| | | |  | | 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 discuss the results from Tennessee’s special election — and what the margin can tell us about next year’s midterm elections … plus, the D.C. quirk that might be going away.
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| Good Wednesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard. Get in touch. In today’s Playbook … — Republicans win in Tennessee … but the good news for the GOP ends there. — Marco Rubio’s NATO no-show. — And why Pete Hegseth just can’t keep out of the news.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
Matt Van Epps waves to supporters at a watch party after announcing victory in the special election for the Tennessee's 7th Congressional District on Tuesday, Dec. 2. | John Amis/AP Photo | CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: There was something for everyone in last night’s red-hot special election in Tennessee, which had the whole of D.C. gripped and eventually saw Republican Matt Van Epps defeat Democrat Aftyn Behn by about nine percentage points. Republican spinners were quick to hail a badly needed win, and a useful plus-one for Speaker Mike Johnson’s difficult House math. “Congratulations to Matt Van Epps on his BIG Congressional WIN in the Great State of Tennessee,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Another great night for the Republican Party!!!” Republican doomsters winced at their massively reduced margin in a district Trump won by 22 points last year. “This is one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we’ve seen yet for Republicans,” wrote GOP comms veteran Matt Whitlock. “If every House district in the country shifted left by this same amount — about 15 points — we would be looking at a blue wave far worse than 2018.” Progressives hailed another big performance from one of their candidates, with Behn cutting the Republican margin of victory down to single digits. And this despite the GOP campaign throwing millions of dollars at attack ads, with Trump branding her “the AOC of Tennessee.” Moderate Democrats managed — somehow — to see their party both over- and under-perform, allowing them to celebrate the sort of vote swing that would deliver a double-digit House majority next year … while at the same time criticizing Behn for failing to match the blue shift we’ve seen elsewhere this year. Rows over the types of candidate Dems should be picking were playing out yet again last night. So here’s the truth: This was not a catastrophe for the GOP. They won the election. The margin was not nerve-wrackingly thin. They have an impressive-looking new member of Congress in Van Epps, a 39-year-old combat veteran and former helicopter pilot. Johnson has 220 House Republicans again, just as he did on Jan. 3. And, well, the midterms are still a long way off. But that’s about all you can say in the plus column. Last night followed the same pattern we watched play out in those dramatic statewide and city elections last month — a huge swing toward the Democrats from November 2024. We’ve seen it now in the bluest of cities and the reddest of towns. We’ve seen it with candidates hailing from both wings of both parties. Nothing the GOP has tried has shifted the mood. And last night, everything was in Republicans’ favor. This was a ruby-red, plus-22 district incorporating swaths of rural Tennessee. The Republican candidate was solid and had the firm backing of Trump. And he was up against a Democrat who had not only called for the local police department to be dissolved — but who literally told a podcast a few years ago that she hates Nashville, and hates country music. Not ideal. And Republicans gave it their all. The GOP significantly outspent its opponents with a flurry of cash in the final days. Trump got heavily involved, tweeting and joining a tele-rally in support for Van Epps. Johnson was out in person on Monday, stumping for Van Epps throughout the day. And yet Democrats cut the Republican margin of victory by 15 percentage points. One thing is certainly clear from the past month: Trump has energized the base. The Democratic base. The clock is ticking for Republicans to turn this around, with the midterms now 11 months away. And as PBS NewsHour’s Lisa Desjardins lays out in this useful X thread, a whopping 35 House Republicans would be vulnerable to the sort of 15 percentage point swing we saw last night. That’s a lot of nervous faces at Johnson’s weekly conference lunch today. (Keep up with all the latest with POLITICO’s Inside Congress team.)
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Learn more. | | | | And there are more special elections to come, in Georgia and New Jersey early next year. They’re unlikely to be the last before November — how many House Republicans will quit during 2026? Plenty of Republicans believe results like last night will precipitate more early departures. “Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle,” one House Republican tells POLITICO’s Aaron Pellish and Meredith Lee Hill. “Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain.” Republicans know they need answers on affordability. It’s taken most of the year, but Democrats have landed on what they believe to be a winning message. The disarray of early 2025 is gone, and a campaign focused relentlessly on the cost of living is now the de facto approach for every Democratic candidate, in every election, regardless of state, background or wing of the party. The GOP is struggling to respond. And that’s partly because its message carrier-in-chief — the man who sucks up all the media attention; AKA the president of the United States — remains unconvinced there’s a real problem. The White House told us Trump would talk more about affordability, and indeed he raises it pretty much every day. But rather than empathizing with and vowing to help the millions of voters who poll after poll shows are struggling with their day-to-day costs, Trump just keeps telling them the problem has been fixed. We saw it again at yesterday’s epic Cabinet meeting. “There’s this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about — affordability,” Trump said. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” For Trump, the job is essentially done. Egg prices are down, he said. Gasoline prices are down. Taxes are down, interest rates are down. So why are people complaining? “I think they're getting fake news from guys like you,” Trump told reporters. “Affordability is a hoax that was started by Democrats.” Dems can barely contain their glee. Your Playbook author was chatting to one former Biden aide this week who genuinely couldn’t believe the president is walking headlong into the same trap that befell them. But we’ve had a full month of this now since the November elections, and it’s looking increasingly unlikely Trump will change course. That doesn’t mean the die is cast. There’s plenty of time for the economy to improve next year, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insists it will. People may start to feel richer. Trump wants to hand out checks to every American, which will be popular if it happens. He’ll also have a handpicked new Fed chair who’s certain to be more accommodating on interest rates. There are plenty of policy levers an imaginative president can pull. But Republicans are under pressure, and the final special election of 2025 shows just how far things have shifted this year. For Trump, the honeymoon is over. The battle to retain control of Washington is underway.
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| | | | WAR AND PEACE UKRAINE ON THE BRAIN: NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Brussels today to discuss the latest developments in Ukraine — but Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be a notable absence. It’s the first time a U.S. secretary of State has skipped a NATO ministerial since 1999, POLITICO’s Victor Jack reports. Plenty of U.S. allies are grumbling, but NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte insists he doesn’t take Rubio’s absence as a sign of sagging U.S. commitment to the alliance, AP’s Lorne Cook reports. Rubio’s deputy Christopher Landau will be there. No justice, no peace: Hopes of a rapid breakthrough in Ukraine are anyway fading fast, with no sign of an agreement following special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s five-hour meeting at the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Trump’s revamped peace plan. “We could agree on some things,” top Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, per NYT’s Paul Sonne and Valerie Hopkins. “Other things provoked criticism, and the president also made no secret of our critical and even negative attitude toward a number of proposals. But the main thing is that a very useful discussion took place.” The big question is what Trump does next. Will he now try (again) to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to back down? Or at some point does he accept the middle ground just isn’t there? Rubio struck a note of realism with Sean Hannity on Fox News last night. “We think that now is the ideal time for both sides to end the war,” Rubio said. “Ultimately it’s going to be up to them. If they decide they don’t want to end the war, then the war will continue. But we’re going to try … We’ve gotten closer, but we’re still not there.” VENEZUELA VEXES: Part of the reason for Rubio’s NATO absence is the administration’s growing focus on Venezuela, which he pitched — perhaps optimistically — to Hannity as a true “America First” cause. “I would say, if you’re focused on America and ‘America First,’ you start with your own hemisphere,” Rubio said. “What happens in our hemisphere impacts us faster and more deeply than something that's happening halfway around the world.” Anti-interventionists across the MAGA movement are now attempting similar contortions to justify their ongoing support, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly and colleagues report in a must-read piece on the White House’s efforts to oust Nicolás Maduro. “Staunch anti-interventionists concede the debate within MAGA has shifted from a philosophical one — whether America First should support intervention at all — to a technical one about what counts as intervention, how much force is acceptable and how to do so with as little bloodshed as possible.” And the temperature is rising. Megan and colleagues confirm reporting elsewhere that Trump delivered an ultimatum to Maduro last week “to leave Venezuela or face the consequences” — and that it’s the president himself leading the charge. “No one is more bullish than the president on this,” one well-placed source tells POLITICO. FOR PETE’S SAKE LIGHT UP MY WORLD: It’s a happy day for Pete Hegseth: The Pentagon’s inaugural Christmas tree lighting ceremony gets underway at 4:45 p.m. Enjoy it while it lasts: Because tomorrow could be a horror show for the Defense secretary, with a long-awaited review of the “Signalgate” fiasco due to be made public. The inspector general’s report was completed and delivered to Hegseth yesterday, NBC’s Gordon Lubold and Courtney Kube report. The full report was also made available to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, per Axios. We’ll see only a redacted version. And there’s more: Hegseth, of course, is already under huge pressure over the deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean — and tomorrow will also see members of Congress meet with Admiral Frank Bradley, the naval commander who ordered the highly controversial follow-up strike that reportedly killed two shipwrecked survivors of an initial U.S. missile strike on Sept. 2. Land of the brave: Hegseth has been putting even more distance between himself and that Sept. 2 attack, telling reporters at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting that he “did not personally see survivors” after the first missile strike and had “moved on to my next meeting” before the second took place. It’s not the sort of excuse you normally hear from the leader of the world’s most powerful military force. Yowza: Former Judge Andrew Napolitano, who is now an analyst on Newsmax but previously worked alongside Hegseth for years at Fox News, said the reported incident is “an act of a war crime.” He said “everybody along the line who did it, from the secretary of Defense, to the admiral, to the people who actually pulled the trigger should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people.” Bigger picture: Regardless of the specifics, Republicans are feeling more and more queasy about this whole campaign. “Even some of Trump’s most ardent backers, while dismissive of a drawn-out probe, are questioning the purpose of the attacks,” POLITICO’s Connor O'Brien, Joe Gould and Leo Shane III report. “The situation is testing GOP fealty to a president who demands loyalty — and could further divide a Republican party that’s already split over foreign policy.” MILLER TIME: For readers who just can’t get enough Pete content right now, Hegseth and his wife, Jen, joined Katie Miller yesterday on her podcast for a lengthy interview about life in the Trump administration. Hegseth was asked which Cabinet member he would trust to babysit his kids. “I mean, not your husband,” he told Miller, which certainly made your Playbook author chuckle. “Or Marco [Rubio].” So who? “I would trust the vice president. I mean, I’ve known Sean Duffy for years. I would trust him.” Life of Pete: Hegseth also revealed his eating habits, which help give a measure of the man. “I have the same breakfast every morning,” he said. “Bacon, eggs and sausage.” And his go-to comfort food? “Cereal,” he said. “Or bread. Bread and butter.”
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| | | | TRAIL MIX STOP THE STITCH-UP: Democrat Mayra Macías is launching an independent bid for Illinois Rep. Chuy García’s seat so that “voters will have a choice,” after García appeared to set up his chief of staff, Patty Garcia, to be confirmed as his successor by retiring after the primary deadline, POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky writes in. “[W]e can’t effectively fight Trump’s attacks on our democratic system if we’re turning a blind eye to anti-democratic actions here at home,” Macías said in a statement. The House rebuked García over his maneuvering; García has denied accusations of wrongdoing. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Endorsement watch: Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate campaign is receiving another progressive push: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is endorsing El-Sayed, becoming the fourth sitting member of Congress to do so, joining Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). El-Sayed is facing off against Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow in the Democratic primary. Reelection roundup: Rep. Ayanna Pressley is running for reelection, she announced yesterday, ending speculation that she might challenge Sen. Ed Markey for his Senate seat, POLITICO’s Kelly Garrity reports. … Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) officially launched his reelection bid yesterday, framing his campaign around tackling AI-driven job displacement and broader economic challenges, AP’s Olivia Diaz reports. REDISTRICTING RODEO: Florida is the next front line in Republicans’ nationwide effort to draw new maps that tip the state further in their favor — but just like in Indiana, things could turn sour, POLITICO’s Gary Fineout reports from Tallahassee. “Those pushing the effort believe the state could yield three to five additional GOP House seats ahead of the 2026 midterms — a haul big enough to influence control of Congress,” Gary writes. “But the drive comes amid an ongoing power struggle inside the state Capitol and a thicket of legal constraints that make Florida one of the hardest places in the country to redraw lines for partisan gain.” Welcome to the new frontier: Mid-decade redistricting may also be on the table in New Jersey, according to a top aide for Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill — even though new maps would not be in place until 2028, POLITICO’s Madison Fernandez reports. “I think we have to be open to it,” incoming chief of staff Alex Ball said at POLITICO’s Transition of Power event last night. BEST OF THE REST SPACE RACE: Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee to head up NASA, is due for his second confirmation hearing in the Senate today. Isaacman will tell senators he “wants to expand investments in nuclear propulsion and commercial efforts to help the U.S. return to the moon before China, which he calls ‘our great rival,’ gets there,” according to prepared testimony, per Reuters. FED UP: The final candidates to succeed Fed Chair Jerome Powell were due to meet VP JD Vance today — but the interviews have all been canceled, WSJ’s Brian Schwartz and Nick Timiraos report. “No reason was given for the decision. A person familiar with the matter said the cancellation was because of a scheduling conflict for the vice president. (Trump said yesterday he’s already picked his candidate, which may also have been a factor.) JUMPING ON JOHNSON: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is escalating her challenge to Speaker Mike Johnson, publicly accusing him of lying and joining a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that Johnson has iced, per POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill and Hailey Fuchs. And it’s part of a trend. “Increasingly, rank-and-file House Republicans are bringing their spats with Johnson into the open,” they write, “suggesting the speaker is losing further control over his restive members as his already slim majority threatens to narrow further.” FOR YOUR RADAR: “Young Republicans chapter plans to host far-right German leader after ‘I love Hitler’ chat,” by POLITICO’s Jason Beeferman: “A New York City-based Republican club will honor a far-right German leader at its annual gala — just eight weeks after its statewide counterpart was disbanded over a group chat in which members praised Adolf Hitler. The city-based New York Young Republican Club’s gala will recognize Markus Frohnmaier, a political leader from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. … In a statement to POLITICO, the group defended inviting the German politician, calling the AfD a model for fighting the far left and denying their ‘über alles’ statement was intended to invoke Nazism.” MUSK READ: “Elon Musk predicts 12 years of Trump Vance Vance,” by POLITICO’s Sophia Cai: “During a video appearance at a reunion of his former federal cost-cutting team, Elon Musk predicted that the country is at the start of a ‘great 12-year span’ composed of the second Trump administration followed by two consecutive JD Vance terms.”
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Explore our ongoing work. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | GREEK GODDESS — Kimberly Guilfoyle is already a star in Athens as the U.S. ambassador to Greece, triggering “a level of attention usually reserved for pop stars or prime ministers,” POLITICO’s Nektaria Stamouli writes from the Greek capital. “In the month since she exploded onto the scene in Athens, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador has fused tabloid-level fascination with high-stakes geopolitics, championing major U.S.-backed energy projects and touching off a diplomatic confrontation with China.” WASHINGTON REJOICES — Trump pledged during his Cabinet meeting yesterday to “rebuild” Dulles International Airport. Among the first targets in the makeover? The infamous “people movers,” which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy singled out as part of Dulles’ dated design. “Dulles is already undergoing a massive transformation aimed at modernizing the airport, launched in 2023,” WaPo’s Dan Diamond and colleagues report, and it’s unclear how a Trump administration plan would fit into that multibillion-dollar effort. “It’s not a good airport. It should be a great airport,” Trump said. HATERS GONNA HATE — Turns out Olivia Nuzzi is not the biggest fan of D.C. “About a third of the way into her new memoir, American Canto, Olivia Nuzzi airs her grievances,” writes the Washingtonian’s Sylvie McNamara. “The things she loathes about the city include the weather (‘unbearable’), the vibe (‘people in Washington love to identify as productive’), the size (‘you cannot look both ways to cross the street without seeing someone you wish to not know’), the sheer volume of other political reporters (‘as if what repulses me about them is not what I see of myself in them’), and the need to repeatedly endure the ‘buzzless start to a dinner party or a book event or a strange gala at the residence of the ambassador to I-never-know-what.’” OUT AND ABOUT — Cocktails flowed as NBC News gathered journalists and elected officials for a holiday reception at Cafe Riggs last night, with NBCUniversal Chair Cesar Conde hailing the broadcaster’s 100th anniversary next year. SPOTTED: HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Jose Cancela, Rebecca Blumenstein, Scott Mulhauser, Marisol Samayoa, Chloe Arensberg, Libby Leist, Tom Llamas, Craig Melvin, Kristen Welker, Andrea Mitchell, Peter Alexander, Matt Gorman, Steve Kornacki, Ryan Nobles, Sam Feist, Kelly O’Donnell, Gabe Gutierrez, Monica Alba, Yamiche Alcindor and Tammy Haddad. — SPOTTED at a “Merry with Meta” event at GoodLove celebrating media and tech: David Ginsburg, Andrea Saul, Jackie Rooney, Andy Stone, Nkechi Nneji, Meridith McGraw, Symone Sanders Townsend, Yamiche Alcindor, Steve Clemons, Phil Rucker and Josh Humphries, Sumi Somaskanda, Brian Baker, Andrew Bates, Tammy Haddad, Senay Bulbul, John McCarthy, Ryan Williams and Helen Milby. — PubKey Bar hosted a film premiere for “Crypto Capital” for its Crypto Christmas celebration. SPOTTED: Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Jon Husted (R-Ohio), Brennen Britton, Darrin Miller, Rebecca Angelson, Collin McCune, Josh Arnold, Jonathan Jachym, Cody Carbonell, Freddy Barnes, Luke Pettit, Cody Carbone, Nate Parker, Tammy Haddad, CJ Pearson, Janiyah Thomas, Nathan Brand, Jennifer DeCasper, Steve DeMaura, Jeff Naft and Sam Markstein. — SPOTTED at Mozilla’s holiday mixer at The Wells in Eastern Market: Jenn Taylor Hodges, Elise Phillips, Joel Burke, Emma Zafran, Mana Azarmi, Jenna Leventoff, Phillip Berenbroick, Samir Jain, Richard Whitt, Raza Panjwani, Christine Bannan, John Bergmayer, Billy Easley, Stan Adams and Jessica Jones. — SPOTTED at The British Embassy’s festive reception celebrating the latest economic agreements between the U.S. and U.K.: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Michael Kratsios, Chris Klomp, Kush Desai, Chloe Autio, Pierre Yared, Luke Lindberg, Jake Denton, Bill Reinsch, Derek Theurer, Leland Smith, Andrew Moore, William Cappelletti, Miriam Vogel, Alexa Verveer, Ned Finkle, Kim Ruhl, James O’Neill, George Holding, Jonny Tan, Mungo Woodifield and Kirsty McVicar. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Kelsey Pritchard is now comms director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She formerly was their state public affairs director. TRANSITIONS — Cally Barry is now press secretary for Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.). She previously worked for Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and is a Morgan Luttrell alum. … Haraden Bottomley is now comms director for Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). He previously worked for Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). … Christine Burgeson is joining American Beverage as EVP of government and public affairs. She previously worked at Airlines for America. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.) … Asa Hutchinson … Margaret Mulkerrin of Rep. Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office … Scott Higham … Mandi Critchfield of Senate Finance … Jesse Lee … Cody Sanders of Plus Communications … POLITICO’s Bruce Ritchie, Kim Bryson and Ruth Yemene … Lance Trover … Bill Tighe of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores … Mike Inacay of Sen. Brian Schatz’s (D-Hawaii) office … David Meyers … Brookings’ Ashley Ruttenberg … Daniel Chao … former Reps. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.), Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) … Robby Mook … Kevin Baron 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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