASH LATEST: NYT goes inside the cockpit of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with the American Airlines jet over the Potomac, recreating a 3-D model of the pilots’ field of view just before the deadly crash occurred. And the same paper has a five-bylined report on the crew that was manning the Black Hawk, detailing the trio’s training mission that night. Former Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan was evicted from her home by the Trump administration with just three hours of notice, NBC’s Jonathan Allen and Courtney Kube report. Fox News’ Trey Yingst will be honored at the 34th annual First Amendment Awards. OVERLOOKED: With little fanfare, the Trump Justice Department has ended a federal investigation into the alleged theft of Ashley Biden’s diary and how it ended up in the hands of Project Veritas, the conservative video-sting operation that has since gone defunct, our Josh Gerstein reports. “Based on information currently available to the Government, no additional criminal charges are forthcoming,” acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoonwrote Wednesday. FBI raids in 2021 at the homes of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and his associates alarmed some First Amendment advocates, since O’Keefe describes himself as a journalist and searches of journalists’ homes or workplaces are rare. The aggressive actions suggested federal prosecutors suspected some criminality on the part of Project Veritas or its personnel. In 2022, two Florida residents, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic stolen property across state lines and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The Justice Department said each was paid $20,000 by Project Veritas for the diary and that they obtained more of Ashley Biden’s effects at the group’s request. Harris was sentenced to a month in prison. Kurlander is set to be sentenced in April. No one affiliated with Project Veritas was ever charged. O’Keefe was fired by the group’s board in 2023, and the organization shut down its operations later that year. “This meek letter from the United States Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York ends their attack on the First Amendment,” said Paul Calli, who represented Project Veritas in the fight. “I am grateful that our effort to protect the freedom of the press was successful.” OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at the Asian American Action Fund’s annual Lunar New Year party at the VUE rooftop last night: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Derek Tran (D-Calif.), Dave Min (D-Calif.) and Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Katherine Tai, Linda Pham, Albert Shen, Irene Bueno, Jay Lim, Christine Chen, Carrie Pugh, Juliet Choi, Jason Park and Norberto Salinas. — SPOTTED at a retirement party for Bill Barloon at T-Mobile: Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, Vonya McCann, Tony Russo, Laura McPherson, David Israelite, Meredith Baker, Melinda Lewis, Rob McDowell, Hugh Carroll, Roger Sherman, John Feehery and Maura Corbett. MEDIA MOVE — Rachel Cohrs Zhang will cover health care, politics and money for Bloomberg. She previously was chief Washington correspondent at Stat. TRANSITIONS — Tom Erickson is joining the Hereford Agency as VP. He most recently was the NRCC’s Independent Expenditure director last cycle, directing $53 million in spending, and is an OnMessage and Kristi Noem alum. … Henry Rodgers is joining Meta to work on public policy. He previously was chief national correspondent at The Daily Caller. … Emily Kingsland is now EVP at Trident DMG. She previously was VP of comms at Revolution. … … Kyle Hayes is now senior director of public policy at the American Society of Association Executives. He was previously VP of government affairs at the Commercial Vehicle Training Association. … Faiq Raza is now a senior adviser at The Roosevelt Group. He was previously a special assistant at DOD during the Biden administration and is a Gary Peters, Denny Heck and Chuck Schumer alum. … Empire Consulting Group is adding Shuwanza Goff to serve as partner/chief strategy officer and Michael Hayes as a partner. Goff previously was assistant to the President/director of White House Legislative Affairs and is a Steny Hoyer alum. Hayes previously was special assistant to the president/deputy director of White House Public Engagement. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) (8-0), Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) and Luz Rivas (D-Calif.) … Indiana Dem Chair Mike Schmuhl … Fox News’ Kevin Corke … WaPo’s Jenna Johnson … GMMB’s Annie Burns … Tiffany Cross … Fernando Suarez … Daniel Wessel … Evan Wessel … Chris Slevin … Jerry Seib … Amanda Miller … Missayr Boker … Tommy Brown … Claire Standaert … Todd Abrajano … POLITICO’s Alina Strileckis, Collins Chinyanta and Erin Schumaker … Cara Castronuova … Malcom Glenn … Rebecca Cooper … Democracy for the Arab World Now’s Raed Jarrar … Ken Lisaius … U.S. Travel Association’s Tori Barnes … Tom Brokaw … NRCC’s Sarah Wood … Greenberg Traurig’s Fred Karlinsky … Lloyd Grove … Martin Pengelly … Julie Williams 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.
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