| | | |  | | By Jack Blanchard with Dasha Burns | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Ali Bianco, Irie Sentner and Makayla Gray Good Sunday afternoon. This is Jack Blanchard, getting an early start to the week. Get in touch.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
There’s a broader political risk to President Donald Trump of choosing yet another Middle East entanglement. | Alex Brandon/AP | A NATION DIVIDED: Donald Trump’s stunning all-out air assault on Iran represents the biggest political risk of his presidency, with the American people far from united behind military action. As Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton — a longtime Trump critic, but even longer-time Iran hawk — tells POLITICO this morning, this is the “most consequential decision” of Trump’s presidency — and “turmoil” and “bloodshed” may well lie ahead. The first numbers are out: A Morning Consult poll conducted right after the bombing began and shared with Playbook overnight shows Americans split right down the middle on whether the U.S.-Israeli attacks are necessary. Among registered voters, 41 percent said the strikes were necessary to prevent Iran from threatening the U.S. and its allies, while 42 percent believed Trump should have continued pursuing diplomacy instead. It’s essentially a dead heat. A second poll conducted yesterday by YouGov asked the question in a slightly different way — whether military action was justified. The numbers are even worse for Trump, with 32 percent of U.S. adults supportive vs. 39 percent opposed. It’s a slight improvement on the pre-attack polling, as laid out here by POLITICO’s Erin Doherty — but not much. And there’s more: A Reuters/Ipsos poll published in the past hour looks worst of all for the White House. It found only 27 percent of Americans “approve” of the military attacks, vs. 43 percent who disapprove. Precarious ground: As the former FiveThirtyEight poll maven G. Elliott Morris notes in his blog, Trump has nowhere near the overwhelming support that former President George W. Bush enjoyed when he launched military action against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Both campaigns eventually became deeply toxic for Bush’s legacy. But more than 7,000 U.S. service members died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no suggestion at this stage of Trump initiating a ground invasion of Iran, as Bush did in 2001 and 2003. Trump will hope that by keeping U.S. casualties in Iran to a minimum, there won’t be equivalent backlash. And so it begins: The first three U.S. military deaths in Iran have now been confirmed. A retaliatory Iranian strike in Israel killed nine people there. Deaths have been reported in Kuwait and the UAE. Iran is vowing further retaliation against the U.S. and Israel, POLITICO’s Eric Bazail-Eimil reports. And civilian deaths are surging too. Almost 150 people are now reported dead after a missile struck a school in southern Iran yesterday. The numbers are likely to keep rising, and there’s no way of knowing how much deadlier the Iranian response might get — or how long this conflict will drag on. “I can go long and take over the whole thing,” Trump mused in a phone interview with Axios’ Barak Ravid yesterday, “or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding.’”
| | | | 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. | | | | Let’s be clear: Trump’s obvious preference for short, sharp shocks makes a rapid campaign far more likely than a long, drawn-out conflict — as does the shortage of American munitions noted in the WSJ. The president already told The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer this morning that he’s prepared to resume negotiations. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump said. “They should have done it sooner.” But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said this morning the attacks “will only intensify further in the coming days." Reminder: There’s a broader political risk to Trump of choosing yet another Middle East entanglement. As Trump himself said in 2020: “We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East. And we’re not fixing our roads in this country. How stupid is it? We’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.” That clip is going viral today — and the sentiment plays at least as well on the right as it does on the left. And there’s also the risk of an oil price spike in an election year. The all-important Strait of Hormuz, through which a sizable portion of the world’s crude oil is shipped, is seeing almost no traffic this morning. OPEC nations have increased output in response, which may offset the inevitable spike in prices to a degree. We’ll be watching the markets closely when they reopen on Monday. Democrats are already seizing on the “affordability” fallout, POLITICO’s Manuel Quiñones reports. Iran now has new interim leadership, but it’s far from clear how long it will last — or what the long-term future of the regime may be. Trump made clear in his video statement early Saturday morning that he wants the Iranian people to rise up; but it’s equally clear there’s no real plan for what happens next. Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) suggested on CBS’ “Face The Nation” this morning that there may be regime figures now “jockeying to audition for the role of Iran’s Delcy Rodríguez.” It sounds more like hope than expectation. But here’s the good news for Trump: The initial stages of this operation appear to have been highly successful. The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the first strikes yesterday represents a stunning military and intelligence triumph for the U.S. and Israel. (Reuters reports airstrikes had originally been planned for last night, but were brought forward when intelligence learned Khamenei would be meeting with his top leaders above ground that morning.) More will surely follow. Local reports (per the Guardian) that the firebrand former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also been killed have not yet been confirmed. But Trump told Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich this morning that “48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it's moving along rapidly.” All numbers cited by the president obviously require a healthy pinch of salt, but you get the idea. And Iran’s retaliation appears to have had minimal impact thus far. The U.S. military’s Central Command dismissed as a “lie” Iran’s claim that it struck the USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles, saying the weapons “didn’t even come close.” And Iranian attacks on other Gulf nations have served only to bind them into the conflict, retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus noted on Fox News this morning. We’re still waiting for Trump to hold a proper press conference or TV interview in response to the attacks. So far he remains in Mar-a-Lago, taking short but frequent on-the-record calls from journalists. A proper Q&A will likely follow soon.
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| | | | Coming attractions: In the meantime, Democrats are gearing up to try to stop Trump in his tracks when Congress returns this week. “If you’re going to initiate war, you need Congress,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Fox News this morning. “This is an illegal war. I have a war powers resolution queued up for vote this week, and I’m encouraging my colleagues to assert the constitutional power vested in the legislative branch.” Moves are also afoot for a war powers vote in the House — most likely this coming Wednesday — where Republicans have only a razor-thin margin. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) repeated this morning he has yet to be convinced about the need for military action. His words will give succor to Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) who believe they can clip Trump’s wings. House Republicans have a call scheduled for 4 p.m. and House Democrats at 8 p.m., per Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman. But it’s not all smooth sailing for Dems, either. Middle Eastern politics remains a hugely divisive issue on the left, and these attacks could upend several key primaries looming this month. As Playbook’s Adam Wren and colleagues report in a just-published article, “the joint U.S.-Israel military operation has put the countries’ relationship squarely at the center of the national political debate — and the role of its big-spending allies like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which praised President Donald Trump’s strikes, front-and-center in the Democratic primaries where the group is spending.” FURTHER READING: “Trump’s patience runs out: Inside the final days before the strike on Iran.” POLITICO’s Sophia Cai, Felicia Schwartz, Eli Stokols and Jack Detsch have the essential insider account on the runup to war. “Iran’s Regime May Survive, but the Middle East Will Be Changed.” The NYT’s Steven Erlanger on why the fundamental weakening of Iran could have a comparable regional impact to the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Why the U.S. and Israel Struck When They Did: A Chance to Kill Iran’s Leaders.” The WSJ’s Dov Lieber, Alexander Ward and Laurence Norman on the critical first strike which took out Khamenei. “‘The Worst-Case Outcome Is Complete Chaos,’” The Atlantic’s Shane Harris, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Nancy Youssef, Ashley Parker, Jonathan Lemire and Michael Scherer on just how bad things could get inside Iran. “What Mehdi Mahmoudian Saw Inside the Iranian Prison System.” The activist and Oscar-nominated screenwriter tells The New Yorker’s Cora Engelbrecht about life under the Iranian regime.
| | | | POLITICO Forecast The forces reshaping politics, policy and power are accelerating across regions and sectors. Drawing on POLITICO’s global reporting, Forecast connects the dots — from major global moments to behind-the-scenes developments — to help readers anticipate what comes next. Sign up for POLITICO Forecast. | | | | | 6 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. UKRAINE LATEST: Top Ukrainian official Kyrylo Budanov said Russia has newly agreed to the U.S. proposals for postwar security guarantees in Ukraine, per the Kyiv Post’s Kateryna Zakharchenko. “The Russian side said directly they would accept the guarantees the United States is proposing to Ukraine,” Budanov said. “They have no alternative.” If confirmed — and keep in mind that neither side signaled there’d been a breakthrough in talks last week in Geneva — that would be a significant and rare step toward a peace deal by Moscow. 2. TRAGEDY IN AUSTIN: “‘Potential nexus to terrorism’: FBI, APD give update on West 6th Street mass shooting,” by the Austin American-Statesman’s Tony Plohetski and colleagues: “Three people are dead and 14 others were injured in a mass shooting early Sunday outside Buford’s bar on West Sixth Street in downtown Austin, officials said. Among the dead was the suspected gunman who was shot by officers. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has joined the investigation based on preliminary evidence found at the scene.” 3. WHO NEEDS CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS? “How Wesley Hunt of Texas Is Working in Plain Sight With Outside Groups,” by NYT’s Shane Goldmacher: “‘Running out of money,’ read the post on the social media platform X, ‘less than $400 remains in my pocket.’ It landed on Nov. 13, from an obscure account called @pie0myWesley with just three followers. Anyone else stumbling upon it might have assumed it was a random musing from someone who had seen better days. The account instead appears to be connected to the Republican Senate campaign of Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas. “And one of its followers is @TxGopFighter, with seeming connections to an outside group helping Mr. Hunt’s candidacy. The two anonymous accounts have spent months sharing strategic information, private polling, messaging advice and media-buying data in what may be an effort to skirt federal law. That law prohibits candidates from coordinating in private with independent groups such as super PACs. The Hunt campaign and those allies, however, are doing so with a pair of social media accounts in plain sight for those who know where to look.” Hunt’s campaign didn’t respond for comment. 4. ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL IT PROBLEM: When Republicans’ stricter Medicaid work requirements kick in next year, they’ll pose a new challenge not only to recipients but to states that will have to collect new data, AP’s David Lieb reports from Jefferson City, Missouri. The total cost of upgrading computer systems and adding employees to handle the eligibility mandates will probably surpass $1 billion across the country, drawing from state and federal money. It’s a wonky task, because existing systems are often outdated and need custom updates in each state. And compiling data to verify Medicaid participants’ job, school or volunteer status will require new sources of information.
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| | | | 5. IMMIGRATION FILES: The judicial resistance rises in … West Virginia? Actually, yes: As the Trump administration kicked off “Operation Country Roads” in the state last month to ramp up immigration enforcement, four federal judges decried “rampant lawlessness by masked ICE agents, defiance of court orders and a wanton infliction of fear and intimidation,” POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney reports. The judges have slammed ICE’s mass detention policy, warning of federal assaults on the law, due process and the Constitution. And they’re threatening consequences if the administration doesn’t change course. In response, the Justice Department condemned “activist judges who’d rather see violent illegal criminals walk free.” Political fallout: The Trump administration’s intense operations in Minnesota, and the months of unrest and crisis that ensued, have upended the state’s political landscape, NYT’s Charles Homans reports. Broad backlash to the immigration crackdown has put Democrats on the front foot in a blue-leaning state they can’t take for granted; Republicans face an uphill fight. But at the same time, some Dems worry that primary voters will lurch to the left in swing seats. 6. 2027 DREAMING: “Trump subpoena, administration probes taking shape, House Democrats say,” by WaPo’s Marianna Sotomayor and Kadia Goba in Leesburg, Virginia: “Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) said in an interview that if he is given the gavel to lead the House Oversight Committee next term, a Democratic majority would ‘absolutely’ pursue an interview with Trump regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. … Top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees asserted that there is enough evidence that [DHS Secretary Kristi] Noem has committed impeachable offenses … to guarantee such a vote in the new year. And they hinted that Attorney General Pam Bondi could also be targeted.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
| | | | POLITICO Pro Policy challenges are evolving — and the stakes keep rising. POLITICO Pro delivers authoritative reporting, expert analysis, and powerful tools to help professionals understand and anticipate the business of government, in Washington and beyond.
➡️ Learn More about POLITICO Pro | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | ANOTHER ONE — The San Francisco Ballet became the latest group to pull out of the Kennedy Center, canceling its May shows, per the S.F. Chronicle’s Aidin Vaziri. THE REST IS HISTORY — “Park Service to Revive Statue of Founding Father Who Enslaved Hundreds,” by NYT’s Lisa Friedman: “A founding father and slave owner [Caesar Rodney] whose statue in Delaware was removed in 2020 amid calls for racial reckoning will be given a position in honor in Washington by the Trump administration as part of celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday.” WEEKEND WEDDING — Richard Hudock, SVP of comms for MS NOW, and Justin Goldman, investment comms specialist at Neuberger Herman, got married yesterday at Central Synagogue, with a reception at the Edison Ballroom. Pic … SPOTTED: Andrea Mitchell, Kaitlan Collins, Symone Sanders Townsend, Eugene Daniels, Alicia Menendez, Jonathan Capehart, Rebecca Kutler, Vaughn Hillyard, Erielle Reshef, Keith Cocozza, Jesse Rodriguez and Tammy Haddad. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Playbook’s Dasha Burns … Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) … Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) … Giulia Giannangeli Leganski of House Energy and Commerce … Maddison Stone of U.S. Travel Association … Stephen Ezell … Adam Brand … Vanessa Cadavillo … POLITICO’s Jasper Goodman, Shelby Pinkerton and Liset Cruz … Lorraine Woellert … Vayl Oxford … NBC’s Bridget Bowman … Kasey Lovett of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency … Meghan Milloy … Eisai’s Elizabeth Brooks … Elizabeth Rhee … former Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Luther Strange (R-Ala.) … former Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) and Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) … Howard Altman … Jess McCarron … Natalie Szemetylo … Ryan Little … Aaron Sherinian … Lauren Vicary … Exxon Mobil’s Mike Bloomquist … Tom Jones … National Transportation Safety Board’s Brian Arata … Ian Sbalcio … Herald Group’s Wyatt Hamilton … Peregrine’s Ali Taki … Tierra Perdue … Rubí Martínez of Climate Power 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.
| | | | 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 | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Canada Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
