| | | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | | Presented by |  | | | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | HAPPENING SOON — Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in history at 27 years old, is set to make her briefing room debut at 1 p.m. A bit of trivia: Without looking at this AP story detailing Leavitt’s rise, who was previously the youngest to hold the title?
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President Donald Trump's sweeping move to freeze federal aid is landing with a shock across the country. | Will Oliver/EPA | TRUMP’S DEEP FREEZE — President Donald Trump’s sweeping freeze on federal aid and grants is still reverberating today as the gears of government churn out the real-world impact of the administration’s broad order. The sudden move left state and local governmental leaders parsing the language of the memo down to the very last word in order to glean exactly what it does and doesn’t apply to, WSJ’s Ken Thomas, Kristina Peterson and Patience Haggin write. Here’s a roundup of some of the programs feeling the effects today: — Despite assurances that Medicaid would be unaffected by the order, WaPo’s Dan Diamond hears that people are “reporting problems with the Medicaid payment system.” — The online portal that distributes funds from the federally funded Head Start programs, which provide preschool assistance to hundreds of thousands of low-income children, is “warning providers of upcoming delays,” HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn reports. — A Meals on Wheels spox tells HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney that the “uncertainty right now is creating chaos for local Meals on Wheels providers not knowing whether they should be serving meals today. Which unfortunately means seniors will panic not knowing where their next meals will come from.” An admin official said the program should be unaffected. The reactions: — Senate Democrats vowed to fight the freeze, calling for a delay in the confirmation of Russ Vought to head up OMB, threatening potential court actions and warning Republicans about potential impacts on their own states, Katherine Tully-McManus and Jordain Carney report. Democrats said the funding freeze is unlawful under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a law that Trump and his allies in turn call unconstitutional. On Vought, Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said this morning that “Republicans should not advance that nomination, out of committee, until the Trump administration follows the law.” — House Majority Whip Tom Emmer applauded the move this morning. In a brief interview on the sidelines of the House GOP retreat, Emmer said that it signals Trump is “doing exactly what he was elected to do,” Meredith Lee Hill reports from Doral, Florida. “You're going to see things like this, and your first reaction is going to be, ‘Well, this isn't the way it's been done,’” Emmer said. "You need to understand, he was elected to shake up the status quo." On the world stage: In addition to last night’s surprise order, the administration’s freeze on foreign assistance issued last week is seeing U.S-funded aid programs around the world “firing staff and shutting down or preparing to stop their operations,” AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer, Samya Kullab, Farai Mutsaka and Charlotte Graham-Mclay report, with a zoom-out on all the programs impacted. A worthwhile read … Steve Vladeck breaks down Trump’s standing with the order on his “One First” Substack: “When, not if, recipients of the frozen funds sue to challenge agencies’ compliance with the [OMB] memo, it’s a virtual certainty that the Trump administration will argue that the ICA is unconstitutional and that the President has inherent constitutional authority to impound. That argument is a loser, but it’s a good bet that it’s going to be up to the Supreme Court to say so — and probably a heck of a lot sooner than we might have predicted as recently as yesterday.” THE NEW WORLD ORDER — “Trump’s perceived enemies brace for retribution with plans, dark humor,” by WaPo’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Sarah Ellison, Patrick Marley and Holly Bailey: Some interviewed by WaPo “are lining up attorneys, a few are packing ‘go bags’ in case they need to quickly flee, a couple are carrying recently acquired weapons, and several still in public office are getting employees ready to receive subpoenas or field interview requests by authorities. About a dozen have spoken to spouses or children about the steps they should take if police arrive at their homes.” PROGRAMMING NOTE — Join POLITICO tomorrow, Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 8:30 a.m., for Playbook’s “The First 100 Days: Immigration” event convening leaders across the aisle to explore what’s next on immigration and the impact on national security and the economy. Featured speakers include Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Chad Wolf, former acting DHS secretary. Register here Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com.
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Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) will not seek reelection next year. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | 1. PETERS OUT: Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) will not seek reelection in 2026, opening up a surprise seat in a heated battleground state with Democrats already facing a difficult path to retaking the majority in the chamber. In an exclusive interview with The Detroit News’ Melissa Nann Burke, Peters said he’s ready to open a “new chapter” and spend more time with family. “I always thought there would be a time that I would step aside and pass the reins for the next generation. I also never saw service in Congress as something you do your whole life,” he said. When asked if he would run for governor or other elected office, Peters said no. Who could be in line to replace Peters? For Republicans, early speculation has coalesced around Rep. John James, who has twice ran and narrowly lost statewide but would bring a high profile and proven fundraising ability to the race. For Democrats, the Peters news has set off a whirl of speculation. Axios’ Andrew Solender reports that Rep. Haley Stevens is “actively considering” a run, and Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) "is considering it." State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, widely seen as a rising star in the party, tells POLITICO that she’s “taking a serious look at both the Senate seat as well as the governor’s race.” Another name to watch: Pete Buttigieg. The Hoosier-turned-Michigander is “taking a serious look” at the seat, Axios’ Hans Nichols scoops, and would also offer a prominent perch for Buttigieg to take on as he considers a future presidential run.. Who won’t be running? Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A spokesperson for Whitmer’s Fight Like Hell PAC tells Elena Schneider that the term-limited Democrat is “proudly serving the people of Michigan as governor and is not running for this seat in the senate.” 2. KASH RULES EVERYTHING: Few of Trump’s nominees have put their views on the public record as Kash Patel, the president’s pick to lead the FBI. Ahead of his confirmation hearing on Thursday, the AP’s Eric Tucker, Ali Swenson and Aaron Kessler reviewed “more than 100 podcasts that Patel hosted or on which he was interviewed over the last four years,” finding that “Patel has habitually denigrated the investigations into Trump, sowed doubt in the criminal justice system, criticized the decision-making of the institution he’s been asked to lead and professed sympathy for jailed Jan 6 rioters.” The catalog “provides an unusually extensive record of a nominee’s unvarnished and controversial worldviews,” which Democrats are certain to drill into when they get a crack at him under oath this week. Why it won’t matter: “While those critics say his views make him unfit for the job, his supporters argue the FBI needs someone as brash as Patel to shake up the agency.” 3. HOW GABBARD GOT HERE: After the U.N. concluded that Syria carried out gas attacks against its own citizens back in 2017, then-Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was searching for an alternate theory of the case. That’s when one of her aides connected her with MIT professor Theodore Postol, “who in the months after the attack had released preliminary research suggesting that the use of chemical weapons in Syria had been staged by opposition forces,” WaPo’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reports. “The 2017 outreach, recorded in emails that Postol shared with The Washington Post, marked the beginning of his years-long engagement with Gabbard. The interactions, which included in-person and virtual briefings, help explain her contrarian views of atrocities in Syria, including past statements expressing doubt about the regime’s responsibility for the use of poison gas.” 4. RFK JR.’S RECORD: And then there’s HHS secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Trump ally has “repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules,” WaPo’s Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert write in an extensive review of his record. “In at least 36 appearances, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines, despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the use of vaccination to protect people from deadly infectious diseases and refuting any ties to autism, The Post found in a review of more than 400 of Kennedy’s podcast appearances, interviews and public speeches since 2020. He criticized vaccines more broadly in at least 114 appearances, calling them dangerous, saying the risks outweigh the benefits and making misleading claims about vaccine safety testing or discrediting vaccine efficacy.”
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| | | 5. WHAT THEY’RE WATCHING ON WALL STREET: “The Fed Is About to Hit Pause on Rate Cuts. Here’s Why,” by NYT’s Colby Smith: “On Wednesday, the Fed is set to put that approach into action, pressing pause on further reductions for the first time since they began lowering borrowing costs in September. The question now looming large over Wall Street and Washington is just how long the Fed will be on hold. For President Trump, who in his first week in office claimed to have a better understanding of interest rates than officials at the Fed, a pause of any length is likely to be seen as too long.” Adding to the equation: The tariffs that Trump has threatened against various nations also loom large for the central bank and “remain a key wild card for the Fed’s outlook because of concerns over how they could influence businesses’ and consumers’ expectations of future inflation,” WSJ’s Nick Timiraos writes. Mood music: “US consumer confidence dips again to start the year, according to business group,” by AP’s Matt Ott 6. PRICED IN: “Drugmakers Show Restraint on Price Increases in New Trump Era,” by WSJ’s Jared Hopkins: “Drugmakers raised the list prices of more than 800 prescription drugs for blood pressure, cancer and other conditions by a median 4% at the start of this year. The modest size of the annual increases could help companies avoid criticism of gouging from President Trump while seeking his administration’s support for such priorities as taking aim at the rebates given to middlemen and altering a federal program providing discounts to certain hospitals. Last year’s median price increase was 4.5%.” 7. MEGATREND: “Union membership fell in 2024, hitting new low,” by WaPo’s Lauren Kaori Gurley: “The union membership rate dropped by one-tenth of a percentage point to a new low of 9.9 percent last year, the Labor Department said Tuesday, while the total number of union members in the United States barely budged last year, with a loss of roughly 100,000 members. About 14.3 million workers were in unions in 2024, according to the Labor Department. The decrease in the union membership rate happened in part because a solid labor market added 2.2 million jobs in 2024, with nonunion positions growing at a faster pace than union ones.” 8. FOR YOUR RADAR: “Protesters Attack Embassies in Congo Amid Fury Over Rebel Violence,” by NYT’s Elian Peltier: “Anger at Congo’s foreign allies has been rising in the country this week over what is seen as their inability to stop an assault on the key eastern city of Goma on Monday by the March 23 Movement, or M23, a Congolese militia that the United Nations and United States say is supported and directed by Rwanda. On Tuesday, protesters burned tires and threw stones in front of the U.S. Embassy’s main compound, according to local news reports, and breached the site of a new embassy building that is under construction.”
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