The war on liberal America

Mar 20, 2025

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With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine

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Good Thursday morning. This is Jack Blanchard.

Cheer up America! Finland — of all places — has this morning been crowned the happiest nation on earth for the eighth year running, according to the annual World Happiness Report. The U.S. came in 24th place — its worst-ever position, way below Mexico in 10th … and way down from America’s all-time high of 11th (achieved in 2012 under, erm, Barack Obama.) Nobody tell the president.

OK, OK: Digging around the data, it seems the Gallup survey underpinning the report was conducted in July 2024, an unusually fraught month even by this great nation’s standards, with President Joe Biden in post-debate meltdown and Donald Trump getting shot at in Butler, Pennsylvania. We’ll all be feeling a little more chill this year … right?

In today’s Playbook …

— How Trump torpedoed liberal America.

— Exclusive: White House defers to Congress on judicial impeachment plan.

— Misery all round at House district town halls.

DRIVING THE DAY

Donald Trump walks through the Kennedy Center.

President Donald Trump tours the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on March 17, 2025. | Pool photo

THURSDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN: Donald Trump’s war on the federal government will hit new heights today as he finally moves ahead with plans to dismantle the Department of Education. Flanked by GOP governors at a made-for-TV signing ceremony this afternoon, Trump will order wrestling exec-turned-Education Secretary Linda McMahon to do whatever it takes to effectively shutter her department and hand power back to the states. It’s another “promises made, promises kept” moment for Trump that will be met with glee by small-state conservatives and utter fury by liberals — not to mention instant challenges in Congress and the courts.

But here’s the thing: This move matters way beyond whatever views you may hold about state government vs. federal; big government vs. small; or indeed America’s underwhelming performance in child education.

What you’ll see today when Trump takes out his pen in the Oval Office at 4 p.m. is another step in the wholesale destruction of the liberal state. Everywhere you look, liberal institutions across America are being gutted … and it’s taken Trump just two months to pull it off. For hardline conservatism, it’s a triumph of historic proportions.

Consider the moves just this past week:

Today’s EO will effectively destroy a $100 billion-a-year executive department created by statute under Democratic President Jimmy Carter 45 years ago. Dems in Congress are already pushing back on the legality, but it’s unclear what will be left amid the wreckage.

The dismantling of the Education Department trumps even last month’s destruction of USAID, which the WSJ revealed last night will now be rebuilt inside the State Department as an agency “to help enhance national security and counter adversaries.” Woke, it is not.

In higher education, Columbia University must today formally respond to the Trump administration’s demands it overhaul a culture the White House has decreed too liberal or lose $400 million. The WSJ reports Columbia will fold.

Yesterday, the White House took aim at UPenn too, pulling $175 million in funding over transgender athlete policies. And cultures are changing … The University of California said Wednesday it would stop requiring the use of diversity statements in hiring.

Pro-Gaza campaigners on campus are being heavily targeted. Last night, POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein revealed Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national on a student visa, was arrested by masked immigration agents in Arlington, Virginia. It follows the arrest last week of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia. More will follow.

The DEI purge continues across government and beyond, with the Pentagon scrubbing tens of thousands of articles from its websites — including those about Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo Code Talkers. Corporate America has taken the hint and is following suit (e.g. this Ben and Jerry’s, erm, scoop from yesterday).

In the media world, Voice of America was effectively shut down on Saturday after more than 80 years broadcasting its pro-democracy message around the world.

And in the arts, Trump on Monday chaired his first meeting of the Kennedy Center board, vowing to enforce his conservative values upon the D.C. institution’s programs and honorees.

That’s just one week. And next in line … museums.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Trump’s Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling has been named acting director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, two IMLS employees tell POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman, and will head to the agency this morning to ensure it complies with an executive order shrinking the agency down to its statutory minimum.

Cultural revolution: IMLS is a federal agency monitoring and administering grants worth $160 million for libraries and museums right across the U.S. The American Alliance of Museums says the order will “essentially gut” an agency which “efficiently provides critical resources to libraries and museums in all 50 states and territories.” Sonderling and a spokesperson for IMLS declined to comment.

Whatever your take on all of that — and while liberals see cultural vandalism, some conservatives see a long overdue correction — it’s clear that many of Trump’s changes are going to be permanent. No serious Democratic candidate for 2028 will come in pledging to reverse every cut. The world has changed before our eyes since Jan. 20.

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COURT IN THE ACT

DIFFERENT TACTICS: Institutions which cannot be dismantled face a different tactic from Trump’s White House: intimidation. While the media takes a regular beating, Trump’s current focus is the judiciary, and the supposedly liberal judges throwing up roadblocks to his radical program. Judge James Boasberg is this week’s primary target and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt piled on hard at yesterday’s briefing, describing the George W. Bush appointee as “a Democrat activist … trying to usurp the president’s authority.”

How intimidation works: “Judges Fear for Their Safety Amid a Wave of Threats,” by NYT’s Mattathias Schwartz and Abbie VanSickle.

But but but: Boasberg is not backing down, still demanding more details on the administration’s mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants last Saturday. He’s set another new deadline of midday today for more info on why his court order was ignored.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: POLITICO’s ace legal brain Josh Gerstein messages Playbook early this morning with new court documents revealing fresh details of the Venezuela case. Lawyers representing five Venezuelan nationals describe “chaos” on board the planes before they departed Texas, with detainees “crying and frightened about where they were being sent.”

The crucial point: The lawyers say the U.S. government has offered zero proof that detainees were actually gang members, and want Trump’s peacetime use of the Alien Enemies Act permanently blocked. “The implications of the government’s position are staggering,” they state. “If the president can label any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison.”

James and the giant impeach: But the White House insists the president has the power to do exactly that, and all the noise from the right — including from Trump himself — is for Boasberg to be impeached. As NBC News explains, that’s never going to happen, given the numbers required in Congress to pull it off.

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FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: So what does the White House really think? POLITICO’s Rachael Bade sat down yesterday with White House deputy chief of staff James Blair for this week’s episode of “Playbook Deep Dive” — and while the podcast doesn’t air until tomorrow, we’ve got an exclusive clip from Blair this morning on Trump’s fight to impeach the judge. He doesn’t sound entirely convinced it’s going to happen. Watch the clip.

“It'll be up to the speaker … to figure out what can be passed or not,” Blair tells Rachael. “I think the thing that is important right now is the president is highlighting a critical issue. And he is doing what he does, which is shine a big old spotlight on something that otherwise may be obscure, or only sold through the mainstream media in a way that misrepresents his position.”

Blair later suggested that Congress may decide to drop the matter entirely, given the GOP clearly lacks the votes. “I doubt that a bunch of floor time will be spent on something if they strongly feel like they can't get the votes,” he said. More coming tomorrow…

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FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Your best read this morning on all of the above comes via POLITICO’s Michael Schaffer, who explores the intertwining bios of this week’s two main characters in Trump’s war on Washington. “Michael Abramowitz and James Boasberg both grew up as children of Washington notables,” he writes, “becoming friends at Saint Albans, the venerable prep school where the local elite has long educated its kids.

“One did journalism, the other did law, and they both wound up in public service. And this week, in a coincidence that feels downright poetic in the shell-shocked universe known as Permanent Washington, they’re the targets in high-profile Trump administration onslaughts that are otherwise unconnected: the shuttering of Voice of America, where Abramowitz served as the director, and the battle over the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, where Boasberg is the judge whose rulings have led to furious presidential condemnations.”

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BEST OF THE REST

THE BEST LAID PLANS: Democratic lawmakers had big plans for recess: Use the time back in their home states to hammer Trump, Elon Musk and the GOP over budget cuts, and return to Washington with the political wind at their backs. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s controversial decision to keep the government open by backing the House GOP’s continuing resolution largely torpedoed that dream, as POLITICO’s Ally Mutnick and Brakkton Booker report, leaving Dems locked in angry town halls with furious supporters.

Not just the Dems: GOP types brave enough to hold town halls this week have also been facing tough crowds. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s event in Wyoming last night did not sound pretty, per NBC’s Kate Santaliz.

The pressure on Schumer continues: Four progressive groups focusing on younger voters have piled onto the Senate minority leader, calling on him to either get more aggressive in fighting Trump or else resign as party leader, POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein scoops this morning. “Gen Z voters want leaders with a backbone who will stand up to billionaires and fight for working people,” reads the letter, which was signed by the Sunrise Movement, College Democrats of America, United We Dream Action and Voters of Tomorrow. “But it’s not just us. You have lost the trust of millions of voters and many of your colleagues in Congress.”

SHOW AND TELL: Trump showed off his newly decorated office — Declaration of Independence and all — during an exclusive tour of the White House with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham broadcast last night. Trump told Ingraham the U.S. is “going to have the strongest economy in the history of the world” and that April 2 — the day his next big tariffs take effect — would mean the "liberation of America."

Always a tweet: On Truth Social last night, Trump called on the Fed to cut interest rates as his tariffs kick in. “Do the right thing,” he urged. “April 2nd is Liberation Day in America!!!”

IMMIGRATION FILES: The White House is weighing whether to create a Pentagon-controlled “buffer zone” for military operations along the U.S.-Mexico border and “empower active-duty U.S. troops to temporarily hold migrants who cross into the United States illegally,” WaPo’s Dan Lamothe reports.

HE SAID WHAT NOW?: In an … unusual move for a sitting Cabinet member, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly recommended people buy Tesla stock last night on Fox News. “If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,”Lutnick declared to host Jesse Watters. “It’s unbelievable that [Elon Musk’s] stock is this cheap.”

Per Business Insider: “Before entering government, Lutnick was the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. The brokerage and investment bank, per an SEC filing made in February, owns Tesla shares. Lutnick agreed to divest his business interests in the bank following his confirmation.”

WHO LET THE DOGE IN?: A federal judge denied a lawsuit filed in D.C. by the U.S. Institute of Peace that requested a temporary restraining order against DOGE, Musk and Trump, WaPo’s Derek Hawkins reports. ICYMI: WaPo’s Karen DeYoung and Derek Hawkins have a must-read tick-tock on DOGE’s takeover of the USIP building.

OOPS: “The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” WaPo reports.

THE LOCAL ANGLE: Trump is urging House Republicans to approve a fix for D.C.’s funding hole that would restore the $1.1 billion shortfall that was omitted from the government spending bill, POLITICO’s Jake Traylor, Katherine Tully-McManus and Meredith Lee Hill report. “The president has confidence the speaker will bring the bipartisan measure up for a vote, said a White House official granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s thinking.”

2026 WATCH: A new Mitchell Research and Communications poll commissioned by MIRS shows Rep. John James (R-Mich.) and Tudor Dixon, the GOP’s 2022 Michigan gubernatorial nominee, are virtually tied in a potential 2026 gubernatorial primary, with James sitting at 31 percent and Dixon at 30 percent. Full poll info

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TALK OF THE TOWN

IN MEMORIAM — “Jeffrey Klein, a founder and top editor of Mother Jones, dies at 77,” by WaPo’s Harrison Smith: “An ambitious, energetic editor with an abiding skepticism toward political orthodoxies — both liberal and conservative — Mr. Klein was only 28 when Mother Jones published its debut issue in February 1976. … Mr. Klein left Mother Jones in 1981 to serve as editor in chief of San Francisco magazine. He later ran West, the Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News, where he mentored journalists including Susan Faludi, a future Pulitzer Prize winner. … In 1992, Mr. Klein returned to Mother Jones as editor in chief. He went on to usher the publication into the digital era.”

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Open Philanthropy is adding Sharon Yang and Karthik Ganapathy as senior comms officers and Michael Brownlie as director of government relations. Yang most recently was national spokesperson on the Harris campaign. Ganapathy most recently was a founding partner of Left Flank Strategies. Brownlie most recently was chief of staff to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

— The NRCC is adding Will Kiley as comms director, Emily Tuttle-Millard as deputy comms director, Mike Marinella as national press secretary, Ben Petersen as national war room director, Zach Bannon as central regional press secretary, Christian Martinez as western regional press secretary, Maureen O’Toole as eastern regional press secretary and Gabe Goralnick as comms coordinator.

— OutKick will be the first sports website ever to be in the White House press pool. Clay Travis, the site’s founder, will join the press pool this weekend and travel to Philadelphia on Air Force One with the president to attend the NCAA wrestling championship.

— The staff of COURIER Newsroom is unionizing with the Writers Guild of America East. COURIER is voluntarily recognizing the 50-member bargaining unit, with CEO Tara McGowan saying that the outlet “strongly believes in the rights of workers to organize and will uphold our commitment to supporting unionization.”

TRANSITIONS — Alexia Latortue is now a non-resident fellow for the Center for Global Development. She previously was Assistant Treasury Secretary for International Trade and Development in the Biden administration. … Leroy Garcia is joining Perry Jacobson as a partner and Colorado lead, as the government affairs firm expands to Colorado. He most recently was chief of staff for the Rural Business-Cooperative Service at the Agriculture Department. … Jorge Santiago is now the political director at the Democratic Mayors Association. He previously was political and coalitions director for western states on the Biden campaign.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) … Ronna McDaniel … DNC’s Lily Hopwood … CNN’s Phil Rucker … Washingtonian’s Cathy Merrill Williams … Kevin Hassett … Gloria Story Dittus of Story Partners … Mark Putnam of Putnam Partners … Arthur Scott … Jon Thompson … Michael Whouley of Dewey Square Group … Jay Heimbach … Benjy Sarlin … POLITICO’s David Ferris and Laila Pirnazar … Naomi Zeigler … Sally Aman … Jackson Hurley of Voters of Tomorrow … Results for America’s Zac Coile … Jessica Carter … Abbey Welborn ... Susan McGinnis ... Matt Finkelstein ... Gloria Totten ... Cory Gattie … Ruth Osinski of BGR Group … CNN’s Jim Bittermann … Logan Booth of Trident GMG

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