1. NOT SHAKING THINGS UP: New DNC Chair Ken Martin is sticking with experienced insiders for the top ranks of the party. POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky scooped that Roger Lau has been elevated to work as the next executive director, along with Libby Schneider as deputy executive director and State Department alum Jessica Wright as deputy executive director and chief of staff to the chair. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Washington Dem Chair Shasti Conrad and Stuart Appelbaum will be associate chairs. 2. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: The House Ways and Means GOP plans to begin writing the big reconciliation bill on March 10 and 12, POLITICO’s Benjamin Guggenheim and Meredith Lee Hill report. That’s when Republicans will really have to buckle down to figure out which tax policies they can afford to include. 3. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said he’s been talking with senior White House officials about Iran, and he urged the two countries to engage in nuclear talks with each other, per Bloomberg’s Jonathan Tirone. “What we need is an engagement that is substantial, tangible and concrete,” said the interlocutor. Meanwhile in Gaza: Egypt tomorrow will present a vision for Gaza to run counter to Trump’s suggestion of removing Palestinians from the territory, Reuters’ Andrew Mills scooped. Cairo’s plan proposes getting Hamas out of power (though it’s not clear how) and having a governance mission coordinate rebuilding and humanitarian aid, answering to regional and Western countries. 4. IN THE DOGE HOUSE: Following an online outcry that reached Elon Musk, USAID has reinstated contracts for a Georgia company that makes peanut butter paste to keep malnourished children alive, CNN’s MJ Lee reports. CEO Mark Moore said he was “thrilled” to restart sending hundreds of thousands of boxes of the food aid that would have otherwise gone to waste. The peanut butter paste about-face is the kind of mistake about which some Trump allies have increasingly worried: that elevating the Department of Government Efficiency as the centerpiece of his administration instead of more popular policies could backfire politically, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly reports. In swing states, despite general support for cutting government waste, operatives say the administration risks being too online and not highlighting the economy, immigration and cutting taxes enough. Indeed, Democrats and liberal groups spent $3 million on anti-Musk Meta ads last month, per Chaotic Era’s Kyle Tharp. The flip side: The National Science Foundation’s leader ordered the reinstatement of nearly half of its 170 fired employees, in the wake of a court ruling, per NYT’s Raymond Zhong. The international fallout: The Bulwark’s Sam Stein reveals that when senior USAID official Nicholas Enrich was fired for writing memos about the agency’s failure to restart lifesaving foreign aid, he was also working on a third memo sounding more alarms. It would have warned that if the aid stopped permanently, there could be “12.5–17.9 million cases of malaria with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths annually; A 28 to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally; An additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year; And, in a worst-case scenario, more than 28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases. … An estimated 1 million children would not be treated annually for severe acute malnutrition.” The domestic fallout: From Durham, North Carolina, CNN’s Curt Devine, Casey Tolan, Kyung Lah, Audrey Ash and Yahya Abou-Ghazala report that layoffs have already upended many federal workers and contractors, while looming funding cuts could damage the Research Triangle. In fact, some universities around the country fear “an existential threat to higher education” from potential cuts to NIH funding for scientific research’s indirect costs, WaPo’s Susan Svrluga reports. A freeze on government credit cards has also halted NIH research on cancer and Alzheimer’s, Popular Information’s Judd Legum reports. 5. NOTABLE DEPARTURE: Thomas Corry has resigned as the top spokesperson at HHS after two weeks on the job, POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn reports, amid clashes with principal deputy chief of staff Stefanie Spear and concerns about Kennedy’s handling of the Texas measles outbreak. 6. PLAYING CATCH-UP: “Inside the Democratic Battle to Go Viral,” by NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson and Oriana González: As head of Senate Dems’ new Strategic Communications Committee, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) “plans to hire in-house content creators and partnership managers. He’s cross-promoting his colleagues on his own social media platforms — each with over a million followers — and he’s espousing direct-to-camera videos to his peers. Average daily social media engagement has tripled since December … The energy is just as feverish in the House, where upping the Democratic ‘new media’ presence has become a focus for leadership.” 7. BURSTING THE BUBBLES: Removing soda from food stamps programs used to be an idea pushed by some Democratic states, and rejected by the Agriculture Department. But with the Make America Healthy Again movement in the GOP driver’s seat, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders plans to seek USDA waivers to limit people spending food aid on junk food, WSJ’s Kristina Peterson, Josh Dawsey and Laura Cooper report. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins seems open to providing them. State legislators in several other states have introduced bills to add such restrictions, as nanny-state concerns have faded in favor of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-inspired views. But soda lobbyists in D.C. are urgently pushing back. 8. FIRST AMENDMENT WATCH: “Can the Media’s Right to Pursue the Powerful Survive Trump’s Second Term?” by David Enrich in the NYT Magazine: “The first step would be for the court to decide to hear a case that might give it the opportunity to reconsider the 61-year-old precedent. Four justices need to vote to accept a case; so far, there appear to be only two votes: [Justices Clarence] Thomas and [Neil] Gorsuch. There are reasons for skepticism that another two votes exist. … But even if most of the justices are satisfied with [New York Times v. Sullivan], what about the precedents that extended the actual-malice standard to a wide range of public figures, not just government officials?” 9. WILD STORY: “The D.C. Power Broker Embroiled in a Global Hacking Scandal,” by WSJ’s Christopher Matthews and Jenny Strasburg: “[A]t a November 2015 breakfast with an Israeli private investigator, [Justin] Peterson launched a yearslong campaign that federal prosecutors now say crossed a line. As he put it in an email following the breakfast, Peterson wanted the investigator to ‘operationalize the research on the bad guys.’ According to prosecutors, in practice that led to something very specific: hacking into the email accounts of Exxon [Mobil]’s enemies. Peterson hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing or charged in connection with the alleged hacking.” His firm, DCI Group, said they hadn’t heard from prosecutors in years and accused “radical anti-oil activists” of spreading conspiracy theories. “No one at DCI directed or was involved in any hacking alleged to have occurred a decade ago,” a spokesman said.
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