| | | |  | | By Zack Stanton | Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices | | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine Good morning! This is Zack Stanton, wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day. Hope you’re prepared to begin it in the most romantic way possible: reading about the Munich Security Conference. Get in touch: zstanton@politico.com. POLITICO EXCLUSIVE: At the POLITICO Pub at the Munich Security Conference this morning, Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin that he was “puzzled and disturbed” by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments ruling out Ukraine joining NATO as part of a peace process. Just posted: Hegseth “made a rookie mistake in Brussels, and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line,” Wicker told POLITICO on the sidelines at MSC. “I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.” (More on Hegseth’s comments below.) But wait, there’s more: Last night, POLITICO and MSC announced an expanded partnership for May’s Munich Leaders Meeting in D.C. Read more about that here. What else is happening at the POLITICO Pub? You can see the full schedule here and follow our livestream all day.
| | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
When President Donald Trump talks about reorienting the U.S.’ role in the world, he means it. | Ben Curtis/AP Photo | A NEW WORLD ORDER: The most important story in Washington today isn’t actually happening in Washington at all: Right now, some of the most influential policymakers in the Western world have gathered at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof for the Munich Security Conference. Over a whirlwind three days, America’s longtime European partners will try to get their sea legs as Hurricane Trump tosses the continent around like a cork floating in the ocean. Snap back to reality: “Europe’s leaders started adjusting to their cold new world without American protection on Thursday — and began to push back against Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine,” POLITICO’s Tim Ross, Jacopo Barigazzi, Hans von der Burchard and Clea Caulcutt write this morning. “In Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London, a growing chorus of voices — some calm, others angry — warned the U.S. president that conceding to the demands of Russian leader Vladimir Putin for territory would amount to ‘appeasement.’” Fear and loathing: “A majority of European countries do not want to lose face and are still not thinking in terms of the new Trump framework,” a European official tells POLITICO’s Laura Kayali and Jacopo Barigazzi, adding that it probably stems from a “mix of fear and denial.” But it’s more than just Ukraine: “Trump’s designs on Gaza and Greenland were examples of the ‘extreme strategic uncertainty’ the world was now living in,” French President Emmanuel Macron tells the FT. “It demanded a radical rethink of how the EU and its member states operate. ‘It is an electroshock. We need asymmetric shocks, we need external shocks. It is an exogenous shock for Europeans.’” 48 hours of shocks … On Wednesday: Trump had a long phone call with Putin during which they agreed to “start negotiations immediately” on ending Russia’s war with Ukraine, Trump said. That sparked fears that neither Ukraine nor its European allies would have a seat at the negotiating table. In a separate call, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy told Trump that Putin is only pretending to want to negotiate a peace deal because he is “afraid of you,” Axios’ Barak Ravid scooped yesterday, citing “a Ukrainian official and three other sources with knowledge of the call.” Yesterday: During his presser with Indian PM Narendra Modi, Trump effectively pulled “a critical bargaining chip for Ukraine and its Western allies off the table” by saying that a potential peace deal would likely have to rule out Ukrainian NATO membership — simply because of Russia’s opposition to it, POLITICO’s Eli Stokols reports. Trump separately said that Russia should rejoin the G7. (Russia, you may remember, was suspended from the group after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine.) Which brings us to today: “The Donald Trump paradigm shift is officially here,” Laura and Jacopo write. Where there’s clarity: In the past, allies have wondered whether to take Trump seriously or literally, to employ a useful cliché. But this time, there’s no ambiguity: When he talks about reorienting the U.S.’ role in the world — putting America “first,” even if it means abandoning old geopolitical partnerships and sounding a death knell for the post-World War II European order — he means it.
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Learn more at https://medicarechoices.org/ | | | What’s less clear: Whether to take Trump’s ostensible proxies seriously or literally. The veep: VP JD Vance is the top-ranking U.S. official to attend Munich, and all eyes will be trained on him as he makes a speech at the conference (8:30 a.m. Eastern) and meets with Zelenskyy late this morning on the sidelines of the conference. (Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also supposed to join for the Zelenskyy convo, but it’s unclear if he’ll make it in time, as he was forced to switch aircraft after his plane’s windshield cracked about 90 minutes into his initial ride.) Big news: In an interview with the WSJ that published overnight, Vance said that “the U.S. would hit Moscow with sanctions and potentially military action if Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t agree to a peace deal with Ukraine that guarantees Kyiv’s long-term independence,” the Journal’s Bojan Pancevski and Alex Ward report. “Vance said the option of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained ‘on the table,’ … ‘There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage’ the U.S. could use against Putin, Vance said.” Who to believe? On Wednesday, Hegseth ruled out any role for U.S. troops in Ukraine, per NYT’s Steven Erlanger. He also angered allies by calling a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders “an unrealistic objective.” But yesterday, Hegseth tried to walk back some of the peace deal concessions he demanded of Ukraine — including no NATO membership or a return to its pre-war borders, POLITICO’s Paul McLeary reports. “Everything is on the table” when it comes to negotiations to end the war, Hegseth said during a news conference wrapping up two days of NATO meetings in Brussels. Speaking of Hegseth: Pentagon officials apparently invited far-right activist (and noted “Pizzagate” conspiracy promoter) Jack Posobiec to accompany the secretary on his first overseas trip, WaPo’s Dan Lamothe reports, “triggering alarm among U.S. defense officials worried about the military being dragged into partisan warfare.” The invitation “raised questions within the Pentagon about Hegseth’s judgment and what he aimed to communicate to U.S. allies if he were to allow a polarizing political figure to be by his side.”
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| | | THE MAGA REVOLUTION THE PALLS OF JUSTICE: In a stunning move, Danielle Sassoon, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, submitted her resignation in light of the Justice Department’s order to drop a federal corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, the NYT scooped. That’s not all: “Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned” … and then, “hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned,” the quad-bylined reporting team writes. To put that in context: “The number of resignations today in protest of DOJ’s order to dismiss the Adams case is now triple the number that occurred during the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre,” NBC’s Ken Dilanian notes. Explosive allegation: In her letter of resignation to AG Pam Bondi, Sassoon wrote that Adams’ attorneys “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with [the] Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,” per NBC. “Sassoon also said in the letter that her office was preparing to file additional charges against Adams ‘based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.’” Backstory: NYT’s Benjamin Weiser and Jonah Bromwich have a good read on Sassoon’s rising star — her “bulletproof conservative credentials” include membership in the Federalist Society and time spent clerking for Antonin Scalia — writing that her “life had been characterized by achievement that was noteworthy even in environments where achievement is the norm.” MUSK’S MISSION: Elon Musk offered the latest window into his Department of Government Efficiency-led effort to slash through federal bureaucracy, saying the U.S. must “delete entire agencies,” POLITICO’s Amanda Friedman writes. What he said: “I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said during a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “It’s kind of like a weed: If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.” Rubber meeting road: The Trump administration moved to lay off thousands of government employees in at least six agencies yesterday, initiating a new and more aggressive phase of its push to shrink the federal workforce, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai, Eli Stokols, Jack Detsch and Brakkton Booker report. By the numbers: Officials didn’t say how many layoff notices they planned to send, but they did acknowledge they expect to go well beyond the 77,000 employees who have already accepted offers to leave. (The voluntary resignation program culled 3 percent of the workforce, well short of the administration’s 10 percent goal.) Out of energy: Energy Department officials yesterday told the agency’s program leaders to inform probationary employees they were set to be fired, a move that could include up to 2,000 people, POLITICO’s Zack Colman and Kelsey Tamborrino report. The orders were communicated verbally, which appeared to be part of a strategy that aligns with a pattern of leaving no paper trail. And over the past 48 hours, at least five other agencies — Education, OPM, the SBA, the CFPB and the GSA — initiated layoffs. IN THE COURTS: A federal judge is giving thousands of USAID employees another weeklong reprieve from being forced onto administrative leave or called home from overseas posts, but signaled that he may not order longer-term relief, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney write. Fighting back from afar: Democratic AGs from 14 states filed a lawsuit yesterday “to challenge what they called the ‘unlawful delegation of executive power’” in the creation of Musk’s DOGE effort, per NYT’s Madeleine Ngo. ERASURE: Amid Trump’s anti-transgender push across the federal government, the U.S. Park Service yesterday “removed references to transgender people from its Stonewall National Monument web pages,” NYT’s Ed Shanahan, Katherine Rosman and Liam Stack report. A (TEMPORARY) WIN: But in a victory for LGBTQ+ allies, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to “keep federal funding in place for hospitals nationwide that offer gender-transition treatments for people under the age of 19,” NYT’s Amy Harmon and Juliet Macur write.
| | | | Join POLITICO on February 19, for the Playbook First 100 Days: Health Care Breakfast Briefing where we will gather key leaders in health care and Washington to discuss the looming issues that will shape health care policy in 2025. RVSP to attend. | | | | | ON THE HILL RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: Speaker Mike Johnson has cleared a major hurdle toward unlocking the massive party-line bill he’s pursuing to enact Trump’s agenda. Now he’s got more jumping to do, POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill writes this morning. The emerging fault lines: GOP members in high-tax blue states are concerned that the plan doesn’t leave enough room to expand the state and local tax deduction. And Senate Republicans and some House hard-liners aren’t ready to give up on a competing two-bill plan. But there’s a more immediate problem: Swing-district Republicans believe that the steep spending cuts Johnson wants across Medicaid, food assistance and other safety-net programs for low-income Americans could cost them their seats — and, in turn, Johnson his razor-thin GOP majority. ABOUT THOSE MARGINS: As the Senate sends through all of Trump’s selections to fill out his administration, one name is requiring a surprisingly delicate dance: Elise Stefanik. On ice: Senate Republicans are holding back Stefanik’s nomination to become ambassador to the U.N. as the White House worries that plucking another Republican from the House could further imperil Johnson’s already slim majority in the chamber just as he is about to get the gears moving on enacting Trump’s agenda, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney and Eric Bazail-Eimil report. UP NEXT: Howard Lutnick, Trump's pick to lead the Commerce Department and implement his sweeping trade and tariff agenda, is set for a full Senate confirmation vote in the coming days. Yesterday, the Senate backed a procedural move to advance Lutnick’s nomination, 52-45. More from POLITICO’s Ben Leonard THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: Where is the resistance? Even as Trump dismantles agencies, fires federal workers and tries to impound congressionally appropriated funds, Democrats are limited in their leverage on Capitol Hill. What can they be doing differently? And what might a more organized and effective opposition look like? To get some answers: Yesterday, chief Playbook correspondent Eugene Daniels caught up with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to talk through all of it. Raskin is no stranger to sparring with Trump. He was a floor manager during the president’s second impeachment. Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appointed him to the Democrats’ “rapid response and litigation working group,” where he’ll help lead the Dems’ strategy to slow down Trump in the courts. Listen now: You can hear their conversation on this morning’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your podcatcher of choice. ONE TO WATCH: Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens is taking steps toward a Michigan Senate bid, POLITICO’s Nick Wu and Ally Mutnick report. The four-term centrist is seriously considering a run to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters, and is inching closer to a decision. Stevens would be a strong contender for Democrats and is known as a prodigious fundraiser. (One question we have: If Stevens takes the plunge, would state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, widely seen as a rising star in the party, pass up her own Senate bid to instead run to succeed Stevens in her deep-blue Oakland County House seat?) ON THE MAP: Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski released legislation to formally rename North America’s highest mountain Denali — countering Trump’s executive order to rename it Mount McKinley, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney writes. The bill would require the Alaska mountain to be referred to as Denali in any laws, maps, regulations, documents, papers or other U.S. records. “In Alaska, it’s Denali,” Murkowski said, adding that it “isn’t a political issue.” Speaking of the last frontier: Former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is believed to be gunning for governor in Alaska, per The Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey — a move that would likely ease the path to reelection for GOP Rep. Nick Begich.
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| | | BEST OF THE REST TRUMP INC.: Trump hasn’t been in office for even a full month yet, but the windfall is in full bloom. “Companies have directed about $80 million to members of the Trump family and the Trump presidential library so far,” WSJ’s Rebecca Ballhaus, Dana Mattioli and Annie Linskey report, noting that the figure “doesn’t include potential gains from crypto pursuits.” TIKTOK ON THE CLOCK: Trump yesterday said he’s still working on a deal to secure a sale of TikTok amid a looming deadline for the app to secure new ownership or face being shut out of the U.S. Trump said he’s optimistic that a deal can be reached before the expiration of his executive order that postponed enforcement of a law requiring China-based ByteDance to cede control of the app — a deadline he indicated he’s open to extending. “I’m going to make it worthwhile for China to do it,” Trump said. (Notably, TikTok did return to the app stores on Apple and Google devices last night.) POLITICO’s Ali Bianco has more ROYCO IN REAL LIFE: NYT’s Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg have a rollicking read on the “Succession”-esque drama that is playing out among the Murdoch family as 92-year-old patriarch Rupert decides how to pass on his legacy: “More than 3,000 pages of documents reveal how years of betrayals led to a messy court battle that threatens the future of Rupert’s empire.” THE WEEKEND AHEAD TV TONIGHT — PBS’ “Washington Week”: Eugene Daniels, Stephen Hayes, Teddy Schleifer and Nancy Youssef. SUNDAY SO FAR … FOX “Fox News Sunday”: national security adviser Mike Waltz … Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) … Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). Panel: Olivia Beavers, Mollie Hemingway, Juan Williams and Josh Wingrove. ABC “This Week”: Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) … House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. CBS “Face the Nation”: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett … Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). CNN “State of the Union”: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Panel: Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.), Jamal Simmons and Kristen Soltis Anderson. MSNBC “The Weekend”: Deb Haaland … Marc Elias. NewsNation “The Hill Sunday”: Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) … Richard Brookhiser. Panel: Margaret Talev, Sarah McCammon and Kellie Meyer. NBC “Meet the Press”: Panel: Matt Gorman, Sahil Kapur, Amna Nawaz and Jen Psaki.
| | | | With a new administration in place, how will governors work with the federal government and continue to lead the way on issues like AI, health care, economic development, education, energy and climate? Hear from Gov. Jared Polis, Gov. Brian Kemp and more at POLITICO's Governors Summit on February 20. RSVP today. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | IN MEMORIAM — “Jim Guy Tucker, Ex-Arkansas Governor Caught Up in Whitewater, Dies at 81,” by NYT’s Adam Nossiter: “Jim Guy Tucker, a former governor of Arkansas who was caught up in the long-running investigation that unsuccessfully targeted his predecessor as governor, Bill Clinton, died on Thursday in Little Rock, Ark. He was 81. His death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of ulcerative colitis, said his daughter Anna Ashton.” SPOTTED: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and their partners in a private booth with the curtain drawn at Joe’s last night. OUT AND ABOUT — At POLITICO’s welcome party for the Munich Security Conference last night, POLITICO and MSC announced a new partnership to bring the Munich Leaders Meetings to D.C. this May. SPOTTED: Canadian Ambassador to the EU Ailish Campbell; Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže; POLITICO's Cally Baute, Jamil Anderlini, Dasha Burns, Jonathan Greenberger, Jonathan Martin, Dave Brown and Rachel Loeffler; BILD Group CEO Carolin Hulshoff Pol; Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk; CEO of the Munich Security Conference Benedikt Franke; former German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger; Breakthrough Energy’s Ann Mettler; former Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz; Microsoft’s Ginny Badanes; Octopus Energy’s Greg Jackson and Chris Fitzgerald; Bayer’s Helga Flores Trejo, Matthias Berninger and Max Müller; FT’s Henry Foy; Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer; BILD’s Marion Horn; the Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes; the National’s Mina Al-Oraibi; Helsing’s Nick Cohen; Ryan Triplette of Coalition for Fair Software Licensing; Women Political Leaders President Silvana Koch-Mehrin; Meridian’s Stuart Holliday; and many more. — SPOTTED at a party celebrating the fifth anniversary of Something Major, hosted by Randi Braun at District Winery on Wednesday: Chris Lu, Nathan Daschle, Patrick Steel, Jane DeMarchi, Kathleen Coulombe, Ryann Hill and Chelsea Koski. MEDIA MOVES — Nick Miroff and Isaac Stanley-Becker are the latest to decamp from WaPo, with both heading to The Atlantic as staff writers. Alex Hoyt is also joining as a senior editor, having previously worked as an editor at GQ and as editor in chief of Amtrak’s The National magazine. … Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel is joining CNN as a senior political and global affairs commentator, per The Hollywood Reporter. TRANSITIONS — Former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) is joining Bondi Partners as a senior adviser. The announcement … Ascent Strategic is adding Wes Farno as director of general consulting and Kristen Fisher as director of business development. Farno is an Ohio political campaign strategist. … Bonyen Lee-Gilmore is now chief external affairs officer for Patient Forward. She previously was VP of comms at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. … … Andrea Woods is now deputy director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Energy, and Ben Dietderich is now press secretary and chief spokesperson. Woods most recently was director of media relations at the American Petroleum Institute. Dietderich most recently was deputy comms director for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). … June Zhu is now a policy adviser for Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Ore.). She previously was legislative assistant for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) … Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Angie Craig (D-Minn.) … Mike Bloomberg … Carl Bernstein … Martha Raddatz … Stephen A. Schwarzman … Oscar Ramirez … Amanda Litman … Ed Patru … former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) … Social Finance’s Karen Anderson … POLITICO’s Rosmery Izaguirre and Oriana Pawlyk … Terry Gross … Scott Will … Ede Holiday (73) … Jon Sawyer … former Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) … Jaime Horn of JLH Strategies … Ryan Blake … World Wildlife Fund’s Cristina Marcos … William Beach ... Daniel Stublen of Agence France-Presse … Rod Lamkey … Bobby Honold ... Mitch Moonier … NYT’s Alan Blinder … Brooke Lierman … Erik Potholm of SRCP Media … Paul Miller of Miller/Wenhold Capitol Strategies … Ann Tait Hall … Evan Kraus ... Jen Pihlaja … Brandon Renz of House Oversight … Eirik Kollsrud of UNRWA … BGR Group’s Matt Hoffmann and Fred Turner … RTX’s Jeff Shockey … House Appropriations’ Elizabeth Oien … Carlos Sanchez of Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-N.M.) office … Marty Markowitz … Jeff Van Oot of Sen. Peter Welch’s (D-Vt.) office … Kirsten Madison of the National Endowment for Democracy … David Cuzzi of Prospect Hill Strategies … Alex Hinson … Jeremy Robbins … Shea Brennan … Rebecca Fertig Cohen … Andrew Milligan … Caitlin Patenaude Vannoy … Rokk Solutions’ Gabby Gallone 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. Corrections: Tuesday’s Playbook misstated whom Nancy Golden Cosgrove was named after. Yesterday’s Playbook mistakenly included Alex Hinson on the birthday list.
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