| | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | | 
President Donald Trump welcomes French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House on Monday, Feb. 24. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo | HAPPENING AT THE WHITE HOUSE — Trump sat down for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House shortly after noon as a Europe-led two-pronged approach to salvage support for Ukraine played out on both sides of the Atlantic. The duo is expected to hold a news conference at 2 p.m., so stay tuned for that. POLITICO’s Clea Caulcutt, Nicholas Vinocur and Eli Stokols have more Russia-Ukraine latest:
- Over U.S. opposition, the UN passed a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after “European countries and Kyiv marshaled support for strong language against Moscow,” POLITICO’s Eric Bazail-Eimil reports.
- National security adviser Mike Waltz said this morning on “Fox & Friends” that the idea of Ukraine joining NATO is “not back on the table,” despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent offer to step down in exchange for his country’s membership to the military alliance, per POLITICO’s Amanda Friedman.
- Though Trump is signaling that Russia is back open for business for American companies, it’s not a call that many are expected to answer any time soon, NYT’s Patricia Cohen writes. “The country’s war-driven economy is struggling with 21 percent interest rates, labor shortages and a shrinking number of middle-class consumers. Then there is the unpredictable business environment in a country where the rule of law can easily shapeshift into the ruler’s law.”
THE LATEST FROM THE HILL — Speaker Mike Johnson’s budget blueprint is starting down the conveyor belt today with a vote before the House Rules Committee at 4 p.m. before it heads to the floor for a vote tomorrow. Buckle in, because the ride is just getting started. With congressional Republicans still sorting out how they’ll move forward to enact President Donald Trump’s tax agenda, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is planning to convene a weekly huddle at the White House to discuss the matter, POLITICO’s Benjamin Guggenheim reports. The meetings, set to kick off this week, will include Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the top brass on the tax-writing committees — House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho.). On the other side of the aisle: House Democrats are “sharpening their attacks on the Republican policy agenda ahead of an expected Tuesday budget vote, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laying out a plan for pushback in a letter to Democratic colleagues Monday,” POLITICO’s Nick Wu reports. As Johnson tries to tamp down any further GOP defections, “Jeffries urged ‘maximum attendance’ from his caucus to keep the pressure on.” Democrats are also “playing up the backlash some Republican members of Congress faced at recent town halls (some of it organized by liberal advocacy groups) as they try to harness grassroots resistance to the GOP.” To wit: In her latest “Corridors” column, POLITICO’s Rachael Bade writes that vulnerable GOP lawmakers are far less concerned about any uproar over Elon Musk’s controversial DOGE team than they are over potential cuts that could be on the table to health care programs that their constituents rely on. “That’s where the battle’s coming,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) told Rachael of proposed cuts to Medicaid. “There’s no doubt that there’s waste, fraud and abuse in every program in the government, including Medicaid — but at what point do you stop cutting into the fat and start cutting into the bone? You can’t pull the rug out from millions of people.” What he’s doing: “Gonzales, who has a large constituency enrolled in the program, already co-authored a letter with seven other House Republicans representing large Hispanic populations asking Johnson to rethink where the GOP is headed on Medicaid. And he said he plans to personally confront the speaker about the issue at a scheduled meeting tonight.” Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com. TOMORROW MORNING: Join us tomorrow at 8 a.m. for our latest “Playbook: The First 100 Days” breakfast. With the Trump administration proposing sweeping changes to U.S. energy policy, POLITICO is bringing together key policymakers at the Hotel Washington for discussions on everything from climate change and oil and gas drilling to FERC and the rising stresses on the power grid. Among the featured speakers: Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), and Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas). RSVP now to join in person or online
| | | | A message from the Coalition for Medicare Choices: Protect Medicare Advantage: 34 million seniors are counting on it.
Over half of America's seniors choose Medicare Advantage because it provides them better care at lower costs than fee-for-service Medicare. With their coverage and care on the line, seniors are watching closely to see whether policymakers keep the bipartisan promise to protect Medicare Advantage by ensuring this vital part of Medicare is adequately funded.
Learn more at https://medicarechoices.org/ | | | | | 7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | 1. DISCIPLINING DOGE: In the most wide-ranging block on Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency thus far, a federal judge this morning moved to bar the Education Department and Office of Personnel Management from sharing sensitive information with DOGE, saying the decision to grant Musk’s team access appears to breach federal privacy laws, POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report. “The continuing, unauthorized disclosure of plaintiffs’ sensitive personal information to DOGE affiliates is irreparable harm that money damages cannot rectify,” U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, an appointee of Joe Biden, wrote in a 33-page ruling granting a two-week restraining order. Meanwhile, Musk warned this morning in a post on X that government employees who have not yet returned to work from their offices full time will be placed on administrative leave, a fresh escalation of his effort to tighten the screws on federal workers, POLITICO’s Andrew Howard writes. “Those who ignored President Trump’s executive order to return to work have now received over a month’s warning,” Musk said. “Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave.” Feeling the freeze: WaPo’s Sarah Blaskey and Shawn Boburg get inside the Agriculture Department, where staffers are struggling to sort through the fallout from the Trump administration’s suspension of funds despite a federal judge’s order putting the freeze on hold. At a recent meeting with department leadership after the judge’s ruling, when staff asked if they could begin releasing money to various programs for farmers and other usual recipients, the officials at the top said no. “Employees seemed confounded by the idea that they would not change course in response to the judge’s action. ‘Isn’t that the whole point of our legal system?’ the meeting record shows one employee said.” 2. HACK JOB: Amid preparations for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last summer, the Republican National Committee “was also quietly dealing with a serious security breach of its internal communications by hackers with ties to the Chinese government,” Alex Isenstadt reports in his forthcoming book, “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power,” ($27) an excerpt of which he shared with WSJ’s Meridith McGraw and Dustin Volz. “In early July, Microsoft reached out to top party officials to inform them that the hackers had for months had access to the RNC email system,” though top RNC officials and Trump campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita chose not to disclose the breach to the FBI over concerns that the media would catch wind. “RNC officials believed the hackers wanted inside information about how the GOP was planning to address Taiwan in its party platform,” but there was no mention. 3. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: With the initial cease-fire deal set to expire on Saturday, negotiators from the U.S. and Israel are “trying to push Hamas to extend the first phase of the truce, delaying a discussion of the hardest parts of a pact that would see a complete end to the war,” WSJ’s Anat Peled and Summer Said report. “The U.S., which is a key mediator in the talks, has said it is committed to reaching the second stage of the cease-fire and ending the war but needs more time to do so.” In comments from a spokesperson yesterday, “Hamas showed early signs it might be open to an extension.”
| | | | Donald Trump's unprecedented effort to reshape the federal government is consuming Washington. To track this seismic shift, we're relaunching one of our signature newsletters. Sign up to get West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government in your inbox. | | | | | 4. THE MERRY OLD LAND OF OZ: “Dr. Oz: How His Millions Collide With Medicare,” by NYT’s Reed Abelson and Susanne Craig: As Mehmet Oz prepares to becomes CMS administrator, a deep dive into his financial interests “revealed not only opaque ties with the industries he may soon regulate but also a coziness with health care companies that lawmakers have already highlighted in questioning his independence. He has made tens of millions of dollars hawking dietary supplements on his show and on social media, often without any mention of his financial interest. He has been paid by medical device firms and health-related ventures, and his money was invested in a dizzying array of businesses. Many of those companies would be affected by any decisions he would make in the government post and many already benefit from agency funding.” 5. THE TIES THAT GRIND: “Trump’s embattled Pentagon pick Colby holds close ties to Obama’s foreign policy advisors,” by Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel: “The ongoing tensions underscore how [Elbridge] Colby — in partnership with a like-minded younger generation of neo-isolationist defense experts now populating the middle rungs of the Pentagon — is expected to achieve a degree of influence that could significantly reshape American foreign policy decisions, raising alarms among mainstream conservatives who are fearful the Defense Department may be less instinctively supportive of Israel and its long-standing alliance with the U.S.” 6. THE APPLE DANCE: After meeting with Trump last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this morning that his company would spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 workers in the U.S. over a four-year span and open up a factory in Texas to expand Apple’s push into AI — all moves that appear intended to dodge the impact of Trump’s tariffs, NYT’s Meaghan Tobin and Jason Karaian report. “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our longstanding U.S. investments,” Cook said in a statement. 7. SCRUTINIZING SCOTUS: “An Important Judicial Tool Mysteriously Goes Missing at the Supreme Court,” by NYT’s Adam Liptak: “A new study to be published in The Columbia Law Review found that in the first 15 terms after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court in 2005, it issued an average of more than seven summary reversals each term. … In the past four terms, by contrast, there was an average of about one summary reversal, Kalvis E. Golde, a law student at Columbia and a Scotusblog columnist, found in the study. The reasons for the sharp shift away from summary reversals are unclear.”
| | | | A message from the Coalition for Medicare Choices:  
| | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | Mike Pompeo is heading to Columbia University as a fellow in its Institute of Global Politics to teach “diplomacy, decision-making and organizational leadership, starting in March,” per WSJ. Lester Holt announced that he will step down from his role as anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News” in the summer, marking another shake-up at 30 Rock. Holt will continue in his full-time role for “Dateline.” No successor was named in the announcement. MEDIA MOVES — Tony Romm is joining NYT as an economic policy correspondent. He previously covered economic policy at WaPo and is a POLITICO alum. The announcement … Danny Nguyen and Cassandra Dumay are joining POLITICO as fellows. Nguyen previously covered local and national politics and anchored a newsletter for The Baltimore Banner. Dumay previously interned for POLITICO’s transportation team and is currently a fellow with the investigative Spotlight team. The announcement TRANSITIONS — Brooke Medina is now VP of comms at the State Policy Network. She previously was VP of comms at the John Locke Foundation. … Shauna Burton is now comms director for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). She previously was the Joint Economic Committee Democrats. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
