| | | |  | | By Jack Blanchard with Dasha Burns | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine, Ali Bianco and Rachel Umansky-Castro On today’s Playbook Podcast: Jack and Dasha dig into what the shutdown deal means for both parties and the latest foreign leader to come to the White House.
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| Good Monday morning. This is Jack Blanchard. Been a busy old night. Get in touch. WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: President Donald Trump announced pardons for nearly 80 prominent allies who backed his effort to subvert the 2020 election. Names on the list posted by Ed “The Eagle” Martin, Trump’s controversial pardon attorney, shortly before 11 p.m. last night included Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro. It’s certainly a novel way to celebrate the Four Seasons Total Landscaping anniversary this year. The kicker: Martin brazenly linked the pardons to his own X post from earlier in the year, stating: “No MAGA left behind.” (Subtle, these guys are not.) And yet “the pardons are largely symbolic — none of those identified were charged with federal crimes,” writes POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney. The order explicitly states there is no pardon for Trump himself. In today’s Playbook … — The shutdown is coming to an end. And with it, a Democratic civil war begins. — Another world leader visits the White House — one who used to have a $10 million bounty on his head. — And it’s a big day for redistricting in Utah, as a judge prepares to decide the state’s map.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is feeling the heat after a group of Democratic senators struck a deal to end the shutdown. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | THE BEGINNING OF THE END: We have movement. After 40 days and 40 nights of a truly biblical government shutdown, the Senate last night moved forward with a procedural vote that should mean this record-breaking crisis is finally coming to an end. What replaces it this morning is the eruption of an ugly Democratic civil war, as the party rips itself to shreds for dealing across the aisle. More on that in just a sec. First, some quick facts:The government is still closed for now. The Senate will pick back up at 11 a.m. and requires more votes to get its side done. The numbers are there, but the timetable remains uncertain. The House then needs to pass the bill, with Speaker Mike Johnson targeting Wednesday for a single-day vote. He should be able to get it through, but it’ll be tight. Plenty of people now believe the government will be open by the end of this week. POLITICO’s Inside Congress has more on the shutdown endgame Which means: Hundreds of thousands of federal workers should soon be returning to (paid) work … Adelita Grijalva should soon be getting sworn in … an Epstein Files vote could soon be hitting the floor of the House … along with a bill to ban members from trading stocks and shares … airplane travel might actually improve next week … and there’s even half a chance your Playbook author’s four-year-old gets to see a T-Rex this weekend. We live in hope. SPEAKING OF EPSTEIN — CHECK THIS OUT: His co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is prepping a commutation application for review by the White House, POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs reveals this morning. Maxwell is pushing for Trump to significantly reduce her 20-year sentence after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal — something he has so far declined to rule out. Maxwell’s recent transfer to a minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas, has drawn heavy criticism from Democrats, who have “argued she has received special treatment since she began cooperating with the administration’s renewed review of the case.” OK, BACK TO THE SHUTDOWN DEAL: Under the terms of the agreement, the federal government will be funded in full through the end of January, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney reports. Certain key agencies and programs — including the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs; the FDA; and the operation of Congress — will be funded for the entire fiscal year. SNAP funding will be restored. Russ Vought’s mass reductions in force are off the table for now. And Dems will get a Senate vote next month on extending Obamacare subsidies — with zero guarantee of success. So yeah — the Dems caved. Or at least, a few of them did. This was not, officially, a leadership-backed deal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, still under immense pressure from his party’s base to show stronger opposition to Trump, voted against the deal — although plenty of his opponents believe he did so with a nod and a wink. For the record: Eight members of the Democratic Caucus did vote with Republicans last night, bringing the magic number to a filibuster-defying 60 votes. Three of them — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and independent Angus King of Maine — have been voting to end the shutdown since early last month. They were joined by Dick Durbin of Illinois — the only member of leadership to back the deal and who is notably retiring next year — Tim Kaine of Virginia, who represents 150,000 federal workers, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire (also retiring next year), Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Jacky Rosen of Nevada. Six degrees of separation: As POLITICO’s Katherine Tully-McManus notes, “there are few obvious threads connecting the group who broke the partisan impasse.” But one point certainly unites them: “None are up for reelection in 2026.” Which is probably for the best. Because the Democratic base is seething. Sellouts: Liberal social media is on fire this morning, with activists, pressure groups and wannabe Democratic senators and presidents falling over one another to condemn the deal in ever-louder terms. Panelists on MSNBC were banging the drum against it last night, some calling for Schumer to face the heat. Instantly, it feels like a purity test — nobody hoping to get anywhere in Democratic circles right now is permitted to be anything other than outraged. A few examples: “Pathetic,” said the current top potential 2028 candidate, California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, who may fancy himself for higher office. Rising stars and Senate hopefuls like Mallory McMorrow, James Talarico and Graham Platner all condemned the deal. Influencers like Hasan Piker are livid. I’m sure you can guess what Bernie Sanders and co. make of it all.
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Learn more at siemens-energy.com | | | | Politics is a rough sport: Despite having played a surprisingly savvy shutdown game, and despite voting against the deal last night, Schumer is still bearing the brunt of blame. The complaint is that Dems stuck this out for 40 days and were actually winning — but then caved for nothing more than the promise of a pointless Senate vote that had already been on the table. Critics claim Schumer either pulled the strings behind the scenes to get the deal done — or is now so unable to lead his caucus that he could not keep them in line. In truth, it’s more nuanced than that: Clearly Dems did not achieve their primary goal. They wake up divided and angry this morning, the momentum of Tuesday’s election victories a distant memory. But in the long, painful history of government shutdowns, the party seeking concessions has never achieved its goals. Like, never. There was a chance it happened this time, had a frustrated Trump decided to pull the rug on the GOP leadership — but despite some severe wobbling in the White House as the election results rolled in, he focused on the filibuster instead. But the idea that Dems come away with nothing is overly harsh. First, Democrats achieved their primary political objective — showing a furious base that they can actually work together effectively and are prepared to fight with every tool at their disposal. That presumably helped energize Democratic voters in last week’s elections, which turned into a blowout in line with the party’s wildest dreams. Secondly, they did so while overcoming all the received wisdom in D.C. — that the party demanding concessions bears the brunt of the shutdown blame. A massive new data set shared with Playbook — an 8,000-person poll undertaken last month by Stack Data Strategy — confirms it: A hefty 52 percent of Americans blamed either Republicans in Congress or Trump himself for the shutdown, the poll shows — versus 34 percent who blamed Democrats. Even 40 percent of registered Republicans blamed Republicans or Trump for the shutdown. Thirdly, and most importantly, Dems have put the Obamacare subsidies squarely on the political map — and drawn a clear political dividing line between the two parties, over a highly salient issue. Next month Republicans will have to choose between finding some sort of solution — their own “cave-in” moment — or very publicly voting down an extension, just a few weeks before the subsidies run out. Neither option sounds great. And the polling on extending the subsidies is extraordinary. A whopping 71 percent of Americans in Stack’s poll said they were concerned about the subsidies ending. That is a mountain of public opinion for Trump and the GOP leadership to overcome. And it includes more than 50 percent of self-identified “MAGA Republicans.” The broader context is a population feeling the pinch. The cost of living was by far voters' top concern, as it has been in so many other polls through 2025. Some 38 percent of Americans said they were financially worse off than a year ago, versus only 20 percent who said they were better off. Most said they expect prices to rise further over the coming year. These are not people in the mood to absorb massive increases in premiums. Yet the White House, so far, is leaning in to Trump’s response to cost-of-living attacks, which is to tell voters prices have come down. A graphic pushed out by the White House social media team on Friday stated: “Despite Democrat lies, President Trump has excelled in improving affordability in his first nine months,” listing individual items — eggs, gas, etc. — which got cheaper in 2025. But the history of politicians telling struggling voters they’re better off than they think they are is not a happy one. It clearly struck a chord with former Joe Biden campaign chief Rob Flaherty, as this meme shows. Let’s hear from the big man: Helpfully, Trump is sitting down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham for a White House interview tonight, airing in the primetime 7 p.m. hour. Ingraham has a strong bullshit detector, as Mike Waltz learned to his cost earlier this year. How hard might she push the president on the rising costs that are worrying her viewers? It should be entertaining TV, if nothing else. On Obamacare: With open enrollment newly underway, “there is little discussion about the one group set to feel the full brunt of the premium increases: hundreds of thousands of legal, taxpaying immigrants,” POLITICO’s Robert King and Alice Miranda Ollstein report this morning. “A provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans passed in July strips all Obamacare subsidies from low-income lawfully present immigrants — those authorized to work and live in the country but unable to qualify for Medicaid yet. This could result in 300,000 people losing coverage next year because they can’t afford it,” according to the nonpartisan CBO.
| | | AT THE WHITE HOUSE ONE MAN’S FREEDOM FIGHTER: We’ve had plenty of interesting visitors to the White House this year — but never a guy who until recently had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. But Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is headed to the Oval Office to meet with Trump at 11 a.m., just a matter of days after the former al Qaeda leader was removed from the U.S. “terrorist” sanctions list. Regional security will be top of the agenda, with Trump expected to welcome Syria into the U.S.-led campaign against ISIL, per Al Jazeera. The context: “It’s the first visit to the White House by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946,” AP’s Seung Min Kim reports. “Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled former Syrian President Bashar Assad last December and was named the country’s interim leader in January. Trump and al-Sharaa … first met in May in Saudi Arabia. At the time, the U.S. president described al-Sharaa as a ‘young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past, very strong past. Fighter.’” Sadly, there's no plans to invite in the press. A look ahead: Meanwhile, Trump is gearing up for another historic meeting this month with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, though Reuters’ Samia Nakhoul reports that the president is unlikely to make any headway convincing the Saudi ruler to agree to normalize ties with Israel. “Riyadh has signalled to Washington through diplomatic channels that its position has not changed: it will sign up only if there is agreement on a roadmap to Palestinian statehood,” per Reuters. TRADING SPACES: Trump took to social media yesterday to praise the revenue brought in from his sweeping global tariffs and said Americans could soon pocket a “dividend” as a result. “People that are against tariffs are fools! We are now the richest, most respected country in the world, with almost no inflation, and a record stock market price,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” Erm, when he said $2,000 a person … Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later clarified on ABC’s “This Week” that the dividend could take the form of paying for “the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda,” and cited the future elimination of taxes on tips and overtime as an example, POLITICO’s David Cohen reports. That is quite the clarification.
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➡️ Subscribe to West Wing Playbook | | | | | TRAIL MIX BIG DAY FOR REDISTRICTING: A district judge in Utah is expected to rule today on which of three possible congressional maps the state will use for next year’s midterms, a decision that may have seismic consequences for representatives in the Beehive State. Judge Dianna Gibson is weighing one map proposed by the Republican-controlled legislature, vs. two more proposed by plaintiffs who accuse the state government of seeking to disproportionately favor the GOP, per Bridger Beal-Cvetko for KSL.com and KSL-TV’s Daniel Woodruff. Reminder: The legislature in October passed a map that could open up two potential pickups for Democrats —- albeit in difficult terrain, as both went for Trump last year. New maps were required after Gibson’s late-August court ruling forced a redraw. HISTORY LESSON: Alan Greenblatt is out this morning with a deep dive for POLITICO Mag on the history of “dummymandering” — or when party gerrymandering spreads a vote “perilously thin.” In essence, “by spreading a party’s voters more thinly across a greater number of districts in order to pick up more seats, a new map will turn strongholds into potential areas of danger.” Last Tuesday’s elections helped “supercharge” fears that the GOP had recently dummymandered their redrawn 2026 maps. The gist: “[B]y redoing their maps, Republicans run the risk of putting more seats in play, with Democrats eager to follow suit where they can. Both parties appear eager to go after advantages that may turn out to be temporary, if not total illusions.”
| | | BEST OF THE REST TRUMP’S MEDIA CRUSADE CONTINUES: Top executives of the BBC resigned yesterday just days after a report from The Daily Telegraph detailed an internal memo, which suggested the BBC misleadingly edited a speech Trump delivered before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, NYT’s Stephen Castle reports from London. The resignations of the director general and chief executive of BBC News represent a “moment of crisis at the U.K.’s main public service broadcaster,” as POLITICO’s Matt Honeycombe-Foster writes from London. They also followed pressure from the White House, which accused the BBC of being "purposefully dishonest.” Trump gleefully welcomed the news of the departures in a post on Truth Social, in which he called his Jan. 6 speech “PERFECT!” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said viewers should tune into GB News, the conservative network on which Nigel Farage hosts a regular show, instead. KASH FLOW: FBI Director Kash Patel made an unannounced visit to China last week “to discuss fentanyl and law enforcement issues,” Reuters’ Laurie Chen and Antoni Slodkowski scoop. “A person briefed on Patel's trip said the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation flew into Beijing on Friday and stayed for about a day. He held talks with Chinese officials on Saturday, the person added.” Patel’s trip follows Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting, where the two sides said they found “consensus” on the issue. SHOCKING SCENES: A man’s dramatic collapse during last week’s White House event touting a new deal on popular weight-loss drugs has severely overshadowed the intended policy focus of the announcement — and led to a decent amount of disinformation, WaPo’s Dan Diamond covers. For one, the man “was not a pharmaceutical executive, as ‘Saturday Night Live’ and others have alleged, but a patient who had taken one of the companies’ weight-loss drugs.” Then there was the debate over whether Trump was seen fighting sleep as officials spoke. In total, the augmented news conference “has been mostly unhelpful for the White House.” SCHOOL DAZE: “How Yale Escaped the Crackdown on Higher Education,” by WSJ’s Douglas Belkin: “The perception on campus is that [President Maurie] McInnis has tried to lay low. Some students have rallied around that tactic. … Now, nearly a year into Trump’s term, many on campus are loath to discuss Yale’s relative outlier status for fear of jinxing it. Those who do chalk it up to well-connected alumni, fortuitous timing and a leader focused on steering the campus back toward the political center.”
| | | | POLITICO’s Global Security briefing connects the policies, deals, and industrial shifts shaping the global defense landscape. From Washington to Brussels, we follow who’s funding what, what’s being built, and how power moves across continents. Subscribe now for the free preview. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | TRUMP’S FIELD TEST: When Trump dropped by the Commanders-Lions game yesterday afternoon, he became the first president to attend an NFL regular season game since Jimmy Carter in 1978. After a flyby of the stadium on Air Force One, Trump was spotted in a box during the game alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Sen. Steve Daines. During the third quarter, he joined the Fox broadcasting booth to chat with the announcers — and quickly took an opportunity to blast military recruitment under former President Joe Biden. Trump was also on the mic as Marcus Mariota tossed a touchdown to Deebo Samuel for the Commanders. (Washington, however, lost 44-22.) Dance break: “In the first quarter Sunday, before the president arrived, Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown celebrated a touchdown catch by pointing into the stands and moving his arms a la the ‘Trump dance’ that several athletes began doing last year,” per AP’s Howard Fendrich. “‘I heard Trump was going to be at the game,’ St. Brown said afterward. ‘I don’t know how many times the president’s going to be at the game, so just decided to have some fun.’” But it didn’t all go so well: “There were loud boos from some spectators in the stands when Trump was shown on the videoboard late in the first half — standing in a suite with House Speaker Mike Johnson — and again when the president was introduced by the stadium announcer at halftime,” per AP. “The jeering continued while Trump read an oath for members of the military to recite as part of an on-field enlistment ceremony during the break in the game.” Ouch. Trump’s visit came on the same day that ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Adam Schefter reported that there have been “back-channel communications with a member of the Commanders' ownership group” expressing the president’s desire for the team’s new multibillion-dollar stadium to be named after him, according to a “senior White House source.” FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Monique Yohanan is now senior fellow for health policy at Independent Women. She previously worked at Adia Health. TRANSITIONS — Swing Left has added Alyssa Escartin as political associate and Kelsey Fitzpatrick joins as political program manager. Escartin previously worked for the DNC and the Harris campaign. Fitzpatrick previously worked for Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and is a DNC and Harris campaign alum. … Douglas Farrar is launching Maywood Strategies, a comms firm focused on regulatory and political strategy. He previously worked at the FTC and is a Carnegie Endowment, Aspen Institute and Capitol Hill alum. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: WaPo’s Mary Jordan and Ben Pauker … Brian Romick … Reuters’ Nandita Bose … Jennifer Curley of Curley Company … ABC’s Josh Margolin … Blake Deeley … former Reps. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) and Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) … Howard Marks … Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe Doescher … Sue Davis … Amanda Ashley Keating of FGS Global … Alex Sopko … Geoff Brewer of Gallup … Elizabeth Greener … Kate Gould of State … LaRonda Peterson … Florida International University’s Carlos Becerra … POLITICO’s Jeff Daker and Declan Harty … CBS’ Alan He … Misty Marshall of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) office … Miranda Lilla … former Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) … Zachary Enos … Carla Picasso of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) office … Jim Kuhnhenn … Julio Céron of the Transport Workers Union … Andy Blomme … Cam Walsh 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 deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. Correction: Yesterday’s Playbook incorrectly stated Eva Kemp’s job title. She is VP of campaigns for American Bridge and is a Biden White House alum. It also misspelled Daniel Swartz’s name.
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