| | | |  | | By Adam Wren | Presented by The U.S. Chamber of Commerce | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine Happy Sunday. Spring is just 11 days away. You’re an hour short on the day already. We’re here to catch you up. Drop me a line: awren@politico.com.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
When Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) reacted to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this week, profanity leaped effortlessly from her lips. | AP | SWEARING A BLUE STREAK: When Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) reacted to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this week, profanity leaped effortlessly from her lips: “Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.” Just a few days earlier, when asked of her message to Elon Musk, she told him to “Fuck off.” Ken Martin, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, took a more Midwestern approach: “Go to hell,” he said, adding later on X: “I said what I said.” Meanwhile, Senate Democrats launched coordinated social media videos fact checking Trump, each of them calling his claims "shit that ain't true." FIGHTING WORDS: In the earliest weeks of Trump’s second term, Democrats have careened from strategy to strategy to respond to him, often ineffectually. But one unifying thread as they try to invigorate their connection to the American voter has been a reach for profanity. Democrats are cursing up a storm, as I write with my colleagues in a new story out this morning. “Goddamn it, tell me who started that?” John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a frequent purveyor of profanity, told our Lisa Kashinsky. Cursing is, of course, not new in politics. Among operatives and principals, it’s a familiar way to broker instant bonhomie. Nor is it new for the Democratic Party, particularly when confronting Trump: Former DNC Chair Tom Perez frequently deployed profanity in 2017 in stump speeches, saying, for example, that Trump didn’t “give a shit about health care.” But the breadth of swearing is unmistakable, newly fashionable among members of a party in the wilderness who are looking for shortcuts to authenticity to channel voters’ rage. In recent days, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said he wanted the “intern” at the National Republican Campaign Congressional Committee who posted “racist shit” on X to be fired. And appraising the landscape of Trump’s America, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii noted this week that the “stock market is down but at least everything is more expensive and services are getting shittier.” SH!T CREEK: Politics, the late Andrew Breitbart once observed, is downstream of culture. And linguistically speaking, Democrats are up a certain creek. Trump beat them to it, using curses increasingly in his march back to the White House, though for some Democrats it is part of their native tongue. “I mean, I was swearing before Trump, so I can't really blame it on him,” Gallego told Playbook. “I'm gonna blame it more on being in the Marines for as long as I was.” Now, Democrats seem to think their impolite words are a shortcut to scoring authenticity points with an increasingly coarse and foul-tongued populace. “Some of it is genuine, some of it is people trying to seem faux-edgy authentic,” said Lis Smith, the Democratic adviser whose profanity is so legendary that her f-bombs played a hand in earning Amazon’s otherwise wholesome documentary on Pete Buttigieg in 2021 an “R” rating. “If the first time you’ve used a cuss word in public is reading off a script, it’s probably not authentic and not something you should do.” It is not always working. Last month, when Democrats joined federal workers at a rally of the American Federation of Government Employees to protest DOGE cuts, the profanities nearly outnumbered the people gathered. “I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to fuck Trump,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), adding, “Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.” The awkward formulation — which landed less like a diss and more like a proposition — was roundly mocked. “If elected officials are going to cuss, they have to mean it,” said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran. Crockett’s f-bomb got some attention back in her district, she told our colleague Mia McCarthy. She said at the Capitol on Thursday that people called the pastor at her church to “tattle” on her. (Though Crockett added her pastor said he approved her message: “He’s not going to be the one to try to rein me in.”) For now, she is unrepentant. She said her answer was “real” and reflected her frustration with Trump and Musk’s actions. “Like I have a potty mouth, especially when I'm mad,” she said. “We're working on it. We're going to pray about it.” SPORTS TALK: It’s not just swearing. Democrats have another gameplan, according to NYT: Talking about the big game. Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro and other Democratic pols are talking sports to connect with Trump voters.
| | | | A message from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agree: make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent.
See why voters support permanent tax relief. Learn more. | | | SUNDAY BEST … — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the impact of tariffs on the price of foreign goods for American consumers, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: "Yes, some products that are made foreign might be more expensive, but American products will get cheaper, and that's the point.. … So will there be distortions? Of course, foreign goods may get a little more expensive, but American goods are going to get cheaper, and you're going to be helping Americans by buying American.” … On whether Americans should prepare for a recession: “Absolutely not. … There's going to be no recession in America. What there's going to be is global tariffs. … You are going to see over the next two years the greatest set of growth coming from America as Americans.” — Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on the Democratic Party on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don't think it's a secret that Democrats have been on their heels since Trump won the election, right? I don't think that's … something hidden. And I think it's on us to be clear about not only leadership, and there's lots of leaders in both parties, but also a strategy … And I think that's something that, as Trump has been successful in flooding the zone, and just like every day 15 things happening, we are still finding our footing.” — Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on the censure of Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) on “FOX News Sunday”: “[H]e shouldn't have disrupted to the extent he did. He was asked to leave. That was appropriate. And I thought that was the appropriate consequence that he had to leave on national television, from the chamber. I didn't vote to censure because he didn't engage in violence or something.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
| | | | A message from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced and simplified the federal tax burden on families and businesses, stimulated economic growth, created jobs, and enhanced the global competitiveness of American companies.
See why voters support making it permanent. Learn more. | | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) unveiled a CR yesterday that would extend current funding levels until September. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | 1. SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN: Just days out from Friday’s midnight shutdown deadline, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) unveiled a CR that would extend current funding levels until September — but the path to keep the government’s lights on is far from certain. The funding extension was released yesterday afternoon after weeks of intraparty haggling, but Johnson can only afford to lose two GOP votes if all Democrats oppose the bill as expected, POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill and Jennifer Scholtes report. What’s in: Johnson’s bill “would increase defense spending by about $6 billion over current budgets, while non-defense funding would fall by a total of about $13 billion. It fulfills a Trump administration request for additional ICE funding to help carry out deportations. The stopgap also maintains a freeze on more than $20 billion in special IRS funding,” Meredith and Jennifer write. What’s not: The spending cuts would not touch benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The CR also doesn’t include an expected bipartisan measure to “avert cuts for doctors who treat Medicare patients — a blow to Republicans who had pushed for the changes that also could risk alienating members whose support will be needed to pass the legislation,” POLITICO’s Ben Leonard, Robert King and Daniel Payne report. So what’s next? Johnson has said he’s aiming to pass the CR as soon as Tuesday, with hopes of sending members home early and sending the bill to the Senate: “That could keep the Senate, Democrats in particular, from trying to amend the stopgap and send it back to the House before a potential government shutdown that would start just after midnight” on Friday, Meredith writes. 2. 2024 CAMPAIGN AUTOPSY, FROM A PRINCIPAL: In a must-read of the weekend, our Elena Schneider interviewed Tim Walz about why he and Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election. The overriding reason, in his estimation: They were too cautious, campaigning as if they were on track to win when in reality they never really were. “We shouldn’t have been playing this thing so safe,” Walz said before a speech to hundreds of Democrats at the Helena, Montana fairgrounds. For example, “I think we probably should have just rolled the dice and done the town halls, where [voters] may say, ‘you’re full of shit, I don’t believe in you,’” Walz continued. Instead, “in football parlance, we were in a prevent defense to not lose when we never had anything to lose because I don’t think we were ever ahead.” The context: “He was an imperfect candidate himself, including a weak debate performance,” Elena writes. “And his self-reflection on Democrats’ failure and the accompanying media blitz is partly self-serving: In addition to leaving the door open to a presidential campaign in 2028, Walz may run for governor again next year. But it is also a candid gut-check of the Harris-Walz campaign at a moment when Democrats are still struggling to reorient to a second Donald Trump term and at a loss on how to approach 2026 and 2028.” 3. DOGE PILE: Some key DOGE headlines from the weekend:
At HHS … All of HHS approximately 80,000 employees were sent an unsigned email late Friday night offering a “voluntary separation incentive payment” of $25,000 to depart the agency, NBC News’ Laura Strickler, Vaughn Hillyard and Nnamdi Egwuonwu report. The employees were given until March 14 to accept the buyout offer, which comes after various agencies — including the Department of Education — sent out similar buyout emails in recent weeks. HHS also recently granted DOGE staff “read-only access” to a sensitive child support database despite the objections of career staff, WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Dan Diamond report. Some career civil servants fear DOGE staff “risk breaking federal law and compromising important safeguards,” by having access to the private income information of federal employees.
- At NOAA … The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is bracing to lose another 1,000 workers in a new round of cuts. Combined with the 1,300 staff who’ve already departed the nation’s top weather and climate agency “the reductions would represent nearly 20 percent of NOAA’s approximately 13,000-member work force,” NYT’s Raymond Zhong, Austyn Gaffney and Christopher Flavelle report.
- At VA … “Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency,” by NYT’s Roni Caryn Rabin and Nicholas Nehamas
- Knowing Amy Gleason … AP’s Ryan Foley and Brian Slodysko are out with a profile on DOGE administrator Amy Gleason. Former colleagues describe her as an effective “behind-the-scenes operator” who may not prefer the spotlight, noting “her rise is the story of a former nurse who got into health care technology to help patients and doctors and climbed through merit.” Still, “Unlike many DOGE workers, Gleason has no prior ties to Musk” and instead got her foot in Trump-world by joining his transition team last November.
4. PARDON ME: NYT’s Ken Vogel has a deep dive on the Washington influence industry taking shape around securing pardons from Trump, who has demonstrated he’s prepared to invoke his pardon power earlier and more often than any of his recent predecessors. “Lawyers and lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump have scrambled to take advantage. They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism. Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.” 5. STEPHEN MILLER’S ENFORCERS: Stephen Miller is wielding immense clout inside the White House, but Trump’s deputy chief of staff also has a potent outside group working to achieve one of the White House’s top early initiatives: outlawing DEI, writes Axios’ Alex Thompson. America First Legal “is a key part of Miller's larger mission to make diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs illegal across the country — based on the argument that they violate the civil rights of white people,” Thompson writes. “In recent weeks America First Legal has been aggressively filing complaints and lawsuits to try to make the federal bureaucracy comply with the new president's executive orders. The group has become a private enforcement arm of the White House's assault on DEI — or as it has billed itself, a right-wing version of the ACLU.” Not just the government: “America First Legal also has been filing and threatening lawsuits against corporations — including Apple — over their DEI policies. Several large tech companies, including Meta and Amazon, quickly backtracked after Trump's victory. Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have been an exception — so far the company has stood firm. … In response, America First Legal sent Apple a letter threatening that the company's role as a federal contractor could be in jeopardy.” 6. SCARY STUFF: “The Trump administration’s pause on foreign aid has hobbled programs that prevent and snuff out outbreaks around the world, scientists say, leaving people everywhere more vulnerable to threatening viruses and bacteria,” NYT’s Apoorva Mandavilli reports in a deep dive on how USAID cuts could impact public health: “Even in quieter times, foreign aid helps to prevent, detect and treat diseases that can endanger Americans, including drug-resistant H.I.V., tuberculosis and malaria, and bacteria that don’t respond to available antibiotics. … Much of that work has stopped, and other organizations or countries cannot fill the gap.” 7. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: Israeli officials announced they will send a team to Qatar tomorrow "in an effort to advance the negotiations" surrounding the ceasefire in Gaza as Hamas officials signal optimism around negotiations on the second phase of the fragile truce, AP’s Wafaa Shurafa reports from the Gaza Strip: “Over the past week, Israel has pressed Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for an extension of the first phase, which ended last weekend, and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce. Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others.” 8. FROM 30,000 FEET: “Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover: ‘You Can’t Pin Him Down,’” by NYT’s Erica Green: “Mr. Trump has long dealt in distortions and lies, including in his first term. But as he executes a much more aggressive agenda at home and abroad, his contradictions have become more brazen and more pronounced. … White House officials argue that especially on foreign policy matters, Mr. Trump is showing his skill as a tough negotiator whose messages adjust to the fluidity of serious situations. … But experts say the dissonance can become dangerous.” 9. LIFE IS A HIGHWAY: “Anger at Elon Musk turns violent with molotov cocktails and gunfire at Tesla lots,” by WaPo’s Pranshu Verma and Trisha Thadani: “Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities … The destruction adds to the woes of a carmaker already in turmoil. Its stock has fallen by more than 35 percent since Trump’s inauguration, and last year, the company suffered its first annual sales drop in more than a decade.”
| | | | CALIFORNIA DECODED: The technology industry and its key characters are driving the national political narrative right now, but it is also a uniquely California story. To understand how the Golden State is defining tech policy and politics within its borders and beyond, we’ve launched POLITICO Pro Technology: California Decoded. This new daily newsletter will track how industry players in Silicon Valley are trying to influence state and national lawmakers – and how government officials are encouraging or foiling those figures. Sign up now to get a limited, free trial of this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. | | | | | FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Without any announcement, Trump last week commuted the one-year sentence of a nurse practitioner in Michigan who pleaded guilty to her role in a $40 million conspiracy to distribute opioids, Kyle Cheney reports. The woman, Jean Pinkard, had been urging the federal judge in her case to delay her date to report to prison because she has terminal cancer. The Justice Department had opposed delaying her jail sentence because she did not produce a physician’s letter attesting to her diagnosis. When the judge — Bill Clinton appointee Denise Hood — learned of Trump’s commutation plan, she called off Pinkard’s date for reporting to prison. While Pinkard’s pardon, at first blush, appears to be a classic use of clemency as an act of grace, there’s also a Trump-world connection. Pinkard’s lawyer is Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer who was deeply tied to Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Lambert told POLITICO on Saturday morning that the commutation was not a special favor from Trump. “Ms. Pinkard was an ideal candidate for this commutation. She took responsibility, brought down the conspiracy, and she did not request a pardon. The conviction stands and only the sentence is commuted,” Lambert said in an email.
| | | | A message from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:  
Americans overwhelmingly support making the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, according to a new poll from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Learn more. | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Kash Patel attended UFC 313 yesterday and said he was “dead serious” about contracting with the UFC to help train rank-and-file agents. Elissa Slotkin revealed she prepared to rebut Donald Trump’s joint session speech by listening to “a lot of” Eminem. FOR YOUR RADAR — The Secret Service shot an armed man near the White House shortly after midnight Sunday. His condition is unknown. OUT AND ABOUT — Coinbase hosted a reception and fireside chat yesterday with White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong at The Ned last night after the White House's first-ever Crypto Summit. SPOTTED: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Labor Secretary Nominee Lori Chavez-Deremer, Reps. Nick Begich (R-Alaska), Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), Faryar Shirzad, Kara Calvert, Julia Krieger, Michael Faulkender, Brian Quintenz, Caroline Pham, Rodney Hood, Travis Hill, Michael Saylor, Chris Dixon, Collin McCune, Josh Arnold, David Bailey, Arjun Sethi, Jonathan Jachym, Nate Parker, Nathan McCauley, Charles Cascarilla, Sergey Nazarov, JP Richardson and Lauren Belive. MEDIA MOVE — Tara Palmeri is leaving Puck to launch a new, YouTube-focused venture. BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): DOD’s Zach Emanuel HAPPY BIRTHDAY: CNN’s Jim Sciutto and Mike Callahan … Randy White … Jon Haber of Cascade Strategy … Bill Nichols … POLITICO’s Brad Dayspring, Chithra Subramanian, Jonathan Lai, Jordan Williams, Nicole Adams, Arek Sarkissian and Dylon Jones … Carrie Filipetti … States Newsroom’s Jane Norman … Jean Cornell … NPR’s Ron Elving … Vernon Loeb of InsideClimate News … Kevin McKeon … Alyse Nelson of Vital Voices Global Partnership … NYT’s Danny Hakim … Matt Morrison … Christie Roberts … Chris Corcoran … Matt Jessee … Alex Treadway ... Cary Hatch … Urban Institute’s Olivia Dunn … CNBC’s David Faber … Bill Van Saun … Talia La Schiazza … Julie Balter … John Murray of Monument Advocacy … Adam Bodily (49) … Biz Stone 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.
| | | | A message from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey conducted by McLaughlin and Associates says:
By a nearly 3-to-1 margin (64% to 20%), voters favor permanently extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, noting its ability to reduce and simplify the federal tax burden on families and businesses, stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and enhance the global competitiveness of American companies. Support for permanent tax relief transcends partisan lines, with 81% of Republicans, 55% of Independents, and even a majority—53%—of Democrats backing the 2017 tax law. This broad support can translate at the polls, as 65% of voters say they are more likely to support a candidate who votes to make the tax cuts permanent, compared to just 20% who would be less likely to do so.
See why voters support permanent tax relief. Learn more. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
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