| | | |  | | By Ali Bianco | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Irie Sentner and Makayla Gray Good Sunday morning. This is Ali Bianco. Send me your tips. MAKE THE U.N. GREAT AGAIN: Donald Trump is casting himself as the missing problem-solver for a U.N. in danger of financial collapse from unpaid dues. In an interview with POLITICO this morning, the president dismissed the idea that the U.N. could ever leave New York, even as senior U.N. officials warn that the organization could be forced to scale back operations and shut its New York HQ if it ran out of cash, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai writes in to Playbook. “I don’t think it’s appropriate. The U.N. is not leaving New York, and it’s not leaving the United States, because the U.N. has tremendous potential,” said Trump, who suggested that he could quickly reverse the organization’s financial fortunes if the agency reached out. “If they came to Trump and told him, I’d get everybody to pay up, just like I got NATO to pay up, right? All I have to do is call these countries. If the head of the U.N. would call the president of the United States, I would make the appropriate phone calls and they would send checks within minutes,” he said. In a turn from his sharp criticisms of the organization last year, Trump insisted the U.N. remains vital — especially after his presidency. “When I’m no longer around to settle wars, the U.N. can,” he said. “It has tremendous potential. Tremendous.”
| | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
“I couldn’t get Democrats years ago to say two words: border security,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | Democrats have been scared to talk to voters about immigration. But the tides appear to be shifting: Some Democrats believe the issue could help them win big in the midterms — if they can keep up the fight until November. “Will they have the guts? I do think they will,” Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, told Playbook. For years, public opinion hasn’t been behind Democrats on the issue: Voters have consistently said they trust Republicans to handle immigration more than Dems, and by 2024, Trump’s mass deportation and border crackdown plans resonated with voters across the country. But in just over a year, Trump’s unprecedented agenda seems to be flagging, with recent polling showing that while immigration control and border security remain a high priority, many voters have soured on the administration’s tactics. The ongoing shift on immigration could be a galvanizing moment for the Democratic Party to win over the ground they previously ceded on one of their worst issues, over half a dozen strategists, lawmakers and campaign operatives told Playbook. But Democrats must have the guts, as Rocha put it, to take the GOP to task on it. “I couldn’t get Democrats years ago to say two words: border security,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, a South Texas Democrat who voted for the DHS funding bill in the House, said in an interview. “And I would always tell my folks, ‘Hey, we can be strong on border security but still be respectful of the immigrants’ rights.’ You know, we can do both.” Getting the party to one unified message on immigration is a tall task. “We never come together on the same message — that’s not going to start now,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an interview. But there is a growing unanimity across the party that the sweeping ICE raids across the country are a pressure point that they need to press for accountability. There’s also an opening with Latinos, a crucial set of voters who feel the immigration issue on a deeply personal level. There is no path for Democrats to retake the House without winning back some Latino voters, UnidosUS Action Fund’s Rafael Collazo said. Latino voters have especially begun to feel demoralized over Trump’s immigration agenda in recent polls — despite many supporting his calls to deport criminals and secure the border. “The average voter wants border security. They want you to go after criminals,” Gallego said. “They don’t want chaos in our neighborhoods. And if we hit that mark, then we will be the party that’s more aligned with where Americans are. We could solidify them by making sure we don’t overshoot.” Indeed, overshooting in the pushback to Trump’s agenda is the biggest risk that campaign operatives and strategists told Playbook they’re watching as Democrats focus more on immigration. Few need reminding of just how polarizing past calls to “abolish ICE” were, as the idea became politically toxic for some strategists when it alienated key swing voters. “DHS and Border Patrol hire a lot of Latinos on the border, and so the message around defunding and abolishing ICE does not translate into accountability — it actually translates into loss of jobs for those border districts,” a Democratic operative focused on Latino voters told Playbook. But fewer lawmakers in office are resurrecting these calls in the party today, a Democratic strategist focused on Senate campaigns, granted anonymity to discuss party strategy, told Playbook. Past the primaries, it’s not the immigration message that will play with voters in Democrats’ must-flip seats, Rocha said.
| | | | A message from AHIP: 35 Million Seniors Could See Reduced Benefits and Higher Costs. Health plans welcome reforms to strengthen Medicare Advantage. However, a proposal for flat program funding at a time of sharply rising medical costs and high utilization of care will directly impact seniors' coverage. If finalized, this proposal could result in benefit reductions and higher costs for 35 million seniors and people with disabilities when they renew their Medicare Advantage coverage in October 2026. Learn more. | | | | “It is less acceptable right now for Democrats to not engage than to have a variety of opinions that don’t exactly align with the public,” Joel Payne, who leads communications for progressive advocacy group MoveOn, told Playbook. Democrats can have a big enough coalition “where people use a variety of different words and descriptors” to call for accountability, he said. With everyone from business owners to activists concerned about the raids, Rocha argues there’s no better time for Democrats to push on this issue on all fronts and tie it to their other (historically stronger) platforms. “They can see citizens being killed in the street, they can see the prices of groceries not coming down,” he said. “You make it part of a narrative arc.” And that message does cut across wings of the party when it comes to Democrats showing themselves taking action on something: “Guess what happened when Democrats stepped into a fight in October around the budget, they were rewarded,” Payne told Playbook, pointing to Dems’ electoral success in 2025. “They were rewarded by the public. They were rewarded by their base.” But the next test for whether the big tent can hold together in practice will come this week. After Democrats mounted a standoff with Republicans over the DHS funding bill last week — demanding ICE reforms — and triggered a government shutdown, the debate is landing in the House. House Democratic leadership is signaling that they won’t supply the numbers to help Republicans pass DHS funding. The pressure from the base is on as well: To cave with no changes would be “abject betrayal,” as Indivisible’s Andrew O’Neill said in a statement. “They have to have the courage to lean in on the conversation,” Collazo told Playbook, “and the first step is to acknowledge that the status quo cannot remain.” HOW IT’S PLAYING: “Immigration takes center stage in New Jersey special election,” by POLITICO’s Madison Fernandez: “[Tom] Malinowski, a former member of Congress and one of nearly a dozen Democrats running in this week’s special election for New Jersey’s 11th District to succeed Gov. Mikie Sherrill, is warning this attack over old votes for ICE funding — something he said many Democrats are ‘guilty of’ — can take hold in upcoming primaries.” SUNDAY BEST … — Speaker Mike Johnson on the negotiations over DHS reforms in the next two weeks, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I think that this is going to happen. But we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that [Democrats have] made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation. … The masks, for example, the additional judicial requirement for a warrant would be a whole other layer of effectively bureaucracy.” — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on immigration enforcement reforms, on ABC’s “This Week”: “We’ll meet later on this afternoon as a caucus to discuss what we believe is the best path. What is clear is that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed … The administration can’t just talk the talk. They need to walk the walk. That should begin today, not in two weeks.” — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Democrats’ demands, on “Fox News Sunday”: “What we want in these next two weeks is to just make ICE follow the law, right? No more of these roving patrols through the cities in which they’re demanding that American citizens show their papers. That’s what happened in Stalin’s Russia. That’s what happened in Maduro’s Venezuela. That’s not America. What we want is for ICE to be able to identify themselves. No more secret police. And then we want accountability for these crimes. We want there to be a real investigation, a state investigation. All we are demanding is that ICE behave legally, lawfully and morally.”
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| | | | TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
- “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” by Hillary Rodham Clinton in The Atlantic
- “The perils of toxic empathy in Minneapolis makes it feel like 2020 all over again,” by Bethany Mandel in the N.Y. Post
- “This Is Not a Drill,” by NYT’s David French
- “‘I Wouldn’t Say the Democrats Are in Good Shape,’” by NYT’s Thomas Edsall
- “Kristi Noem’s Reckless Lies,” by the editors of The Free Press
- “Employers face little risk from Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement,” by Semafor’s Ben Smith
- “Silicon Valley can’t be neutral any longer,” by Reid Hoffman in The San Francisco Standard
- “Trump’s Greenland Envoy: We Need ‘Total, Unfettered Access,’” by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry in the NYT
- “Greenland isn’t the answer to U.S. Arctic security. This place is,” by Alice Rogoff in WaPo
- “Forget TACO. It’s GUAC that matters with Trump’s tariffs,” by George Bogden in WaPo
9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. FEELING SPECIAL: Christian Menefee won a special congressional runoff election yesterday in Houston, which will make the former Harris County attorney the newest member of Congress and narrow Republicans’ House majority further, per the Houston Chronicle’s Faith Bugenhagen. Menefee easily triumphed over fellow Democrat Amanda Edwards to fill the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s seat, which GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott long kept vacant. Menefee won’t have long to rest, though: Because Texas Republicans have now enacted a deeper gerrymander, he’ll be up in the March primary for a new version of the district. Edwards is running again, as is longtime Rep. Al Green, teeing up a generational Democratic clash. What Texas Dems are celebrating: Novice candidate and machinist/veteran Taylor Rehmet scored an upset in a state Senate seat that voted for Trump by 17 points, per The Texas Tribune’s Alejandro Serrano. Rehmet was heavily outspent by Republicans, on top of the uphill geography of the district’s composition for Democrats — yet he won by more than 14 points. 2. ABOUT LAST NIGHT: At the Alfalfa Club’s closed-door dinner, Trump took the stage and joked about filing a lawsuit against Kevin Warsh, his new Fed chair nominee, if Warsh doesn’t lower interest rates when he gets to the central bank, WSJ’s Josh Dawsey and colleagues scooped. “It’s a roast,” Trump explained to reporters later, adding that he had not asked Warsh to commit to anything to land the nomination. At the Capital Hilton event, Trump also talked about the possibility of more U.S. strikes against Iran, and he called former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) left-wing. Trump’s table at the dinner was slated to include George W. Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Inside the room: Trump also said he liked many of the people at the event but hated some of them, according to an attendee, POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman writes in. Trump called out Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who was attending, as “too late Powell.” (Powell was seen chatting with Warsh at one point.) But he also praised Jeb Bush, who was in the crowd, as a formidable opponent.
Outgoing Alfalfa president Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) joked of a new food pyramid with Snickers, Diet Coke and Big Macs. Incoming club president Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) received a standing ovation when talking about his friendship with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and how they’ve put partisanship aside to work together for their state. This year’s new members, or sprouts, are Bret Baier, Brian Moynihan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roger Ferguson, Maya MacGuineas and Larry Culp. Also SPOTTED: Jeff Bezos, Susie Wiles, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, USTR Jamieson Greer, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, SEC Chair Paul Atkins, Dina Powell McCormick, Joel Kaplan, Tory Burch, Darren Woods, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Cindy Daines, Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Robert and Elena Allbritton, Hank Paulson, Condoleezza Rice, Brian Grazer, Lachlan Murdoch, Mike Bloomberg, Justice Elena Kagan, UAE Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba, David Petraeus, Gary Cohn, Fred Ryan, Elaine Chao, Michael Kives, Catherine Merrill, Terry McAuliffe, Mike Needham, Glenn and Suzanne Youngkin, Gina Raimondo, Mark Ein and Donna Shalala. | | | | POLITICO Governors Summit Join POLITICO's annual Governors Summit, held alongside the National Governors Association’s Winter Meeting, for a series of forward-looking conversations with governors from across the country about how state leaders are setting the agenda for America’s next chapter. Hear from Gov. Wes Moore (D), Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), and more. Register Now. | | | | | 3. FILLING THE SWAMP: “‘Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company,” by WSJ’s Sam Kessler and colleagues: “Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars … The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. … The deal with World Liberty Financial … was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff … “The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips … The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.” 4. THE NEW PLUTOCRATS: The latest financial disclosures show who really holds the outside-spending purse strings in America heading into 2026: proponents of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, Israel and Trump, NYT’s Teddy Schleifer reports. Those groups or industries have super PACs — Leading the Future, Fairshake, AIPAC’s United Democracy Project and MAGA Inc., respectively — that are flush with incredible amounts of cash, which could make them “the wild cards” of the election. Republicans in the driver’s seat: The filings, which were due by midnight last night, show that Trump-affiliated accounts now have $375 million on hand, an unprecedented sum for a president who can’t run again and a higher total than any other politician in America, POLITICO’s Jessica Piper reports. (The big unanswered question: How will he use it?) Meanwhile, the RNC has an almost $100 million advantage over the struggling DNC, NYT’s Shane Goldmacher and Reid Epstein report. And Elon Musk is back in the fold for Republicans, giving $10 million to super PACs bolstering Hill Republicans at the end of the year, per Jessica. On the flip side: In many of the most essential House and Senate races, Democrats have outraised their Republican counterparts, in line with recent trends. Dems have solid money leads in the Senate races in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire, POLITICO’s Erin Doherty and Jessica report. But in some states with contested Democratic primaries — like Iowa, Maine and Michigan — Democrats are lagging the GOP frontrunners. 5. PRIMARY COLORS: “Michigan’s 3-car pileup of a primary has Senate Democrats worried,” by Playbook’s Adam Wren in Detroit: “Democratic leaders both in Michigan and D.C. are growing more worried by the day that the hard-fought contest, which won’t be decided until the August primary, will exacerbate ideological tensions and leave the nominee in a weakened position heading into a contest against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). … For now, the race is wide open.”
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| | | | 6. FRONTIERS OF COURT-PACKING: “Utah to expand its Supreme Court, with approval from Legislature, Cox,” by The Salt Lake Tribune’s Robert Gehrke: “After filling the [two] new seats, [Utah Gov. Spencer] Cox will have appointed five of the seven justices. … In addition to dealing the Legislature a crushing blow in the redistricting challenge, the courts have, in recent years, blocked Utah’s ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state’s school voucher program unconstitutional.” 7. MINNESOTA LATEST: “Judge denies effort to bring temporary halt to ICE operation in Minnesota,” by The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Sarah Nelson: “A federal judge on Saturday, Jan. 31, denied an effort by Minnesota and the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis to swiftly halt the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to the state, saying officials have not cleared the legal threshold to bring an immediate pause to the operation. … The lawsuit argued that the surge of 3,000 agents violates Minnesota’s sovereignty and was motivated by political animosity by the administration to change the state’s immigration laws.” Another high-profile ruling: “Judge orders release of 5-year-old detained by ICE in Minnesota,” by POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney: “District Judge Fred Biery appended the famous picture to a blistering three-page ruling that accused the Trump administration of vast lawlessness and inhumanity in its deportation push. And the judge took aim at … Trump himself, seemingly comparing the president to a ‘would-be authoritarian king’ that the nation’s founders warned against.” 8. DEMOCRACY WATCH: “‘Worst-case scenarios’: How Democratic election officials are preparing for potential Trump intrusion in the midterms,” by CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and colleagues: “The potential for federal government intervention in state elections ‘is now in a category, like a weather event, like a bomb threat, like a power outage’ that officials must prepare for, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told CNN. … [H]e and his colleagues have discussed a range of moves, from seeking to protect voters from interactions with federal law enforcement at polling places to navigating the administration’s push for access to personal information about tens of millions of voters.” 9. JUDICIARY SQUARE: A federal appellate judge has dismissed then-DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle’s misconduct complaint against judge James Boasberg, WaPo’s Salvador Rizzo reports. The Justice Department failed to provide evidence to substantiate the political bias they alleged of Boasberg. And the appellate judge said the comments Boasberg was accused of making — about concerns that the Trump administration would flout court orders — wouldn’t be misconduct anyway. Since then, federal judges have repeatedly ruled that the Trump administration has defied judicial orders. More from Mizelle: Now outside DOJ, Mizelle posted yesterday that Trump supporters who are interested in becoming assistant U.S. attorneys should reach out to him. After his comment sparked criticism about politicizing the historically nonpartisan federal prosecutor positions, Mizelle dismissed the concerns as Trump Derangement Syndrome.
| | | | New from POLITICO Introducing POLITICO Forecast: A forward-looking global briefing on the forces reshaping politics, policy and power worldwide. Drawing on POLITICO’s global reporting, Forecast connects developments across regions and sectors to help readers anticipate what comes next.
➡️ Sign up for POLITICO Forecast. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | HOLLYWOODLAND — The “Melania” documentary has way outpaced projections at the box office this weekend and is on track to earn $8.1 million, the best opening weekend for a non-concert documentary in more than a decade. The film has definitely found its audience, which has skewed heavily toward women, people over 55 and white people — in some ways similar to turnout for faith-based movies, per Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro. Eighty-nine percent of attendees say they’d definitely recommend it, which is “unheard [of] for any movie.” (Also nearly unheard of is the film’s critical pummeling: Its Metacritic score is 7 out of 100.) It’s especially strong in conservative areas; a theater in Boca Raton, Florida, is the top-grossing. MAHA MEETS ‘THIS TOWN’ — “RFK Jr. is now a wellness guru for Republicans in Washington,” by POLITICO’s Amanda Chu: “Across Washington’s MAGA scene, concern over ingredients in meals and everyday products is a growing obsession and a sign that [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s] cultural influence has penetrated the most private corners of daily life. Republican staffers are often spotted wearing Oura rings and WHOOP bracelets — fitness trackers Kennedy says he wants every American wearing — and many have begun cutting ultraprocessed foods and artificial dyes from their diets.” PLAYBOOK HOME DECOR SECTION — The chairs from the famous optical-illusion photo of the Bidens and the Carters sold for $10,795 at auction last week, WaPo’s Kyle Melnick reports. OUT AND ABOUT — The Washington AI Network and Ned’s Club hosted a breakfast yesterday ahead of Alfalfa Club dinner, with Tammy Haddad presenting Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) with the network’s First Mover Award. Walter Isaacson also spoke. SPOTTED: Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Dina Powell McCormick, British Ambassador-designate Christian Turner and Claire Turner, Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Friar, Julie Sweet, Jill Hazelbaker Franks, Teresa Carlson, Donna Shalala, Matt and Shanti Garman, Jonathan Gillibrand, Joel Kaplan, Sally Quinn, Dmitri Alperovitch, Mark Ein, Senay Bulbul, Tiffany Moore, Pamela Brown, Shannon Kellogg, Olivia Igbokwe-Curry, Elizabeth Falcone, Helen Milby, Niamh King, Jackie Rooney, Rachel Pearson, Eric Motley, Michael Moroney, Jennifer Prescott, Toni and Dwight Bush, Alan Fleischmann and Dafna Tapiero, Adrienne Elrod and Todd Webster. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) … Marc Elias of Elias Law Group … Ken Klippenstein … Adrian Carrasquillo … Fred Barnes … ABC’s Jordyn Phelps … Crossroads Strategies’ Mat Lapinski … Rachel Walker … Matt Moon of Narrative Strategies … David Barnhart … Aria Kovalovich … Natalie Cucchiara of Lot Sixteen … Michael Frias … Tara McGowan … Jason Russell … Meaghan Burdick … CBS’ Alana Anyse … NBC’s Catherine Kim … Chase Adams … Erin Dooley … Ian Hines … Tara Brown … Bloomberg’s Michelle Jamrisko … Gray Barrett … Gavin Wilde … Jake Siewert … TKG Strategies’ James Kimmey … Miguel Ayala … POLITICO’s Sean Jennings and Annie Allen … Andrew Thomas of the Herald Group … Ron Holden 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. Correction: Friday’s Playbook misstated Veronica Bonifacio Penales’ new job title. She will be comms associate for the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
| | | | A message from AHIP: 35 Million Seniors Could See Reduced Benefits and Higher Costs
Health plans welcome reforms to strengthen Medicare Advantage. However, a proposal for flat program funding at a time of sharply rising medical costs and high utilization of care will directly impact seniors' coverage. If finalized, this proposal could result in benefit reductions and higher costs for 35 million seniors and people with disabilities when they renew their Medicare Advantage coverage in October 2026. Learn more. | | | | | | | | Follow us on X | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Canada Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
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