| | | |  | | By Zack Stanton | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun and Bethany Irvine Good morning. This is Zack Stanton in the driver’s seat this Sunday. Get in touch. Speaking of the driver’s seat … our Adam Wren writes in with a SPOTTED from the Indianapolis 500: Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.); Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso doing a fundraiser with Roger Penske and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio); Lachlan Murdoch.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
President Donald Trump salutes during commencement ceremonies at West Point on Saturday, May 24. | AP | President Donald Trump has a quiet day ahead (famous last words, I know). He’ll be at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, until 5 p.m., when he departs en route to the White House, where he’s due to arrive at 6:30. But even while the relative calm of a three-day weekend may afford a moment’s pause, his political project steamrolls ahead, remaking government in his MAGA movement’s image and — key to that goal — doing so while attempting to reset everyone’s expectations. The new normal in personal enrichment: NYT’s Peter Baker has a smart read this morning on the extent that the Trump family has financially profited from the presidency. They are, he noted, “hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking,” including at least $320 million in crypto fees, billions in foreign real estate deals (read also: NYT’s Damien Cave on one such project in Vietnam), and even an exclusive new club in D.C. that charges $500,000 a head to join. And yet … “a mark of how much Mr. Trump has transformed Washington since his return to power is the normalization of moneymaking schemes that once would have generated endless political blowback, televised hearings, official investigations and damage control,” Baker writes. “The death of outrage in the Trump era, or at least the dearth of outrage, exemplifies how far the president has moved the lines of accepted behavior in Washington.” The new normal in the economy: “Companies are struggling with unstable tariff rates, bond-market swings, canceled federal contracts, rising import costs, and visa challenges,” The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey writes this morning. “They’re unsure about the economic outlook. They’re unsure about tax rates. They’re unsure about borrowing costs. Last week, Moody’s downgraded American debt, meaning it has less confidence in the country’s growth and capacity to manage its deficits.” And yet … “This is a year of chaos, so dramatic in its upheaval that it sometimes obscures how weird things have been, and for how long. Over the past half decade, businesses have contended with a pandemic, a recession, an inflationary spiral, and a trade war. They have negotiated swift changes in consumer behavior and input prices and interest rates, as well as significant shifts in policy more broadly, from Joe Biden’s New Deal Lite to Donald Trump’s autarkic austerity. John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington-based think tank, calls it ‘the era of thrash.’”
| | | | A message from the Alzheimer's Association: Congress Can Connect Americans to Alzheimer's Solutions: This is the most hopeful time in the history of Alzheimer's. Breakthrough research — made possible by bipartisan support in Congress — has led to the first FDA-approved treatments, earlier detection, improved diagnosis, and better support for caregivers. With over 7 million Americans living with this fatal disease, and their nearly 12 million caregivers, Congress must accelerate, not stop, progress. Congress, it's up to you. | | | | The new normal in the judiciary: “Amid rising tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary, some federal judges are beginning to discuss the idea of managing their own armed security force,” WSJ’s Katherine Long, James Fanelli and C. Ryan Barber scooped. While Supreme Court justices are protected by their own dedicated police force, “other federal judges are protected by the U.S. Marshals Service, which reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi,” and some judges are “worried that Trump could order the marshals to stand down in retaliation for a decision that didn’t go his way.” For its part, the White House has condemned attacks against the judiciary. “Attacks against public officials, including judges, have no place in our society,” White House spox Harrison Fields told the Journal in a statement. “President Trump knows all too well the impact of callous attacks, having faced two assassination attempts.” And yet … After Trump’s public tone toward judges changed in mid-March — when he said U.S. District Judge James Boasberg “should be IMPEACHED” for ruling that the administration couldn’t summarily deport Venezuelan migrants — it precipitated a wave of threats to judges nationwide. “Starting in April, some judges and their relatives received unsolicited pizza deliveries in the name of Daniel Anderl, the deceased son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl was shot dead in 2020 at his parents’ home by a disgruntled litigant.” Companion reading: “How Trump's clash with the courts is brewing into an ‘all-out war,’” by USA Today’s Zac Anderson The new normal in speaking to servicemembers: Yesterday, in his commencement speech at West Point, the president wore his signature red MAGA campaign hat to address the Army cadets in an unusual speech for the setting. He boasted of “liberat[ing] our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” a nod to his war on policies that promote diversity and inclusion. He repeated his frequent campaign rally chestnut that he was investigated more than mobster Al Capone. He spoke of “trophy wives.” (Douglas MacArthur’s May 1962 “Duty, Honor, Country” address this was not.) The new normal at the State Department: POLITICO’s Nahal Toosi has a new column that’s a must-read for folks in Foggy Bottom, looking at the Ben Franklin Fellowship, a “not-so-secret society whose members run State.” Its ranks include “Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, top officials in bureaus such as consular affairs, and even an acting undersecretary or two.” The group “emphasizes goals such as border security; opposes typical diversity, equity and inclusion practices; and advocates for the careful use of U.S. resources abroad,” she writes — which is not altogether surprising or unusual. But what is distinct is “its heavy focus on reforming the State Department itself,” and the way that it’s doing that “could affect U.S. foreign policy decades into the future.” Companion reading: “The fellowship: how Trump loyalists are taking over the US state department,” by FT’s Guy Chazan
| | | | A message from the Alzheimer's Association: False claims are spreading — including the dangerous myth that the NIH has focused Alzheimer's research only on one target called beta Amyloid. Publicly verifiable facts prove this is untrue. Let's move past the confusion, and continue strong bipartisan support for life-saving research. | | | | SUNDAY BEST … — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on the spending cuts in the reconciliation bill, on “Fox News Sunday”: “I support spending cuts. I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt. The problem is the math doesn't add up. They're going to explore the debt.” He continued: “Somebody has to stand up and yell, ‘the emperor has no clothes.’ Everybody is falling in lockstep on this, ‘Pass the big, beautiful bill. Don’t question anything.’ Well, conservatives do need to stand up and have their voices heard.” — Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on how many senators agree with his critiques of House Republicans “big, beautiful bill,” on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.” — Speaker Mike Johnson on his advice to Ron Johnson and other GOP senators who take issue with his chamber’s bill, on “State of the Union”: “I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we have reached over a long period of time, and it's best not to meddle with it too much. … We've got to deal within the realm of what's possible.” More from POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy
TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
- “American Corruption,” by Paul Rosenzweig for The Atlantic
- “Ode to Scum,” by Matt Taibbi for Racket News on Substack
- “Trump is trying to politicize the military’s recruiting success,” by Jacob Freedman for the Boston Globe
- “JD Vance on His Faith and Trump’s Most Controversial Policies,” by NYT’s Ross Douthat
- “ChatGPT Is a Gimmick,” by Jonathan Malesic for The Hedgehog Review
- “I Warned My Party About Biden’s Health. Will They Listen Now?” by Dean Phillips for The Free Press
- “A Brain-Dead Woman Is Being Kept on Machines to Gestate a Fetus. It Was Inevitable,” by Kimberly Mutcherson for NYT
- “The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History,” by Jonathan Chait for The Atlantic
- “Wrong Again, Democrats: Paying ‘Influencers’ Misses the Boat,” by Faiz Shakir for The New Republic
- “Bruce Springsteen Will Never Surrender to Donald Trump,” by Eric Alterman for NYT
| | | | Playbook isn’t just a newsletter — it’s a podcast, too. With new co-hosts who bring unmatched Trump world reporting and analysis, The Playbook Podcast dives deeper into the power plays shaping Washington. Get the insider edge—start listening now. | | | | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: POLITICO’s Danny Nguyen and Jessie Blaeser dig into a Trump administration project intended to revisit thousands of federal agreements that is “starting to sink a vast ecosystem of contractors that deploy jobs across the Washington economy.” The “chainsaw-wielding approach” has produced claims of big savings, including several multimillion-dollar contracts. “At least 2,775 out of more than 20,000 contracts for consulting and investment advice under review have been cut as of May 11, worth $3.1 billion in claimed savings, according to an analysis of DOGE’s list of terminations and government data obtained by POLITICO.” The knock-on effect: “But the reach of the review — looking back at contracts that have already gone through a competitive bidding process overseen by career civil servants — is nonetheless unprecedented. It has frozen hiring, triggered layoffs and sparked chaos across the consulting industry, a vast shadow workforce across Virginia, Washington and Maryland that often weathers broader economic slumps.” 2. RUSSIA-UKRAINE LATEST: Russia and Ukraine “swapped hundreds more prisoners on Sunday, the third and last part of a major exchange that reflected a rare moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the more than three years of war,” AP’s Samya Kullab and Oleksii Yeroshenko report from Kyiv. “Hours earlier, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and other regions came under a massive Russian drone-and-missile attack that killed at least 12 people and injured dozens. Ukrainian officials described it as the largest aerial assault since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the silence of America and other world leaders “only encourages” Russian President Vladimir Putin. 3. DISPATCH FROM THE WILDERNESS: The NYT is launching an “occasional” series to drill down on the Democratic Party and the key questions it faces: “how it got so dire, what comes next and who could lead the way,” NYT’s Shane Goldmacher writes in the first installment. “The first challenge is that it is not just Republicans and independents who have soured on the Democratic Party. It is also Democrats themselves. The Democratic base is aghast at the speed with which Mr. Trump is undermining institutions and reversing progressive accomplishments — and at the lack of resistance from congressional leaders.” Painting quite the picture: Longtime Dem researcher Anat Shenker-Osorio has conducted about 250 focus groups with swing voters asking them to compare the two parties to animals. This is the pattern: “Republicans are seen as ‘apex predators,’ like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive.” 4. THE LOAN LURCH: “Millions of Americans hit with bad credit after missed student loan payments,” by WaPo’s Abha Bhattarai: “Credit scores dipped by more than 100 points for 2.2 million delinquent student loan borrowers, and 150 points or more for more than 1 million in the first three months of 2025, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It’s the kind of credit score drop that follows a personal bankruptcy filing. Roughly 2.4 million of those Americans previously had favorable credit scores and would have qualified for cars loans, mortgages or credit cards before these delinquencies were reported, researchers said.”
| | | | A message from the Alzheimer's Association:  
The Alzheimer's Association is working with bipartisan lawmakers to make meaningful policy changes. More work remains. | | | | 5. MUDDY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: “Trump’s Warming Toward Syria Complicates Israel's Military Strategy,” by NYT’s Michael Shear: “Trump’s surprise embrace of [Ahmed] al-Shara not only offered the new Syrian leader an unexpected lifeline, it also appears to have undercut efforts by the hard-line Israeli government to seize on the instability in Syria and the weakness of the new government to prevent the rise of another anti-Israel neighbor. … Before Mr. Trump’s declaration of confidence in the new Syrian leader, [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu and his top aides in Israel had been determined to deny Mr. al-Shara and his nascent government access to the vast array of heavy weaponry amassed by the Assad regime over its decades in power.” 6. GOING TO CALIFORNIA: Trump’s immigration agenda will have a particularly acute impact on California, which counts on immigrants to boost the economy, WSJ’s Jim Carlton and Paul Overberg write. “The state’s population rose 0.6% in 2024, reaching 39.43 million by adding almost a quarter-million people, according to Census Bureau estimates. … Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, often seen as a potential presidential contender, is publicly touting the population bump. … Yet California’s growth is tenuous. Without immigration, it would have shrunk significantly in the past year. Net immigration rebounded to more than 300,000 people in 2024, after plunging to as few as 44,000 in the worst year of the pandemic.” 7. RECRUITMENT REPORT CARD: “US military spent $6 billion in the past 3 years to recruit and retain troops,” by AP’s Lolita Baldor: “Coupled with an array of new programs, an increased number of recruiters and adjustments to enlistment requirements, the additional incentives have helped the services bounce back from the shortfalls. All but the Navy met their recruiting targets last year and all are expected to do so this year. … Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeatedly point to Trump’s election as a reason for the recruiting rebound. But the enlistment increases began long before last November, and officials have tied them more directly to the widespread overhauls that the services have done.” 8. ON THE SCENE: “They gathered to turn ‘pain into purpose.’ Then gunfire shattered their peace,” by WaPo’s Michael Laris and Karina Elwood: “This account of Wednesday’s tragedy — how an evening suffused with aspirations for peace suddenly dissolved, in the span of a muzzle flash, into unspeakable violence that echoed around the globe — is based on numerous interviews, statements by police and government officials, and publicly available court records.” 9. AMERICAN EXPORT: “Scientists have lost their jobs or grants in US cuts. Foreign universities want to hire them,” by AP’s Christina Larson and colleagues: “The ‘Canada Leads’ program, launched in April, hopes to foster the next generation of innovators by bringing early-career biomedical researchers north of the border. Aix-Marseille University in France started the ‘Safe Place for Science’ program in March — pledging to ‘welcome’ U.S.-based scientists who ‘may feel threatened or hindered in their research.’ Australia’s ‘Global Talent Attraction Program,’ announced in April, promises competitive salaries and relocation packages.”
| | | | Cut through policy complexity and turn intelligence into action with POLITICO’s Policy Intelligence Assistant—a new suite of tools designed to save you time and demonstrate your impact more easily than ever—available only to Pro subscribers. Save hours, uncover critical insights instantly, and stay ahead of the next big shift. Power your strategy today—learn more. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Kamala Harris spoke at a real estate conference in Australia and urged listeners to “remember the 1930s.” Jack Schlossberg has completed his journey from Camelot to Cameo: the Kennedy scion is shilling videos for rates starting at $75. THE SHOW MUST GO ON — “Broadway shows keep the Kennedy Center going. But will they stay away?” by WaPo’s Naveen Kumar: “The gamble is that nonunion tours could net the center more money. Deals between producers and presenting houses vary, but lower production costs mean higher potential profit margins from box office sales split between the parties. But that very likely won’t be enough to make up for the center’s significant reduction in theater programming.” TRANSITION — Steve Herman is joining Ole Miss as executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation. He is retiring from Voice of America, where he most recently was chief national correspondent. The announcement WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Kelly Cohen, Arlington Public Schools occupational therapist, and Josh Cohen, director of comms at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and a State Department, Pentagon and Hill alum, welcomed Abby on Thursday. Pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) … David Sacks … former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan … Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution … Laurie Rubiner … Megan Van Etten of PhRMA … Peyton Vogel … Savannah Haeger of FedEx … Kate Ackley Zeller of Bloomberg Government … CBS’ Stefan Becket … Anna Palmer … POLITICO’s Catherine Kim and Diana Hernandez … Annie Clark of Rokk Solutions … Alliance for Justice’s Carolyn Bobb … former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) … former Reps. Steve Russell (R-Okla.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) … Matt Lakin … Natalie Ihrman of USDA … ABC’s Jay O’Brien … Haleah Lewis of the Washington Speakers Bureau … Alexandra Sanchez 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, deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
| | | | A message from the Alzheimer's Association: Congress Can Connect Americans to Alzheimer's Research, an Investment in America's Fiscal Health
As the most expensive disease in the nation, untreated Alzheimer's is a major driver of rising federal and state spending, adding to America's long-term debt.
The bipartisan path forward is clear: Sustained NIH investment in Alzheimer's and dementia research. This commitment accelerates innovation, leading to effective treatments, early detection and prevention strategies, and reduced long-term costs for families, Medicare and Medicaid.
Supporting NIH research is not just compassionate policy; it is a smart fiscal strategy with strong bipartisan backing in Congress and overwhelming support among the American public.
Together, let's create a future free from Alzheimer's and all other dementia.
Congress: Invest in research today, ensure a healthier and more fiscally sustainable tomorrow. | | | | | | | | Follow us on X | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Canada Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
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