Will Biden give Putin a lump of coal?

Dec 24, 2024

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DEATH KNELL — In the wake of President JOE BIDEN’s federal death penalty commutations, President-elect DONALD TRUMP today reiterated his pledge to expand the use of capital punishment for “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

President Joe Biden is weighing new sanctions on Russian energy. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images

TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE — Biden may have one last twist of the knife for Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN before he leaves office.

The president is considering a significant new round of sanctions taking aim at the ships and exporters that have kept bringing Russian oil to other countries, WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Ellen Nakashima reported this morning with new details of the plans being discussed. The banks that facilitate Russia’s energy sector could also be targeted for changes.

It’s a risk the Biden administration wasn’t previously willing to take, for fear of causing gas and oil prices to jump. But Washington’s decision matrix is different now, as Bloomberg’s Annmarie Hordern, Jenny Leonard, Viktoria Dendrinou and Alberto Nardelli reported earlier this month: Inflation has eased. Oil prices have fallen. The election has already happened. And, of course, Trump is coming.

Though Trump has frequently criticized Biden’s moves to squeeze Russia, sources tell the Post that new sanctions could actually strengthen Trump’s hand in forcing Russia to the negotiating table to end the war in Ukraine. It could also give Kyiv more leverage. Existing sanctions from the U.S. and Europe have already damaged the Russian economy, triggering high inflation and a potential recession, but energy sales have helped keep it afloat.

Sanctions are just one potential irritant in the U.S.-Russia relationship. In the latest news out of Moscow, American EUGENE SPECTOR was sentenced to 13 additional years in prison on an espionage conviction today, WaPo’s David Stern reports.

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Then there’s the secretive network of weapons dealers connecting Iran to Russia and funneling arms to the battlefield in Ukraine. U.S. officials and others tell Bloomberg’s Ben Bartenstein that Iranian oil businessman HOSSEIN SHAMKHANI, known as “HECTOR,” has emerged as a crucial figure getting weapons across the Caspian Sea — the kind of links about which the Biden administration has repeatedly warned in the past few years. His lawyer declined to comment.

Related read: “Trump Will Confront a More Vulnerable but Determined Iran,” by NYT’s David Sanger: “Iran … is suddenly far more brittle than it was during his first administration, its leadership more uncertain, its nuclear program more exposed and vulnerable to attack. That new reality has touched off an internal debate about how his administration should approach Tehran: with an openness to negotiations, or with an attack on its nuclear enrichment program — overt or covert, or perhaps initiated by Israel. Or, as many suggest, a round of ‘coercive diplomacy’ that leaves Tehran to choose either a negotiated disassembly of its nuclear capability, or a forced one.”

MOVE FAST AND PASS THINGS — Senate Republicans are dreaming of getting their first, border-focused reconciliation bill to the Senate floor even before Trump’s inauguration, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. Ideally, they’d like the Senate Budget Committee to move the resolution within the first weeks of the new year/new term, getting it signed into law in February. Current plans for the expected filibuster-proof bill include “around $100 billion for the border, paid for with energy leases and with a TBD national security component.”

GOOD NEWS — BILL CLINTON was discharged from the hospital. He had the flu.

Good Tuesday afternoon, and thanks for reading Playbook PM. Happy Christmas Eve (and Hanukkah Eve)! This is our last afternoon edition for the rest of the holiday season, but Playbook will still be in your inbox every morning. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.

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7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is seen during a House Rules Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol Nov. 1, 2023. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and other fiscal hardliners are hoping Donald Trump gives them a boost. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

1. DYNAMIC TO WATCH: “Warning signs for conservatives who want to draft Trump in their spending war,” by Jordain Carney: “[L]ast week’s meltdown over government funding underscored that Trump doesn’t always share their fiscal restraint. … For now, fiscal conservatives are banking on Trump being their best hope after losing battle after battle the last two years. … Some [moderates] are actively hoping Trump can help them tame their hardliners instead of emboldening them.”

2. SLOW-MOTION CATASTROPHE: A new international report today estimates that at least 638,000 people in Sudan are suffering from the equivalent of famine, with several more regions of the country at risk of joining them amid the war, WSJ’s Gabriele Steinhauser and Mohamed Zakaria report. That’s just the latest horror as the toll of hunger rises around the world, and aid from wealthy nations isn’t keeping up, Reuters’ Jaimi Dowdell, Kaylee Kang, Benjamin Lesser and Raymon Troncoso report. The latest U.N. estimates predict that it won’t be able to help two-fifths of the people who need aid next year.

Amid the darkening outlook, one big question is whether the Trump administration will cut U.S. contributions. He wanted to slash aid in his first term, but Congress didn’t go along with him. Now, some outside allies want to make sure that if the U.S. ponies up, international organizations get more from other nations, too: Currently, China, India and Russia provide less than 1 percent of the aid, while the U.S., Germany and the European Commission pay for the majority, Reuters notes.

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3. WHAT WENT WRONG IN AFGHANISTAN: “Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban,” by NYT’s Azam Ahmed in Kunduz: “For years, the Americans supported militias in the north to fight the Taliban. But the effort backfired — those groups preyed on the populace with such cruelty that they turned a one-time stronghold of the United States into a bastion of the insurgency. People came to see the militias, and by [extension] the Americans, as a source of torment, not salvation. … That state-sponsored misery was central to how the United States and its Afghan partners lost the north — and how, despite two decades and $2 trillion in American money, Afghanistan fell.”

4. BEHIND THE PANAMA CANAL THREAT: Newly named special envoy MAURICIO CLAVER-CARONE tells WaPo’s Karen DeYoung that concern about Chinese influence in Latin America motivated Trump’s surprise saber-rattling about retaking the Panama Canal. “Decades of U.S. commerce financing China’s growth and strategic footprint in the Americas is over,” he says.

5. KNOWING BRENDAN CARR: “How a Telecom Bureaucrat Learned to Speak Trump,” by WSJ’s Drew FitzGerald, Amrith Ramkumar and Maggie Severns: “People who have worked with Carr describe an ambitious risk-taker with a firm grasp of technical and legal details. His wife, MACHALAGH, a past staffer for former House speaker KEVIN McCARTHY, also informs his sense of Beltway politics. In recent months, Carr’s statements have hewed increasingly close to Trump’s, a stance that has raised eyebrows inside the legally independent FCC.”

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6. FIRST AMENDMENT WATCH: For several years, NewsGuard has provided nonpartisan ratings of various news outlets’ bias and trustworthiness. But Republicans are increasingly unhappy with its low ratings for far-right outfits like Newsmax and OAN — and Carr accuses it of censorship of conservatives, WaPo’s Will Oremus and Naomi Nix report. NewsGuard and outside experts shoot back that Carr is the one trying to censor them, and possibly violating the Constitution. It’s “symptomatic of a broader societal struggle over who gets to arbitrate the truth. And Carr’s letter potentially heralds a Trump administration prepared to wield state power to win that battle.”

7. IMMIGRATION FILES: “‘Dreamers’ Make Emergency Plans as Trump Vows to Deport Millions,” by WSJ’s Jim Carlton: “At-risk students are scrambling to learn their rights, making plans to go underground if necessary and — just in case — contacting distant relatives in home countries they barely remember should they end up being sent there.”

Meanwhile, as blue states strategize to protect immigrants under Trump, our Sacramento colleague Lindsey Holden obtained a draft of California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM’s plans. They suggest an “Immigrant Support Network” with hubs to help connect undocumented immigrants and their loved ones to specific supports or legal services.

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