| | | |  | | By Bethany Irvine | | Presented by |  | | | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | | 
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's name card is seen misspelled during a cabinet meeting at the White House. | AP | ON DEFENSE: With Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth under intense scrutiny for the administration’s deadly campaign against alleged drug-trafficking vessels around Venezuela, President Donald Trump gave Hegseth another vote of confidence at the top of his Cabinet meeting today. “Pete is doing a great job,” Trump said as he lauded what his administration has renamed the Department of War. Hegseth, who was seated directly to Trump’s left, was the first Cabinet member to speak — though his official nameplate on the table read “SSECRETARY OF WAR.” Hegseth delivered an impassioned defense of his department’s actions, including the Venezuelan boat strikes. “As I have said, and I will say again, we have only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,” Hegseth said. “President Trump said we are taking the gloves off and taking the fight to the designated terror organizations, and that's exactly what we're doing.” Hegseth wrapped up his remarks with praise for the president: “I will end by saying, as President Trump always has our back, we always have the back of our commanders, who are making decisions in difficult situations. And we do in this case and all the strikes. They are making judgment calls and ensuring that they defend the American people. They have done the right things. We will keep doing that and we have their backs.” “Good job,” Trump responded. The swirl of interest comes after a WaPo report that detailed a verbal order Hegseth reportedly gave to “kill everybody” and a Sept. 2 strike during which a second missile struck a boat at the direction of Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. The view from the Hill: “This has just been an ongoing effort to try to derail Pete Hegseth,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told reporters, per POLITICO’s Joe Gould. “Democrats never wanted them. They have all these bogus stories. This is another bullshit line that in a week from now, no one will be talking about.” But Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is retiring at the end of his term, wasn’t so dismissive: “Somebody made a horrible decision, so they need to be held accountable,” Tillis said, per Joe. “If the facts play out the way they’re currently being reported, then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington.” Bradley is slated to brief lawmakers on the Senate and House Armed Services committees on the boat strike Thursday, per The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. “I assume we’ll attempt to get all the facts surrounding what happened with that incident,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters. In Venezuela: As the threat of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela grows, Nicolás Maduro has grown fearful of being targeted in a precision strike or raid and has upped security measures, NYT’s Anatoly Kurmanaev reports. Maduro also approved a U.S.request today to resume migrant repatriation flights into the country, with an Eastern Airlines flight from Phoenix now authorized to land soon at Maiquetia, near Caracas, per Reuters. RUSSIA-UKRAINE LATEST: As Trump convened his inner circle at the White House, his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top negotiators inside the Kremlin, per AP. Ahead of the talks, Putin accused Europeans of sabotaging the U.S.-led efforts with “unacceptable” amendments to peace proposals, per the AP: “[T]hey don’t have a peace agenda, they’re on the side of the war,” Putin said. The view from Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lauded the U.S.-led peace plan during an official visit in Dublin, telling reporters that while some aspects of the deal “still have to be worked on” America is taking “serious steps to end the war in one way or another.” Back in Washington, Trump boasted about his ability to end foreign wars, repeating his claim that he’s ended “eight wars” while in office. “But we’re going to do one more, I think, I hope,” Trump said. “Every time I end a war they say, ‘If President Trump ends that war, he’s going to get the Nobel Prize.’ … I should get the Nobel Prize for every war — but I don’t want to be greedy.” Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at birvine@politico.com.
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The Department of Homeland Security said it would announce the new additions to the list of countries affected by the travel ban soon. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP | 1. IMMIGRATION FILES: The White House is weighing expanding its travel ban from 19 countries to around 30 nations following last week’s shooting of two National Guard soldiers in D.C. that killed one and seriously injured another, though the exact number of countries impacted could change, CBS’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez and colleagues report. “The Trump administration has cited the attack in Washington — which was allegedly carried out by an Afghan man who entered the U.S. in September 2021 and was granted asylum in April 2025 — to further expand its immigration crackdown.” The administration “has halted all visa and immigration processing for Afghan nationals, paused asylum case decisions for all nationalities and ordered a full-scale review of green card cases involving immigrants from the 19 countries currently subject to the travel ban. … In a statement Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it would announce the new additions to the list of countries affected by the travel ban ‘soon.’” The crackdown continues: The administration is launching “intensive immigration enforcement operation primarily targeting hundreds of undocumented Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region,” NYT’s Hamed Aleaziz and Zolan Kanno-Youngs report. “The effort, which is beginning this week, focuses largely on Somalis with final deportation orders who are living in the Twin Cities, though [an official] said that others who are still seeking legal status could be swept up as well. … Roughly 100 officers and agents from around the country have been brought in for the operation.” Counting on it: Around 35,000 migrants have utilized the Trump administration’s self-deportation app, CBP Home, to self deport since its launch nine months ago, The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff reports. The administration spent $200 million on a self-deportation ad campaign, and participants were offered a plane ticket and a $1,000 cash bonus — with the total costs reaching around “$7,500 per self-deportation,” per The Atlantic. A DHS spokesperson didn’t confirm what the agency spends per deportation, but “the department has estimated the cost of having ICE officers arrest, detain, and deport someone to be more than $17,000 per deportee.” 2. TIS’ THE SEASON: Dell CEO Michael Dell and his wife Susan announced today a pledge of $6.25 billion to help expand the so-called “Trump accounts” for 25 million U.S. children. The money would be divided up into $250 deposits to help seed the tax-advantaged investment for children under 18 and marks “one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever to go directly to Americans,” per NYT’s Nicholas Kulish. The investment is intended for the accounts of children 10 or younger who were born before Jan. 1, 2025, in ZIP codes with a median income of $150,000 or less. Dell told CNBC the money is designed “to help families feel supported from the start and encourage them to keep saving as their children grow.” . 3. ON THE HILL: Speaker Mike Johnson threw cold water on rumors of a Republican-approved short-term extension of the expiring Obamacare health subsidies at his weekly news conference today, telling reporters that Republicans “didn’t commit to” any type of extension despite the looming deadline, per AP. “Every American, 100% of Americans, need their health care costs to come down. Republicans have ideas to do that. Now, what I’ve got to do is build consensus deliberately around the best ideas,” Johnson said. A big break: Another area where Johnson is lacking consensus is with House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who lambasted the speaker today in a post on X for allegedly blocking a measure she is pushing to include in the annual defense policy bill: “[T]he Speaker is blocking my provision to root out the illegal weaponization that led to Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, and more,” Stafanik wrote. “He is siding with Jamie Raskin against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state.” Johnson pushed back against Stefanik’s critique, telling reporters: “All of that is false. I don't exactly know why Elise won't just call me. I texted her yesterday. … As soon as I heard this yesterday, I was campaigning in Tennessee, and I wrote her and said, What are you talking about? This hasn't even made it to my level.” Stefanik shot back: “Just more lies from the Speaker” and said his claim that he didn’t know about it was “his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”
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| | | | 4. OFFICIALLY OUT: Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández was officially freed from a West Virginia federal prison today after Trump’s controversial pardon of the leader’s sentence on drug trafficking charges. Hernández was sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in aiding the trafficking of “hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States” and has spent four years in the U.S., per the AP. 5. VAX NOT: The new chair of HHS’ Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Kirk Milhoan, says the group is planning to vote on Thursday to potentially end the standard proactive of vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B “and to examine whether shots on the childhood immunization schedule are behind the rise of allergies and autoimmune disorders,” WaPo’s Lena Sun reports. The ACIP vote on new recommendations comes after Kennedy completely upended the panel in June and the advisers had pushed back an initial vote back in September following internal squabbling. The gist: The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics recommended back in 1991 that practitioners vaccinated infants for Hepatitis B within 24-hours of birth, which has been “credited for a 99 percent drop in infections in children and teens.” But critics “say that it is unnecessary to vaccinate all children for the virus when the vast majority are not at risk for infection.” The panel is “weighing a delay in that first dose by an interval that is ‘still being finalized,’” Milhoan told WaPo. 6. SPORTS BLINK: A new bipartisan bill is being introduced in the House today by Reps. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and Burgess Owens (R-Utah) that “seeks to authorize $50 million worth of federal funding every year for host cities to use towards transportation and infrastructure of major sporting events,” The Athletic’s Adam Crafton reports. “Larsen’s home state of Washington will host six games during the men’s World Cup in 2026, including the United States men’s national team’s (USMNT) second group stage game and two knockout games. Rep. Owens may have a local interest because his home state of Utah will host the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2034.” The D.C. dearth: “Why Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital, won’t host 2026 World Cup matches,” by The Athletic’s Henry Bushnell: “The primary reason, people close to the selection process explained to The Athletic, is that FedEx Field, now called Northwest Stadium, the rundown home of the NFL’s Washington Commanders, was among the least attractive of the 17 proposed stadiums — and its then-owner was unwilling to upgrade it.” What Andrew Giuliani is reading: “When squabbling neighbors become World Cup co-hosts,” by POLITICO’s Sophia Cai: “Japan’s soccer boss has some lessons for the U.S., Canada and Mexico.”
| | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Sabrina Carpenter decried the White House’s use of her song “Juno” over footage of agents detaining migrants in a post on X. “[T]his video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” Carpenter wrote. The White House responded to Carpenter’s missive: “Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, referencing Carpenter’s “Manchild” song. THE REVIEWS ARE IN — Olivia Nuzzi’s new book, “American Canto,” lands on shelves today “with a soft, disappointing thud,” NYT’s Alexandra Jacobs writes in her review. “To paraphrase Britney Spears, a pop-culture touchstone for the author and fellow blond millennial: It’s not a tell-all, not yet a memoir. Chapterless and scattershot, it’s an attempted letter from Trump’s America in the style of a would-be Joan Didion (on Adderall rather than Elavil), or maybe Simone de Beauvoir,” Jacobs writes. “Nuzzi is an astral force I can still see somehow hurtling triumphantly through the transformed media galaxy. But this moon’s a lead balloon.” OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at the National Taxpayers Union annual Christmas Gathering at Sazerac House last night: Christian Chelak, J.P. Freire, Gregg Keller, Halie Craig, Jacob Garcia, Autumn Hanna, Chris Thomas, Jake Tipton, Nick Wyatt, Rich Zipperer, George Copelan, Stephen Ellis, Christopher Gray and Nicholas Johns. — Tara Palmeri hosted a holiday party last night at the Voltz Clarke Gallery in downtown Manhattan to celebrate the nine-month anniversary of “The Red Letter” and the launch of her company. SPOTTED: Andrew Yang, Gabe Brotman, Adam Faze, Jonathan Wald, Carl Swanson, Angelo Roefaro, Patrick McGinnis, Nomiki Konst, Daniel Rosen, Ryan Heath, Cat McKenzie, Kourtney Bitterly, Abi Baker and Leah Bourne. MEDIA MOVE — Aishah Hasnie is taking on a new role as anchor and White House correspondent at Fox News. She will lead a new Saturday show from 12-2 p.m. beginning Jan. 10. She previously was a senior national correspondent. More from The Hollywood Reporter TRANSITIONS — Christian Rehder is now comms director Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.). He previously worked for Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and is an Eric Schmitt alum. … Heritage Action has added Daniel West as government relations director for the House and Chip Wyatt as government relations director for the Senate. West previously worked for Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.). Wyatt previously worked for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). … … Jack Sears is now VP of U.S. government solutions for D-Wave Quantum Inc. He previously worked for Precise Systems. … Morgan Hopkins is now comms director for Geoff Duncan's gubernatorial campaign. She previously worked for North Carolina Governor Josh Stein. 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.
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