| | | |  | | By Bethany Irvine | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Rachel Umansky-Castro
|  | THE CATCH-UP | | COMEY PLEADS NOT GUILTY: Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty at his formal arraignment this morning on the two felony charges brought against him that were demanded by President Donald Trump, POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report from the federal courthouse in Alexandria. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff set a Jan. 5, 2026 trial date for Comey’s case, which has sparked outcry that Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department to target perceived enemies.
| 
People hold signs and flags as they march during a demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and planned deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago, Illinois. | AFP via Getty Images | CHECKING IN ON CHICAGOLAND: Hundreds of National Guard troops are expected to descend on Chicago today as Trump continues his immigration crackdown across American cities. As Illinois leaders push back on the incursion, Trump escalated his rhetoric, calling for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to be imprisoned for their resistance in a Truth Social post. “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote. Both Johnson and Pritzker responded, vowing not to back down from the fight. Watch this space: A federal judge in Chicago today “extended a nationwide consent decree requiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to better document and report probable cause for immigration arrests and found the agency repeatedly violated the 2022 agreement by making ‘warrantless arrests’ both before and during ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’” the Chicago Tribune’s Jason Meisner reports. “In his 52-page ruling, which has implications for immigration-enforcement operations across the country, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said ICE had improperly told its field offices over the summer that the consent decree had been canceled. The judge also took particular issue with a practice by ICE agents of carrying blank warrant forms known as I-200s with them on missions and filling them out at the scene.” How it’s playing: A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that around 58 percent of Americans — including seven in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans — feel that the president should only deploy armed troops to “face external threats.” The poll of more than 1,000 voters also found that 37 percent of those surveyed agree that presidents of either political party should have the power to deploy troops into states even when state governors object, while 48 percent disagree. Meanwhile, around 83 percent of respondents agreed the military “should remain politically neutral and not take a side in domestic policy debate,” Reuters’ Jason Lange reports. Survey says: Zooming out, Trump’s aggressive deportation push remains generally popular among Americans, according to a new NYT/Siena University survey, though a slim majority feel his methods have “gone too far.” Around 54 percent of registered voters broadly favor deporting immigrants living in the country illegally, comprising “more than 90 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of independents and nearly 20 percent of Democrats,” per NYT’s Ruth Igielnik and Jazmine Ulloa. More on the numbers: 53 percent of voters feel the process of deporting people “has not been fair,” while 44 percent said it was “mostly fair.” Around 52 percent of those surveyed also disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, compared to 46 percent who approve. And 51 percent “said his actions around immigration enforcement had gone too far.” Good Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at birvine@politico.com.
| | | | A message from The National Retail Federation: For over a century, NRF has championed every retailer and retail job. As the industry evolves to meet changing consumer demands, the NRF Business of Retail Initiative and endowed chair at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business will provide a lasting platform for in-depth study and research. Learn more. | | | | | | 8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | | 
Speaker Mike Johnson and party leaders gathered for a news conference today, where Johnson hammered Democrats for creating a mess of headlines in their home states. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | 1. SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN: We are into day eight of the government shutdown, and the mood on Capitol Hill is feeling a lot like Groundhog Day. Speaker Mike Johnson and party leaders gathered for a news conference today, where Johnson hammered Democrats for creating a mess of headlines in their home states. Johnson listed off to reporters a series of headlines from Democratic states on the challenges airlines face, national park closures and food bank usage. Johnson also lamented the shutdown’s impacts on “air traffic controllers and flight safety across the country as aviation sector employees continue to toil in high-pressure jobs without certainty of when they’ll receive their next paychecks,” POLITICO's Meredith Lee Hill reports. Expect more of the same messaging tomorrow: Johnson will be joining C-SPAN to take viewers’ calls live on “Washington Journal” tomorrow at 8 a.m., per POLITICO’s Nick Wu. In the Senate: Majority Leader John Thune sounds unlikely to keep the chamber in over the weekend, wondering whether it would do any good as votes on the stopgap bills continue to fail. “If enough Democrats start to come to their senses and want to have conversations about how to get the government open, then I’m certainly open to be here,” Thune told reporters ahead of the votes, adding: “If they’re just gonna continue to vote down keeping the government open, I’m not sure what purpose that’ll serve.” 2. WILDERNESS EXPLORERS: “DNC briefs top Democrats on audit of 2024 White House loss,” by POLITICO’s Elena Schneider: “Late spending, exacerbated by a mid-battle candidate switch, and lack of attention to voters’ top concerns are among the reasons Democrats’ lost the White House last year, the Democratic National Committee says in its assessment of the defeat. The DNC started briefing top Democrats this week on parts of its post-election review, a highly anticipated post-mortem for a party still divided over what led to President Donald Trump’s second victory and how to forge a path back to electoral power. More juicy details: “DNC officials argued Democrats didn’t spend early or consistently enough to engage and persuade voters, one of several problems the party faced in 2024, the committee said. Swapping Joe Biden with Kamala Harris atop the ticket intensified those systemic, long-term problems for the party, the officials said, according to two people briefed by the DNC this week and granted anonymity to discuss those conversations. So far, Biden’s age has not come up, they said. The DNC officials said the party’s failure to respond to voters’ top issues led to losses across once-core constituencies, including working class voters.” 3. ANYBODY HAVE A MAP?: The Supreme Court is set to rehear a case next week that could potentially gut a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Now, Democratic voting rights groups are sounding the alarm about a nightmare scenario that allows Republicans to redraw up to 19 House seats in their favor, POLITICO’s Andrew Howard scoops. A new report from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund claims that the proposed gutting would all but guarantee Republican control of Congress. “Taken together, the groups identified 27 total seats that Republicans could redistrict in their favor ahead of the midterms — 19 of which stem from Section 2 being overturned.” 4. IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREENE: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), once a stalwart Trump loyalist, has been bucking her party on issues ranging from Iran strikes to the Obamacare subsidies at the center of the shutdown fight. And as frustration mounts in the West Wing over Greene’s positions, NBC’s Melanie Zanona and colleagues report that the Georgia lawmaker has grown increasingly disillusioned with the GOP after the White House discouraged her from launching a Senate bid in Georgia. Though Greene “denies that her statewide ambitions’ being dashed has anything to do with her recent independent streak,” the lawmaker’s “recent behavior has surprised even some people who are close to her.” And Trump’s noticed too. “In recent months, he called at least two senior Republicans to ask, ‘What’s going on with Marjorie?’” NBC writes. And in “what some Republicans viewed as another sign of Greene’s shifting attitude toward the political scene, she was invited last month to attend the grand opening of Trump’s ‘Rose Garden Club’ at the White House, but she turned it down.”
| | | | Global Security is POLITICO’s new weekly briefing on the policies and industrial forces reshaping transatlantic defense. From Washington to Brussels and beyond, we track how decisions ripple across borders — redefining the future of security and industry. Sign up for the free preview edition. | | | | | 5. TRAIL MIX: Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson launched a primary bid against longtime incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen today, opening up another opportunity for the Democratic Party to have the age debate, POLITICO’s Elena Schneider reports. “The primary represents the latest clash between generational forces in the party, with the 30-year-old Pearson taking on the 76-year-old Cohen. … Cohen, who was first elected in 2006, has faced primary challenges before and he’s usually crushed his opponents.” But Pearson is entering the race with some backup: David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve group is pledging $1 million to support Pearson. 6. NOMINATION STATION: Karen Brazell, Trump’s pick for Veterans Affairs undersecretary for Benefits, has withdrawn her nomination, citing “personal reasons,” POLITICO’s Leo Shane and Daniel Lippman report. Brazell had faced backlash from Democrats “because of her role as a senior advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins, whose aggressive agency cuts raised concerns about agency workloads and efficiency.” The post has been without a Senate-confirmed undersecretary since January. 7. FOR YOUR RADAR: Republicans are ramping up the pressure campaign for Democrats to dump Virginia Democratic AG candidate Jay Jones over a series of text messages Jones sent wishing violence on his political adversaries, POLITICO’s Brakkton Booker reports. “The messages, unearthed a month before the off-cycle election, have given the GOP hope that Virginia’s incumbent attorney general, Jason Miyares, could emerge victorious in what otherwise appears to be a tough bellwether year for them.” 8. A POST-SCOTUS LIFE: “Justice Kennedy, Off the Bench but Still Rendering Opinions,” by NYT’s Adam Liptak: Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy “has made few public statements since his retirement in 2018, which set the stage for the court’s decisive shift to the right. But in a two-hour conversation last week in his Supreme Court chambers overlooking the Capitol, he denounced what he said was a spike in ignorance, partisanship and vulgarity in the nation’s public life. “The justice also discussed why he thinks his majority opinion establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage a decade ago should endure, a question the court may soon face. He talked about his bitter falling out with Justice Antonin Scalia and their reconciliation shortly before his colleague’s death in 2016. He criticized originalism, the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation among conservatives. And he reflected on his relationship with President Trump, whose rise appears to have played a role in the justice’s critique of declining civility in public discourse.”
| | | | Want to know how policy pros stay ahead? Policy Intelligence Assistant — only with POLITICO Pro — merges trusted reporting with advanced AI to deliver deeper insights, faster answers, and powerful report builders that drive action. Get 30 days free. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | John Thune agreed to buy John Fetterman’s kid’s cookies during a one-on-one meeting, per NBC’s Julie Tsirkin. So there’s at least some negotiations happening on the Hill. IN MEMORIAM — “Former Detroit U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick dies at 80,” by The Detroit Free Press’ Todd Spangler: “Cheeks Kilpatrick served 18 years in the state House and 14 in the U.S. House before fallout from Kwame Kilpatrick's arrest on perjury and misconduct in office charges presaged her defeat in 2010 in a Democratic primary to former U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke of Detroit. … Cheeks Kilpatrick was the second Black woman from Michigan to serve in the U.S. House.” TRANSITION — Renegade DC has added Paulina Enck as an account executive and Samantha Kyprios as account associate. Enck previously worked at the American Action Forum. Kyprios previously worked for Klein Cook. 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. | | | | A message from The National Retail Federation:  
| | | | | | | | 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 | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
