| | | |  | | By Irie Sentner | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Makayla Gray
|  | THE CATCH-UP | | | 
Tricia McLaughlin is leaving DHS next week after delaying her exit amid the killings of two American citizens by federal immigration agents. | Jose Luis Magana/AP | McLAUGHLIN OUT: The public voice of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown is leaving the administration, POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman and Adam Wren scooped this morning. Tricia McLaughlin, the top spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and one of the most vocal defenders of the agency’s controversial immigration enforcement tactics, is informing colleagues today that she is leaving the department next week, Daniel and Adam report. McLaughlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. McLaughlin has been one of the most public officials at the agency and frequently spars with reporters and social media commentators alike over criticisms of DHS’ immigration operations in Chicago and Minneapolis. “At the peak of her tenure, McLaughlin, a former ABC News contributor, logged as many as five media appearances a day,” Daniel and Adam report. News of McLaughlin’s departure comes amid mounting criticism over DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s leadership within the administration, a chorus of Democratic lawmakers calling for her to resign, a funding lapse for the agency over a bitter partisan fight in Congress over reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol, and just days after the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report cataloging “constant chaos” within the agency. “Another MAGA extremist forced out of DHS,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote of McLaughlin’s departure on X. “Noem next. Keep the pressure on.” McLaughlin had started planning to leave in December but delayed her exit after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers, according to the people briefed on her exit. What’s next for McLaughlin is unclear, but when asked by the Cincinnati Enquirer earlier this year whether she would ever run for office if she returned to her hometown Cincinnati, McLaughlin — who’s married to GOP consultant Ben Yoho — said she “wouldn’t rule anything out.” Lauren Bis, one of McLaughlin's deputies, will replace her as assistant secretary of Public Affairs at DHS, and Katie Zacharia, a Fox News commentator and adviser to Richard Grenell, is also coming in as deputy assistant secretary, per Axios. FOIA FILES: Top ICE officials were aware as early as last March that the level of force — both in lethal and non-lethal efforts — used by ICE agents against their targets was dramatically increasing, POLITICO’s Eric Bazail-Eimil scoops. That’s according to internal emails released in a Freedom of Information Act request to the nonprofit watchdog American Oversight and shared first with POLITICO. Those emails revealed that ICE officials have known about a pattern of use of excessive force by agents nationwide for nearly a year without exhibiting a particular urgency to respond to that trend — and that instead, they sought to highlight heightened assaults against officers. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the documents. Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at isentner@politico.com.
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For over 140 ingredients, you can find common uses, alternative names and safety assessments from food safety authorities at GoodToKnowFacts.org. | | | | | | 8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | 1. REMEMBERING JESSE JACKSON: Trump this morning in a post on Truth Social weighed in on the death of Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist and former Democratic presidential candidate. “I knew him well,” Trump wrote in the post. He called Jackson a “good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts.’” Trump added that Jackson was a “force of nature like few others before him,” and claimed that Jackson “could not stand” former President Barack Obama, whom he said Jackson helped get elected. Bishop William Barber, who co-founded the Poor People's Campaign and was a longtime associate of Jackson who worked on his 1984 presidential campaign, laughed when Playbook shared with him the details of Trump’s post, including the line about Obama. “If Jesse was alive and heard that, he wouldn't even respond to that. He would go right back to policies,” Barber told Playbook’s Makayla Gray. Obama responded to the news of Jackson’s death in a post on X, saying that he and Michelle “will always be grateful for Jesse's lifetime of service, and the friendship our families share. We stood on his shoulders.” Read the POLITICO obituary, by David Cohen The stepback: “I covered Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign. The racism he faced was undisguised,” by WaPo’s Karen Tumulty: “The obstacles he faced — including those from his party’s establishment — were overt and subtle.” 2. WAR AND PEACE: Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are having a busy day in Geneva, where they’re brokering peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and Iran and the U.S. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV he had reached a “general agreement” with Witkoff and Kushner from which Washington and Tehran “will proceed … and move toward drafting a potential agreement” for a nuclear deal, Bloomberg’s Patrick Sykes and Arsalan Shahla report. The apparent movement came after Iran said it would close part of the Strait of Hormuz for military drills. Witkoff and Kushner then gathered with top Ukrainian and Russian officials for their third trilateral meeting in three weeks after the previous two delivered little progress, NYT’s Constant Méheut reports. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday emphasized on social media it’s “a big mistake to allow the aggressor to take something” — echoing language he used last week in an interview with Playbook’s Dasha Burns. 3. FOR YOUR RADAR: “Strikes on 3 more alleged drug boats kill 11 people, US military says,” by AP: “The series of strikes conducted Monday brought the death toll to at least 145 people since the administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels since early September. Like most of the military’s statements on the 42 known strikes, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. It said two vessels carrying four people each were struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean, while a third boat with three people was hit in the Caribbean Sea.”
| | | | 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. | | | | | 4. PARDON PANDEMONIUM: “‘It’s Chaos’: How Trump’s Pardoning Process Keeps Changing,” by NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright: “The nearly dozen people who NOTUS spoke with — including sources both outside the Trump administration, like lawyers and lobbyists, and inside the White House — described an ever-changing situation. … There’ve been concerns internally over the outside reaction to some of the pardons. Senior aides, including [chief of staff Susie] Wiles, have been concerned with how people are profiting off the process … Administration aides have even gone so far as to pull some potential pardons from being approved after officials found that someone would directly profit from them.” 5. YOU’RE FIRED: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s chief of public affairs after months of resistance by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin reports. Col. Dave Butler, Driscoll’s chief adviser, was head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs when Gen. Mark Milley was chair and was on a list of 34 officers selected to get promotions. But Hegseth delayed that list for months over concerns about a handful of officers — and Butler offered to remove his name to help move forward the other promotions, according to an Army official. 6. VOTE-A-DRAMA: “Noncitizen voting is rare. Why is Washington so focused on it?” by POLITICO’s Dana Nickel: “A flood of Republican-backed efforts to tighten voter ID laws is serving as a distraction from more serious threats to the American voting system, according to top election security experts. Experts … point to recent rollbacks to frontline programs that protect state and local elections, as well as cuts to the top federal agency that guards electoral systems, as key threats ahead of the midterms. But lawmakers are focused elsewhere: They’re currently debating policy measures to crack down on noncitizen voting and move election certification authorities to the federal government.” 7. HOW IT HAPPENED: “Why Congress failed to reach an Obamacare deal,” by POLITICO’s Robert King and Simon Levien: “The stalemate over the Hyde amendment, which bans federal dollars funding abortion, wasn’t the only reason behind the legislation’s demise. Lingering ideological opposition to Obamacare, White House indifference, the lack of a unifying alternative and an influential lobbying effort tying the subsidies to fraud also played a part in the subsidies’ demise. In many ways, the outcome of the debate was foreseeable months ago, lawmakers of both parties told POLITICO in more than a dozen interviews for this story examining how Congress failed to prevent the huge increases in health care costs.” 8. HINDSIGHT IS 20/20: “Obama Took On Recession, Health Care and Iraq. What He Didn’t See Coming Was Trump,” by NYT’s Peter Baker: “A new set of oral history interviews documents how Barack Obama and his advisers missed the shifting mood of the country that would ultimately replace him with a successor they considered a ‘con man,’ ‘clown’ and ‘laughingstock.’” Listen to all 462 interviews
| | | | A message from American Beverage:  
America's beverage companies are making it easier than ever to find clear information about the ingredients in your favorite beverages. Learn more at GoodToKnowFacts.org. | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | GUTTER POLITICS — Trump this morning in a post on Truth Social called on Maryland, Virginia and D.C. to “get to work, IMMEDIATELY,” cleaning up the more than 200 million gallons of toxic sewage in the Potomac, which he called a “Radical Left caused Environmental Hazard.” He added that “If they can’t do the job, they have to call me and ask, politely, to get it fixed.” He said due to the DHS shutdown, the government would have to call in “true Patriots to do the work because many are not working right now.” He blamed both the sewage spill and shutdown on Democrats. BIG COMPETITION — Second lady Usha Vance has a new project: a design challenge calling on children to create a hand-drawn bookmark “depicting what America means to them” in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary. Applications are due to the National Endowment for the Arts website by March 31, and Vance will select one winner in each of three age groups — K-2, grades 3-5 and 5-8 — who will be invited to Washington for this summer’s semiquincentennial celebrations. PLAYBOOK REAL ESTATE SECTION — “How an Auction House Finally Sold Dan Snyder’s Controversial Mansion,” by Washingtonian’s Eric Wills: “The real estate was originally listed for $49 million. More than seven years later, it finally has a new owner.” YOUR FAVORITE CHEF’S FAVORITE BOARD MEMBER — David Strasser is stepping in as CEO of the José Andrés Group, Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman reports. Strasser, a venture capitalist who served on the group’s board, is replacing Sam Bakhshandehpour, who has had the top job since José Andrés stepped down in 2024. “The group currently operates more than 40 restaurants in the US and internationally, including Jaleo, Zaytinya, Minibar, Bazaar, and others in the DC area.” MEDIAWATCH — “MS NOW Inks Deal With Crooked Media to Air ‘Pod Save America’ and More on TV,” by The Hollywood Reporter’s Caitlin Huston: “The political podcast company, which is home to titles such as Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It and more, has struck a deal with MS NOW to air highlights from the week’s podcast episodes on Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET. The first episode will premiere Feb. 28, featuring analysis about the State of the Union and more.” TRANSITIONS — Erin Morrow Hawley is joining Lex Politica as appellate chair. She will remain of counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. … Kelvin Giang is now military legislative aide for Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.). He previously worked for the House Select Committee on China under Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.). … Sean Clerget is joining Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies as senior principal. He most recently worked for Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) on the House Ways and Means Committee. … … Paul Feinstein is joining Haynes Boone as a partner in the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group. He most recently worked at Venable LLP. … Chris Syrek is joining OnMessage Public Strategies as EVP. He most recently worked at the VA. 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 editor Giuseppe Macri and deputy editor Garrett Ross. Correction: Friday’s Playbook PM misspelled Ian Bremmer’s name.
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