| | | |  | | By Eli Okun | | Presented by |  | | | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | THE RETRIBUTION PRESIDENCY: “Trump preparing large-scale cancellation of federal funding for California, sources say,” by CNN’s Annie Grayer and Gabe Cohen: “[It] could begin as soon as Friday … Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California. On Capitol Hill, at least one committee was told recently by a whistleblower that all research grants to the state were going to be cancelled.”
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President Donald Trump said he's not thinking about Elon Musk. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: After initial rumblings of a detente last night between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the president and his White House had some sharper words today for the wealthiest person in the world. Don’t let the door hit you where the Lord split you: After Musk started attacking Republicans’ reconciliation bill and the administration he just departed, Trump referred to Musk as “the man who has lost his mind” in an early-morning call with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem,” the president told CNN’s Dana Bash on the phone. “I’m not even thinking about Elon.” (Shades of “The Fountainhead” there — “But I don’t think of you.”) Twisting the knife: Top White House officials made sure to spread the news to all manner of mainstream news outlets — which Musk hates — that Trump intends to sell the Tesla that he got in March and that he doesn’t plan to call Musk today. Whither DOGE? Beyond the personal stakes, one big question is how this week’s falling out will affect the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, which despite Musk’s drama has already had a transformative effect on the federal workforce and millions of lives worldwide. James Fishback, a prominent supporter who came up with the idea of “DOGE checks,” told POLITICO’s Sophia Cai that he’s leaving the movement due to Musk’s “baseless personal attacks” on Trump. Then there’s the clean-up: Across the federal government, agencies have scrambled to rehire thousands of fired workers, WaPo’s Hannah Natanson and colleagues report. And ProPublica’s Brandon Roberts and colleagues reveal that a DOGE employee set up an AI tool to figure out thousands of contracts to cut — but it contained errors, sometimes inflating the value of a contract by the power of 1,000. “Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says,” the engineer says. At rallies on the National Mall and across the country today, thousands of veterans will protest VA cuts, WaPo’s Olivia George reports. Nonetheless: The administration went to the Supreme Court today with an emergency appeal to try to hollow out the Education Department’s workforce, per POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein. Solicitor General John Sauer asked the justices to undo a federal judge’s order that barred the firings of nearly 40 percent of the agency. On the Hill: Despite Trump’s comment, Republican leaders in Congress were eager to downplay his tensions with Musk and emphasized that they want everyone on the same page to pass the reconciliation bill, POLITICO’s Gigi Ewing and colleagues report. Speaker Mike Johnson said on CNBC and at the Capitol that he hopes for quick resolution: “I believe in redemption.” Says one top administration official: “We’re just gonna move along and pass the bill. And that’s kind of the feeling of everyone right now.” Interesting wrinkle: Advocates for the NASA moon mission are hopeful that the Trump-Musk rift will give the moon a boost relative to Musk’s Mars dreams, Sam Skove writes for the new POLITICO Pro Space newsletter. Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.
| | | | A message from The National Association of REALTORS®: Homeownership is the leading way Americans build wealth—but a 4.7 million-unit housing shortage is putting that at risk, especially for the middle class. The National Association of Realtors® has a plan. With smart tax reforms that support homeownership and community investment, paired with other targeted policy changes, we can increase housing supply and restore the American Dream. See the plan at FLYIN.Realtor. | | | | | | 8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | 1. JOBS DAY: You can see the ongoing impact of DOGE in the latest May jobs report, which shows that the federal government lost 22,000 jobs last month. As NYT’s Eileen Sullivan and Lydia DePillis report, hundreds of thousands of workers forced out of the government en masse are struggling to find new opportunities, with the D.C. area hit especially hard. But the jobs data overall showed a still-solid if cooling labor market: At 139,000, the topline number again came in a bit ahead of economists’ predictions, while the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent, per Bloomberg. Inside the report: The strength was especially concentrated in health care and leisure/hospitality, while manufacturing ticked down. The big picture is that the economy is holding fairly steady, despite some cooldown and ongoing caution in a period of major uncertainty. The numbers for March and April were also revised downward by a collective 95,000 (the kind of routine change that then-Sen. Marco Rubio last year alleged without evidence was a sign of the Biden administration cooking the books). 2. TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE: “White House Quietly Pressures Senate to Water Down Russia Sanctions,” by WSJ’s Lindsay Wise and Alex Ward: “A key provision in the legislation, backed by more than 80 senators, is the imposition of sanctions on key Russian officials and sectors, as well as penalties for countries that do business with Moscow. That, President Trump fears, could harm his goal of reviving relations between the U.S. and Russia … [A]dministration officials have quietly contacted [Sen. Lindsey] Graham’s office, urging him to water down his bill, namely by inserting waivers that would allow Trump to choose who or what gets sanctioned … Another way to weaken the legislation would be to turn the word ‘shall’ into ‘may.’” 3. RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: The Senate Banking Committee has released the text of its portion of the megabill. And House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is projecting confidence about the prospects of the legislation overall. He tells POLITICO’s Mia McCarthy that he expects the reconciliation package can still be passed through both chambers by July 4. But he’s urging senators not to mess with the state and local tax deduction in particular, given how difficult it was for House GOP leaders to nail that down. Emmer also said he’s ignoring Musk’s continued attacks. The politics: There are warning signs for Republicans in the latest KFF Health poll, which finds that more than 70 percent of Americans are worried about the impact of Medicaid cuts in the bill leading to more people uninsured and hurting hospitals. But some Senate Democrats are warning that they can’t just go negative — they need to tell working-class Americans what they’re for, too, like Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) support for axing taxes on tips, Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio reports. The impact: If the Senate retains the bill’s defunding of Planned Parenthood for all health services because it provides abortions, the organization says roughly one-third of its clinics could be in danger of closing, NBC’s Kaitlin Sullivan reports. That would have a big impact on women who rely on the centers for health care. 4. CLIMATE FILES: “Planet-warming emissions dropped when companies had to report them. EPA wants to end that,” by AP’s Melina Walling and colleagues in Leopold, Indiana: “Trump’s EPA argues [the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program] is costly and burdensome for industry. But experts say dropping the requirement risks a big increase in emissions if companies are no longer publicly accountable for what they put in the air. And they say losing the data — at the same time the EPA is cutting air quality monitoring elsewhere — would make it tougher to fight climate change.”
| | | | 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. | | | | | 5. OUT AND OUT: As WorldPride gets underway in D.C., today is the deadline for active-duty transgender troops to voluntarily leave the military. After that, the Pentagon plans to force out any who remain. For thousands of trans service members, it’s a brutal parting “as they mourn years of service and reimagine lives that have been built around the military,” CNN’s Elizabeth Wolfe reports. As of this week, there were about 700 voluntary separation requests just in the Army; other branches haven’t released numbers. 6. TRAIL MIX: In Tuesday’s New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary, Rep. Mikie Sherrill is seen as the favorite. But with scant independent polling, likely low turnout and the disappearance of the old party-machine “county line,” this six-way race has the potential to surprise, POLITICO’s Madison Fernandez and Ry Rivard report. A few thousand votes could decide the result, and Sherrill’s fellow contenders are hoping to turn out unconventional voters. Sherrill has plenty of establishment support: Will that still be enough? The next big primary: NYC’s mayoral race was jolted by the news that state Sen. Jessica Ramos, a candidate herself, is endorsing frontrunner Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, NYT’s Emma Fitzsimmons reports. Ramos was outright questioning Cuomo’s mental abilities — which prompted his spokesperson to ask if she was sober — as recently as April and was among the state leaders who pushed him to resign in 2021. But Ramos has more recently been frustrated by the ascent of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in her progressive lane. Coming in November: In Virginia, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’ strong social conservatism — to the right of incumbent Glenn Youngkin on same-sex marriage and abortion — could make it tougher for her to replicate his success in the purple state, NBC’s Adam Edelman reports. 7. DISCRIMINATION DIGEST: Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) decried the fact that a Muslim had led prayer in the House today, saying it “should have never been allowed to happen. America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.” Upon realizing that the man was actually a Sikh, not a Muslim, she edited the post to change the word to Sikh. Then she deleted it. More from POLITICO’s Aaron Pellish 8. MIX AND MATCH: “Cards in deck: Trump keeps stack of orders ready to play as needed,” by WaPo’s Natalie Allison and colleagues: “White House staff have maintained a stash of executive orders and proclamations they can deploy depending on the themes of the moment and the narratives they want to shape … Some orders are put into the calendar well in advance … Others are teed up the night before they are signed depending on impulse, political strategy and the overall mood within the White House … Wednesday evening was the time the president and his team chose to hit the go button on the long-planned travel ban.”
| | | | A message from The National Association of REALTORS®:  
Homeownership builds wealth, but a 4.7 million home shortage threatens middle-class prosperity. NAR has a plan to boost supply. See it at FLYIN.Realtor. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Donald Trump is the protagonist of a Cantonese opera in Hong Kong, whose latest iteration incorporates the Oval Office blow-up at Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the assassination attempt. Bruce Springsteen’s diehard fans in Republican politics — from Chris Christie to Chris Pack to Mike Marinella — are sticking by his music, though not his feud with Trump. IN MEMORIAM — “Marina von Neumann Whitman, Who Carved Path for Women in Economics, Dies at 90,” by NYT’s Clay Risen: She was “an expert in international trade who in 1972 became the first woman to be appointed to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and who later was one of the few women to join the executive leadership at General Motors.” BATTERING RAHM: Rahm Emanuel is this week’s guest on “The Conversation with Dasha Burns,” where he discussed his reputation for being “kind of an asshole” and whether he wears that badge with pride. Emanuel said he understands how the perception came about through his years of taking on powerful institutions. “Yeah, I am tough,” Emanuel tells Dasha. “Because guess what? The interest groups are pretty powerful and they do need sometimes somebody that’s willing to take a two-by-four and smack them upside the head, and I make no bones about that.” The full episode drops Sunday. Watch the preview clip … Subscribe to the pod OUT AND ABOUT — Meridian International Center held its fifth annual “Culturefix” event yesterday, including awards that honored Roger Goodell, Anna Deavere Smith, Sanford Biggers and Mark Sikes. Also SPOTTED: Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, Austrian Ambassador Petra Schneebauer, Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) and Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Ashley Davis, Elizabeth Duggal and Alain Taghipour, Marlene Malek, Luke Frazier and Robert Pullen, Stuart and Gwen Holliday, Michael Bidwill, Geoff Bennett, Grace Bender, Heather Florance, Jessica Glass, DeDe Lea, Fred Hochberg and Tom Healy, Fred Humphries, Stephanie and Mark Robinson, Roy and Manisha Kapani, Randi and Jeffrey Levine, Jonathan Nabavi, Brendon Plack, Jeff Miller, Peter O’Reilly, Samia Farouki, Thomas Lloyd, John McCarthy, Efe Obada, Donté Stallworth, Omar Vargas, Rosie Rios, Jim Sciutto and Gloria Riviera, Rina Shah, Jennifer Griffin and Greg Myre, Lee Satterfield, Lisa Ross and Gordon Sondland. TRANSITIONS — Gustavo Torres is retiring as executive director of CASA, after more than three decades in the role. … Jerzy Piatkowski is now counsel at Fenwick. He most recently was VP of contracts and associate general counsel at General Dynamics Mission Systems. … Kevin Orellana will be a legislative assistant for Rep. Vince Fong (R-Calif.), handling his financial services portfolio. He previously was a legislative aide for Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.). BONUS BIRTHDAY: Jordan Finkelstein 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.
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