| | | |  | | By Bethany Irvine | Presented by The American Council of Life Insurers | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | BREAKING: “Judge orders immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts student detained by ICE,” by POLITICO’s Liz Crampton and Kyle Cheney: “U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ruled that Ozturk had been unlawfully detained in March for little more than authoring an op-ed critical of Israel in her school newspaper.”
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Donald Trump took to Truth Social this morning to signal that he may be open to dropping the steep 145 percent tariffs he’s levied against China. | Cheng Xin/Getty Images | THE TRADE-OFF CONTINUES: It’s a big weekend for U.S.-China relations as the two sides prepare for a high-level meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss President Donald Trump’s trade war. The latest turn of the screw: Trump took to Truth Social this morning to signal that he may be open to dropping the steep 145 percent tariffs he’s levied against China. “80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.,” the president wrote, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who Trump has given the reins on China negotiations. Baby steps: While an 80% tariff would still be “prohibitively high for most companies” doing business between the two countries, Trump’s post “could signal movement that would ease fears among consumers, businesses and the markets,” POLITICO’s Megan Messerly reports. “Perhaps more importantly, the Friday morning post signals that the president has given Bessent his proxy to negotiate a lowering of the tariffs on his behalf.” Who’s on the guest list: Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to send his top public-security aide to meet with Bessent and USTR Jamieson Greer in Geneva, WSJ’s Lingling Wei and Brian Schwartz scoop. Wang Xiaohong, one of Xi’s top lieutenants, is “the point person” to discuss Washington’s concerns about fentanyl trafficking from China. The view from Beijing: It’s clear “Chinese officials have grown increasingly alarmed about tariffs' impact on the economy and the risk of isolation as China's trading partners have started negotiating deals with Washington,” Reuters’ Antoni Slodkowski and Laurie Chen report in a look at why China decided to meet. Managing expectations: “In Geneva, Beijing appears to have modest expectations,” per Reuters. “Internally, China has downgraded the talks from a higher level to merely a meeting, reflecting its view that the discussions will be mostly about finding out Washington's demands and red lines after weeks of contradictory messages by Trump and other senior U.S. officials.” MIXED MESSAGES: House Republicans remain locked in disagreements over tax provisions. President Donald Trump’s mixed message probably isn't helping. Where we’re at: House Republicans are huddling to hash out an agreement over spending cuts for their megabill that would also fulfill the president’s tax demands. The group was already stalled by infighting before Speaker Mike Johnson announced a half-trillion reduction in the bill last night. Though the tighter budget may placate the more than two dozen fiscal hawks seeking cost-cutting measures, it will also make it that much harder to include the cuts Trump is pushing. To complicate matters further, it’s less clear what exactly Trump wants in the bill. The president declared in a post on Truth Social this morning that Republicans “should probably not” boost taxes on the nation’s wealthiest people — though in the same post said, “I’m OK if they do!!!” So, what now? The GOP seems no closer to an agreement on provisions than earlier this week. While raising the top income tax rate could give the Ways and Means Committee breathing room for more additions, tensions are still high around exactly what to cut and expand. What to watch: House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) is set to meet with Trump today to discuss the impasse. Johnson is also expected to phone Trump to discuss the megabill today. More from POLITICO’s Benjamin Guggenheim Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at birvine@politico.com.
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White House adviser Jared Kushner listens during a teleconference with governors at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters | Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images | 1. THEY WENT TO JARED: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former chief Middle East negotiator, seems to be informally back on the job counseling administration officials on their negotiations in the region, CNN’s Alayna Treene and Kristen Holmes report. As Trump prepares for a trip to the Middle East next week, Kushner is unlikely to join but remains “heavily involved in discussions with Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, about signing agreements that would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.” What else is on the horizon: The White House has said Trump’s goal on the trip is to secure “economic agreements” with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “But Kushner and other Trump advisers have also been privately plotting the more ambitious goal of expanding the Abraham Accords, the treaties negotiated during Trump’s first term between several Arab Nations and Israel.” Still, sources say Kushner “does not have, nor want, a formal role in Trump’s second term” despite being a “crucial player behind the scenes.” 2. INDIA-PAKISTAN LATEST: Tensions are escalating between Pakistan and India following India’s Wednesday morning airstrikes targeting the Pakistani-controlled side of Kashmir. Reports of “nonstop barrages” on the Kashmiri border and beyond emerged overnight with both nations issuing differing accounts in the press. “The details of the conflict remain blurry in part because each side is not only spreading its own spin, but also blocking the other’s,”NYT’s Anupreeta Das reports. “Pakistan has banned Indian news sites for years. Now India has cut off most of its own access to Pakistani news sources.” The growing hostility is also putting the Chinese military supply to Pakistan to the test, resulting in what is essentially a proxy war with the West,CNN’s Nectar Gan, Simone McCarthy and Brad Lendon report: “Over the past five years, China has supplied 81% of Pakistan’s imported weapons … With Pakistan armed largely by China and India sourcing more than half of its weapons from the US and its allies, any conflict between the two neighbors could effectively be a showdown between Chinese and Western military technologies.” 3. KEEPING HIS OPTIONS OPEN: “With a trip to Pennsylvania, Sen. Ruben Gallego enters the 2028 conversation,” by NBC’s Megan Lebowitz and Sahil Kapur: “Gallego is set to attend a town hall Saturday in Bucks County, a key swing area outside Philadelphia that Donald Trump flipped by a few hundred votes last year. … It’s the type of move that will fuel speculation about Gallego as a presidential contender … And while he said his message in Pennsylvania will focus on more immediate matters, like preserving Medicaid and pushing back against Trump’s tariffs, Gallego didn’t close the door on the possibility down the road.” 4. IMMIGRATION FILES: Though much ink has been spilled on the federal price tag on Trump’s sweeping deportation push,Bloomberg’s Dylan Sloan and Michael Smith report how the wealthy executives of for-profit prison companies are poised to bring in millions due to the policy. The nation’s largest company, GEO Group Inc., will reopen a 1,000-bed detainment center that will serve a “modern-day Ellis Island in reverse – for some of the millions of immigrants the Trump administration has vowed to deport.” Meanwhile, GEO Group Inc. founder George Zoley’s “personal fortune has grown by $50 million since Donald Trump was reelected in November” and “reached a new milestone: $304 million.” A snapshot of the upheaval: “A girl recovering from a rare brain tumor celebrated her 11th birthday Sunday, hundreds of miles away from everything she's known — her friends at school, her community at church, her home,”NBC’s Nicole Acevedo reports. Though the child is a U.S. citizen, she was one of four U.S. citizen children sent to Mexico from Texas this year after authorities deported her undocumented parents. Hoping to find a way to resume medical treatment in the U.S., the girl's family will meet with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus later today to urge “legislators to advocate for their return under humanitarian parole.” 5. SURVEY SAYS, PART I: The White House is continuing to ramp up threats to cut federal funding to universities unless the institutions acquiesce to their policy demands. But a new AP-NORC poll finds that a majority of the electorate disagrees with Trump’s approach to higher education, with the rising cost of college tuition outweighing many of the hot-button political issues. More on the numbers:
- Depths of disapproval: 56% of those surveyed disapprove of how Trump is handling issues related to colleges and universities. To little surprise, Democrats and independents are more likely to disapprove, but the “public’s view of how the president is dealing with higher education is in line with his overall approval rating,” the poll notes.
- Cutting deep: 62% of respondents support maintaining federal funding for scientific and medical research at colleges, with only 3 in 10 approving of cuts. A similar majority say “colleges and universities make more of a positive contribution to medical and scientific research than a negative one,” AP’s Jocelyn Gecker and Linley Sanders report.
| | | | How will new trade and tariff policies impact American manufacturing? Join POLITICO on May 14 at Manufacturing in America. Unpack what's on the horizon for manufacturers with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and industry experts. Register Now. | | | | | 6. SURVEY SAYS, PART II: A new poll of D.C. area residents conducted by WaPo and George Mason University shows that over “4 in 10 D.C. area residents who live in households that experienced a federal worker or contractor layoff, firing or being put on leave say they could not pay all their bills on time as a result,” WaPo’s Olivia George, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report. Meanwhile, more than one in five residents say “they are seriously considering moving away in the next 12 months.” The potential demographic shift in the district coincides with the effects of post-pandemic slowdown and federal government cuts, which have left the local economy “teetering on the edge of a painful slump,” per the WaPo team. 7. MR. ADAMS HEADS TO WASHINGTON: NYC Mayor Eric Adams will meet with Trump face-to-face later today ahead of a deadline for DOJ to provide documents in its case against the embattled mayor, POLITICO’s Emily Ngo reports. “The court papers to be unsealed are expected to shed light on the prosecution into a mayor accused of taking bribes from Turkish officials. … They were initially due on the public docket last Friday, but the DOJ failed to file them.”
| | | | Policy moves fast—stay ahead with POLITICO’s Policy Intelligence Assistant. Effortlessly search POLITICO's archive of 1M+ news articles, analysis documents, and legislative text. Track legislation, showcase your impact, and generate custom reports in seconds. Designed for POLITICO Pro subscribers, this tool helps you make faster, smarter decisions. Start exploring now. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Camryn Kinsey says she “feels better” after fainting on-air during a Fox News program last night. Gavin Newsom is taking his anti-tariff message to Fox News with a new ad airing this weekend. IN MEMORIAM — “David Souter, Supreme Court justice favoring judicial restraint, dies at 85,” by WaPo’s Ann Marimow: “Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the intellectual New Englander who disappointed Republicans and delighted liberals by slowing a conservative transformation of the high court, died May 8 at his home in New Hampshire. He was 85. The high court announced his death but did not cite a cause. Justice Souter, who supplied a key vote to uphold abortion rights in his early years on the court, was a little-known New Hampshire judge dubbed the ‘stealth candidate’ when President George H.W. Bush nominated him in 1990 to replace justice William J. Brennan Jr., then the anchor of an eroding liberal majority.” OUT AND ABOUT — The Atlantic Council’s annual Distinguished Leadership Awards yesterday evening at the Waldorf honored Judy Collins, Victor Pinchuk, Croatian PM Andrej Plenković, retired Gen. John “Jay” Raymond and Stephen Hadley. SPOTTED: Mac Thornberry, David Rubenstein, Adrienne Arsht, John F.W. Rogers, Frederick Kempe, Jenna Ben-Yehuda, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, Rama Yade, Melanie Chen, George Chopivsky, Capricia Marshall, John Herbst, retired Gen. James Jones, Omani Ambassador Talal Alrahbi, Albanian Ambassador Ervin Bushati, Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova, Montenegrin Ambassador Jovan Mirković, Lithuanian Ambassador Audra Plepytė, Portuguese Ambassador Francisco Duarte Lopes, Michael Andersson, Karan Bhatia, Helima Croft, Sean Fitzpatrick, Kellyanne Conway, Sherri Goodman, Wolfgang Ischinger, Melanne Verveer, Katy Balls, Theresa Hitchens, Laura Kelly, Naeim Khanjani, Almar Latour, Diego Munhoz, Vivian Salama and Susan Sadigova. — Franco Nuschese hosted a book party for Laurence Leamer’s new book, “Warhol’s Muses” ($32), at Cafe Milano yesterday. SPOTTED: Pat Harrison, Rob Brunner, Marilyn Thompson, Tom LoBianco, Janet Donovan, Howard Mortman, Roxanne Roberts, Robert Devaney, Vesna Leamer, Ted Johnson, Chris Murray, Kevin Chaffee, Juliegrace Brufke, Judith Beermann, Maura Judkis and Kevin Cirilli. Pic — Puck kicked off a power breakfast series yesterday in the Lincoln Library at the Waldorf Astoria, where Leigh Ann Caldwell interviewed Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.). SPOTTED: Jon Kelly, Liz Gough, Abby Livingston, Nancy Baker, Victoria Espinel, Mary Streett, Matt Gorman, Maryam Mujica, Lila Nieves-Lee, Tina Anthony, Michael Falcone, Rachel Harris, Mariel Sáez, Molly Edwards Connor, Matt Mowers, JP Fielder, Angela Krasnick, Jeff Marootian, Tyler Grimm, Ian McHenry, T.W. Arrighi, Lee Slater, Kevin Walling, Amy Garland, Annie Clark, Anne MacMillan, Hazim Nada, Amanda Anderson and Torrey Shearer. — Cornerstone Government Affairs held a spring happy hour for the Democratic Women Communicators Network, with Adrienne Elrod as featured speaker and Kirsten West as host. SPOTTED: Marneé Banks, Chelsea Koski, Kristen Orthman, Sarah Schakow, Leslie Wertheimer, Stephanie Nye, Brianna Frias, Evelyn Chang and Kemi Giwa. — The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation hosted its 15th annual Great Ladies Luncheon yesterday at the Ritz Carlton West. The event featured a symposium showcasing ADDF’s research on Alzheimers followed by a salad lunch and fashion show sponsored by Saks Fifth Avenue featuring spring looks by Toccin. SPOTTED: Andrea Mitchell, Judy Woodruff, Elise and Marc Lefkowitz, Charlie Lefkowitz Crowley, Kristin Rae Cecchi, Mark Roithmayr, Howard Fillit and Alex and Michael Toccin. TRANSITION — Jeremy Nighohossian is now a senior fellow and economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute focusing on health care policy. He previously worked at FTI Consulting, specializing in antitrust and health care policy. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. | | | | A message from The American Council of Life Insurers:  
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