How Trump has already changed the world

Jan 31, 2025

Presented by

THE CATCH-UP

HAPPENING SHORTLY: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt takes to the podium for her second press briefing at 1 p.m.

HAPPENING MONDAY: VP JD Vance will go to East Palestine, Ohio, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Ohio members of Congress for the second anniversary of the train derailment, the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito reports.

President Donald Trump speaks as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump reportedly may delay Canada and Mexico tariffs by a month. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

PRESSING PAUSE ON AMERICA FIRST … It looks like President Donald Trump may be delaying the 25 percent tariffs he’d threatened to impose on Canada and Mexico tomorrow. Reuters’ Jarrett Renshaw scooped that he’s planning to announce the tariffs will begin March 1, and include a process to ask for sector-specific exemptions. Of course, nothing is finally decided until Trump announces it, and one official tells Reuters the exemptions will be “few and far between.”

… AND PRESSING PLAY (WITH A PAUSE): One of the most consequential actions of Trump’s administration so far, the pause on most foreign aid (even after a partial reversal) has altered lives around the globe. It’s a clear manifestation of the Trump doctrine in action, prioritizing spending on Americans and focusing on needs at home at the cost of humanitarian programs worldwide that the U.S. typically props up.

The change has already exacerbated some of the world’s worst crises and imperiled vulnerable groups, as NYT’s Sui-Lee Wee, Declan Walsh and Farnaz Fassihi run down:

In Khartoum, Sudan, which is battling famine, two-thirds of soup kitchens that feed more than 800,000 people have shuttered.
Myanmar refugees in Thailand have been cut off from lifesaving medications, and patients were carried out of hospitals on stretchers.
Cambodia worries about a malaria resurgence.
In Afghanistan, 1,700 women have lost their jobs — and, thanks to the Taliban, have little hope of another one.
Independent media outlets in Iran and Cambodia are struggling.
A critical famine detection warning system has shut down, per WaPo’s John Hudson.
Across Eastern Europe, pro-democracy groups, civil society pillacrs and independent media outlets have lost critical funding, raising fears about an opening for Russia or China, AP’s Stephen McGrath and Aurel Obreja report from Chisinau, Moldova.

And the reverberations could redound too: “At stake is not just the good will that the United States has built internationally, but also its work to promote America’s security interests,” the Times writes.

But Trump officials argue that the changes are a necessary right-sizing of a mission that has long spent too much elsewhere, on the dime of American taxpayers who are often struggling themselves. “The U.S. government is not a charity,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week. Still, “we don’t want to see people die and the like.”

Chaos at USAID: In addition to the spending freeze, widespread administrative leave for top official and contractor layoffs have upended the agency, AP’s Matthew Lee and Ellen Knickmeyer report. With exemptions for immediately life-or-death programs — like food aid to very malnourished infants — on the line, a lot of the lawyers who would have helped get waivers to continue them are the people who’ve been placed on leave. One top USAID official yesterday briefly rescinded the order for leave yesterday, saying it was unauthorized. But then he was placed on leave too. More from NBC

HEADS UP: “Career prosecutors withdraw from federal criminal investigation of GOP Congressman Andy Ogles,” by WTVF-TV’s Phil Williams: It’s “an unprecedented move that could signal plans by the Trump administration to drop the case against a Republican ally.”

INFLATION NATION: The inflation metric preferred by the Fed rose last month from 2.4 percent annual inflation to 2.6 percent, per CNN. The latest report makes clear that the central bank’s fight against high prices still isn’t fully won. But there was better news under the hood: Volatile energy and food costs largely contributed to the increase, and core inflation (which excludes those categories) remained unchanged at 2.8 percent. The Commerce Department price index numbers also showed consumer spending jumping 0.7 percent, higher than predicted.

Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.

A message from Meta:

Open source AI is available to all, not just the few.

Meta's open source AI, Llama, is free to use – enabling startups like Zauron Labs to collaborate with universities and build an AI tool that's like a spellchecker for radiologists.

Now, radiologists have more ways to reduce the 4% error rate in the 3 billion imaging exams done each year – potentially improving outcomes for millions of patients.

Learn more about how others are building with open source AI.

8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. CRASH FALLOUT: The FAA today indefinitely paused almost all helicopter flights around Reagan National airport, in the wake of 67 people dying in the nation’s worst air disaster in a generation, per Reuters. Authorities have now retrieved more than 40 of the dead bodies from the Potomac River, AP’s Lindsay Whitehurst reports.

A clearer picture: As more information emerges about the crash, it seems likely that “multiple layers of the country’s aviation safety apparatus failed,” following years of warnings about the system’s worsening lapses, NYT’s Sydney Ember, Emily Steel, Mark Walker, Kate Kelly and Niraj Chokshi report. It will take months for investigators to comb through the evidence and conclude definitely why this happened. But early signs indicate that the helicopter was flying higher and further away than it was supposed to; that an air traffic controller pulling double duty didn’t do enough to keep the aircraft apart; and that the jet’s pilots didn’t see the helicopter.

In the past few years, there were at least two incidents where planes nearly collided with helicopters at Reagan National, and a third between two helicopters, CNN’s Casey Tolan, Majlie de Puy Kamp, Curt Devine, Haley Britzky and Oren Liebermann report.

Trump’s latest focus: “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit,” he posted on Truth Social today. “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”

2. MUSK READ: “Musk Lawyer Tries to Build a Powerhouse Firm With a Billionaire Client,” by NYT’s Teddy Schleifer: “Several top Republican lawyers are joining forces with the lawyer for the billionaire Elon Musk in hopes of building a new conservative legal powerhouse. Chris Gober, a swaggering Texas-based lawyer who has represented Mr. Musk in high-profile political fights for the last year, has hired four lawyers from Holtzman Vogel … Mr. Gober has said that his enlarged firm, now called Lex Politica, drew inspiration from an unlikely source: Marc Elias, the Democratic Party’s own superlawyer, who has consolidated power.” The new lawyers are Jessica Furst Johnson, Steve Roberts, Christine Fort and Nicole Kelly.

3. TWO BIG DEPARTURES: David Lebryk, a longtime Treasury official who was the department’s senior-most career employee, is leaving in the wake of a dispute with Musk surrogates, WaPo’s Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf and Jacqueline Alemany scooped. “Department of Government Efficiency”-affiliated officials had repeatedly asked for access to the government’s sensitive system for paying out tons of money annually, leading to a clash with Lebryk last week after he was named acting secretary. Lebryk said Friday he was retiring.

And Robert Santos is leaving his role as Census Bureau director, even though he’s not done with his term, AP’s Mike Schneider reports. As the agency prepares for the 2030 census, Trump now has an opportunity to install his own pick at the top. Some Republicans want Trump to try again to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, though litigation tied up that effort — which critics say would violate the Constitution — in his first term.

4. TALES FROM THE CRYPTO: “Republicans Want to Kill Tax-Reporting Rule for Some Crypto Trades,” by WSJ’s Richard Rubin: “The push from Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Rep. Mike Carey (R., Ohio) … [aims] to remove a December Biden administration rule that requires decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms to report transactions to the government just like stock brokerages do and centralized crypto exchanges soon will. Eliminating the tax rule is the industry’s priority for the first quarter … [It] would mark Congress’s first-ever repeal of a tax rule this way … Some tax experts worry that the pro-crypto push opens an easier path for tax evasion.”

A message from Meta:

5. FOLLOWING THE MONEY: “Digital Currency Firms Gave Millions to Trump’s Inauguration,” by Dave Levinthal for NOTUS: “Cryptocurrency platforms Coinbase and Kraken, crypto investment firm Paradigm Operations, blockchain company Galaxy Digital Holdings and the trading platforms Robinhood Markets and Crypto.com have all officially joined Donald Trump’s seven-figure inauguration donor club … according to previously unreported congressional disclosures reviewed by NOTUS.” Also donating at least $1 million each: Chevron, Altria, Qualcomm, Intuit, Bayer Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Comcast Corporation, the National Association of Manufacturers and Coupang.

6. ONE WAY TO TURN TRUMP OFF TIKTOK: Increasingly, some TikTok influencers are amassing and sharing information about ICE raids to help undocumented immigrants avoid arrest and deportation, Bloomberg’s Max Rivera reports. The informal effort is targeted at helping local communities, though other users who support Trump’s crackdown have tried to flood accounts with false info.

In other immigration news: Colombian President Gustavo Petro today urged undocumented Colombians in the U.S. to return south and build “social wealth” back in Colombia. One country over, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is expected to meet today with Trump envoy Richard Grenell, CNN’s Kristen Holmes and Samantha Waldenberg scooped. Deportation flights to Venezuela, which the country’s authoritarian government has previously refused, will be a focus, along with American detainees.

At the Pentagon, meanwhile, Trump’s executive order to house tens of thousands of detained migrants at Guantánamo Bay “came as a shock” and has triggered a major scramble to implement it, Paul McLeary, Jack Detsch and Myah Ward report. And though Trump is certainly ramping up immigration arrests, Reuters’ Jonathan Allen reports that some of the arrests in the NYC raid highly publicized by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem actually “were not a departure from how past administrations have pursued people charged with crimes.”

7. HAPPENING TODAY: “Trump to hold first meeting with CEO of AI chipmaker Nvidia,” by WaPo’s Cat Zakrzewski and Jackie Alemany: “Trump is expected to meet Friday with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, marking the first meeting between the president and the leader of a chip company at the center of the artificial intelligence gold rush amid concerns about China’s rising influence in the industry. … Planning for the meeting began before the spike in anxiety about DeepSeek.”

8. WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY, MR. ROBINSON: Former North Carolina gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson is hanging it up, National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg reports. The former lieutenant governor will retire from politics and end his defamation lawsuit against CNN over its reporting on his scandalous internet history, calling it “a futile effort.”