Trump turns the screws

Politico

2 days ago

Presented by
With help from Eli Okun and Bethany Irvine
Good Tuesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, having a completely unstressful time moving the family into a new D.C. home after months in an Airbnb. Our furniture and entire worldly goods arrived from London by boat yesterday — all 167 boxes. But as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, my actions are my only true belongings. So let's get to it.
SPOTTED: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dining with White House personnel chief Sergio Gor at Cafe Milano last night, Playbook's Dasha Burns writes in.
Tavolo per due: 'They talked for nearly two hours,' Dasha reports. 'Sen. Mark Warner and Art Collins came over to say hello, among others … One can only guess at what the two could have been gabbing about for so long — but you may recall both Gor and Bessent had their share of clashes with the recently departed Elon Musk. Perhaps it was a celebration dinner?'
In today's Playbook …
— Trump goes to work on the Senate GOP.
— Iran deal on the brink after latest enrichment row.
— Washington waits for the first Trump-Xi call.
DRIVING THE DAY
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL: Donald Trump is turning the screws on GOP senators as he races to get the centerpiece legislation of his term into the statute books. For the second-successive day, the president has no public-facing events on his schedule — though that could change — as he focuses attention on getting the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill over the line by the self-imposed July Fourth deadline.
This is quieter, grubbier work than the shock and awe tactics of Trump's first 100 days, and it shows. As Playbook noted last week, there has been less minute-by-minute drama emanating from the White House of late, with attention shifting away from the headline-grabbing purges of early-stage DOGE and the market-melting tariff warfare of 'Liberation Day' to the altogether muckier business of, well, getting things done.
Phase Two: VP JD Vance told us back in April that the focus of Trump's second 100 days would be very different to the low-hanging fruit of the first — chiefly, pushing this megabill through Congress while resolving key foreign policy targets like the war in Ukraine and the Iranian nuclear program, one way or another. We're very much into that phase now.
Consider Trump's Monday: A face-to-face with Majority Leader John Thune within hours of the Senate returning from its Memorial Day break. … Personal calls or meetings with key Republican holdouts, including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). … And a barrage of stream-of-consciousness Truth Social posts — totalling more than 400 words — urging GOP colleagues to hit the July Fourth deadline, and insisting (again) that the bill includes 'NO CUTS to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.'
Fact check: This last claim — hardly a new one for Trump — is the subject of a buzzy new piece by my ace POLITICO colleagues Adam Cancryn and Jake Traylor, which notes fast-shifting definitions around what the White House means by 'no cuts.' Trump, after all, has been saying for months that he will protect these very programs — and yet the BBB in its current form cuts more than $600 billion from Medicaid, and according to some estimates will see millions of people lose access to insurance. So which is it?
Here's the rub: Trump is framing the $600 billion budget cut as nothing more than a long-overdue clampdown on waste, fraud and abuse, pushing undocumented immigrants off the system as well as unemployed people who fail to sign up for training or volunteering opportunities. 'Medicaid does not belong to people who are here illegally, and it does not belong to capable and able-bodied men who refuse to work,' one White House official tells POLITICO. 'So no one is getting cut.'
This debate matters hugely: The 2026 midterms will be a referendum on Trump 2.0 — and Democrats want to convince voters the GOP chose to expend its trifecta powers delivering tax cuts for the wealthy while ripping health care from the poorest. But Trump believes he has a winning argument, too. GOP consultants say removing Medicaid from undocumented people and those refusing to work resonates strongly with voters who hate to see their hard-earned tax dollars frittered away. Whichever of these messages hits home hardest next year will go a long way to deciding who wins out.
Reminder: These arguments are playing out within the GOP Senate conference, too. Just like House Speaker Mike Johnson before him, Thune is facing pressure from both 'Medicaid moderates' nervous about the already-planned changes and deficit hard-liners who want far bigger cuts than those proposed. As usual, any shift in one direction would risk enraging the other side … And any Senate changes to the legislation will need to be signed off by the wafer-thin GOP majority in the House.
How this week pans out: Senate committees will start releasing their text portions as soon as today, per my POLITICO colleagues on Inside Congress. The uncontroversial parts will go first — we're expected to get the Armed Services panel's document today — but the real action will come later in the process, when the Finance Committee releases portions on tax and Medicaid. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told Bloomberg he expected Senate leaders to present Trump with a draft of these revisions by this weekend.
While we're waiting for all that: Trump is expected to send his rescissions plan to Congress today, as my POLITICO colleagues Meredith Lee Hill and Jennifer Scholtes scooped last week. We're expecting to see $9.4 billion in DOGE cuts codified, mostly covering NPR, PBS and foreign aid. $2 trillion in savings, it certainly ain't.
WAR AND PEACE
GOING NUCLEAR: Trump's hotly anticipated prospective nuclear deal with Iran — seemingly on the brink of being signed several weeks ago, per hints dropped by administration officials — suddenly looks a lot less certain. Trump moved to slap down surprise reports yesterday that the U.S. proposal sent to Tehran at the weekend would allow 'limited low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil,' per Axios' Barak Ravid. AP swiftly confirmed the scoop, a significant compromise which would have risked enraging GOP hard-liners.
Trump wades in: 'The AUTOPEN should have stopped Iran a long time ago from 'enriching,'' Trump wrote on Truth Social last night. 'Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!' It's unclear where that statement leaves the proposal sent by his envoy Steve Witkoff last weekend — and either way, the noises out of Tehran are not good. One senior Iranian official told CNN the U.S. plan was 'incoherent and disjointed,' while Reuters suggests Iran is poised to reject the deal.
BREAKING OVERNIGHT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: 'Israeli Soldiers Open Fire Near Gaza Aid Site. Gaza Health Officials Say 27 Are Killed,' by NYT's Patrick Kingsley and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
ALSO NOT LOOKING GOOD: Russia and Ukrainian officials agreed last night to swap killed and captured soldiers after a brief round of talks in Istanbul — but report little progress toward ending the three-year conflict, per the AP. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Russia again refused to agree to an unconditional ceasefire. The second round of talks followed Sunday's devastating Ukrainian attack on Russian air bases, and Russia's endless barrage of drone strikes on Ukrainian cities. Officials from Ukraine have proposed a third round of talks at the end of the month.
Meanwhile in Washington: The president is facing mounting pressure to impose further sanctions on the Kremlin from Senate Republicans, Semafor's Burgess Everett reports. He says several frustrated lawmakers have been 'saying recently they do not want to wait for the White House's greenlight at this point' — though Thune told reporters Trump is 'still hopeful they'll be able to strike some sort of a deal.'
IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN: 'The Pentagon is poised to shift its oversight of Greenland by putting it under U.S. Northern Command, a symbolic gesture that would more closely align the island territory with the U.S.,' POLITICO's Paul McLeary and Phelim Kine report. 'The switch is the most concrete step yet in the Trump administration's months-long effort to gain ownership over Greenland, an autonomous island aligned with Denmark.'
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
XI DRIVES ME CRAZY: Washington is still waiting for the big Trump-Xi Jinping phone call that administration officials hope will unlock stalled trade talks. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is the latest official to signal that Trump is likely to talk with the Chinese president this week, per Reuters — and it's worth recalling there's been no publicly acknowledged call between the two since Jan. 17. Trump warmed up last night (and again early this morning) with a series of pro-tariff posts on social media.
TACO Tuesday: It comes with China increasingly bullish about the way this trade war has panned out, noting Trump's surprising willingness to roll back tariffs so quickly after his initial flurry of attacks. Beijing yesterday hit back at Trump's latest claims about its conduct, with Beijing's Ministry of Commerce calling Trump's accusations 'baseless' and claiming the U.S. had been the party who 'severely undermined' the truce, per NYT.
Man with a plan: In a highly readable new profile of Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng — the man Xi has entrusted with waging war on the U.S. economy — the WSJ's Lingling Wei writes how Beijing's 'economic gatekeeper' has built an arsenal of strategic tools 'including export controls of critical materials used to make chips, cars and F-35 jets.' This, she notes, 'gives it the ability to cause the U.S. real pain.' Trump will hate every word.
Coming attractions: Despite the various legal challenges to his power to even enact trade barriers without congressional support, Trump is due to double the 25 percent steel and aluminum tariffs tomorrow. The announcement was announced last Friday night and prompted domestic steel and aluminum prices to skyrocket yesterday.
And as for those legal challenges: Trump won the 'appeals court lottery' last night, as my POLITICO colleague Kyle Cheney put it, after one of his appeals to a judgment challenging his tariff powers was handed to the only three Trump-appointed judges that sit on the D.C. Circuit Court.
MORE ECONOMY CHAT: Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are both addressing the American Compass New World Gala in D.C. tonight.
BEST OF THE REST
COMING TO A WHITE HOUSE BRIEFING NEAR YOU: Murder rates are tumbling across the U.S. in 2025, Reason's Billy Binion reports (and re-ups in an X post now going viral). Homicide stats are down at least 20 percent on last year, and we could even be on course for the lowest number on record. It's an extraordinary stat which, as he says, probably deserves a little more attention. (The trend follows dramatic falls in homicide rates in 2024 and 2023 too, Binion notes, though that's less likely to be the subject of a gleeful Truth Social post any time soon.)
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Out of the wilderness — Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, thinks he may have part of the solution to what ails Democrats: A new think tank that will 'push the Democratic Party toward the most effective, broadly popular positions regardless of which wing of the party they come from, with an eye toward 2028,' POLITICO's Elena Schneider scoops this morning. He's calling this new policy research and messaging hub 'Searchlight,' in honor of Reid's famously hardscrabble home town.
What it would do: At a hush-hush meeting of top party donors and elected officials last month in upstate New York, Jentleson pitched the group as 'an institutional space where Democrats can think freely and put … ideas out into the world,' per one person directly familiar with the project. 'Voters do not break down among the perceived ideological lines that a lot of Democrats are drawn into by the interest groups,' one retreat attendee told Elena.
THE VIEW FROM THE GOP: In 2024, Republicans made historic inroads with Latino voters. Now comes a warning from GOP consultant Albert Eisenberg in POLITICO Magazine: New survey numbers show that Latino support has curdled, and Republicans risk blowing their shot. 'It is tempting for Republicans to scoff at polls, but even if the topline voter approval is wrong, the significant drop in approval rating still matters,' Eisenberg writes. 'And both the polls and my conversations with would-be Hispanic Republicans in Pennsylvania show a clear drop-off. It should be a blaring alarm bell for the GOP as the 2026 midterms appear on the horizon.'
COLD SHOULDER FOR CUBA: POLITICO's Eric Bazail-Eimil reports how Cuba had hoped to mend relations with the U.S. by accepting five deportation flights this year, yet 'the island nation finds itself increasingly at odds with the Trump administration.'
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND: Andrew Cuomo hasn't won the New York City mayor's race yet — but he's already planning a national campaign to take on Trump. In a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO's Sally Goldenberg, the former governor and mayoral frontrunner said he plans to campaign against Trump's proposed Medicaid cuts to help Democrats in swing House districts across the country — a political strategy he says could help his party retake the House.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Virginia Del. Irene Shin is running to succeed the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) in Congress, opening with an endorsement from Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who describes Shin as a disruptor who can bring a 'different kind of politics' to Congress. In her launch video, Shin says she's running for the seat because 'this moment calls for generational change.' Watch the full video
HAPPENING TODAY: South Koreans headed to the polls overnight to elect a new president after months of political upheaval. Analysts projected that Lee Jae-myung, centrist Democratic Party candidate, would beat out Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party. But, as NYT's Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul, whoever wins faces daunting challenges, including trying to fix a sputtering domestic economy and navigating tensions between Washington and Beijing. 'The new leader must mend ties with China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, to spur exports and economic growth. But the United States, its only military ally, is demanding that South Korea help contain China.'
TALK OF THE TOWN
AND THE AWARD GOES TO: The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation honored the winners of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes for Distinguished Reporting in 2024 at its annual dinner last night. Annie Linskey, Davis Winkie and Noah Robertson were this year's honorees. More on the winners here
MEDIA MOVES — Chelsea Cirruzzo is now a Washington correspondent at Stat, covering HHS. She previously was a health care reporter at POLITICO. … Steve Shepard will be associate director of political research at Pew Research Center. He previously was senior campaign and elections editor and chief polling analyst at POLITICO. … Jason Dean will be lead analyst for WP' Intelligence's AI and tech vertical at WaPo. He previously was global technology editor at WSJ.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Harper Polling is relaunching under the leadership of pollster/owner Brock McCleary and data strategist/managing director Mike Yelovich. McCleary previously served as a pollster for Trump's 2020 campaign and Vivek Ramaswamy's 2024 presidential effort and is an NRCC alum. Yelovich was previously polling director at Cygnal. Read the full press release
— Megan Dorward is now VP of public affairs at Optimal. She previously was head of industry, government and political advertising at Snapchat.
TRANSITIONS — The Human Rights Campaign is adding Jonathan Lovitz as SVP of campaigns and comms and Amy Peña as SVP and general counsel. Lovitz most recently was a director of public affairs and senior adviser at the Biden Commerce Department. Peña previously was general counsel for the Chicago Community Trust. … Liz Abraham is now a counsel in White & Case's international trade practice. She previously was director of the international policy office at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. … Ken Farnaso is now an associate in the public affairs, regulation and geopolitical practice at the Brunswick Group. He is a Trump, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and PLUS Communications alum. …
… Tara Hupman is now VP of external affairs at the American Clean Power Association. She most recently was general counsel to the House Republican Conference. … Fara Sonderling is now a partner at Converge Public Strategies. She previously was manager of government affairs for the American Forest & Paper Association. … Chris Bowman is now director of government affairs at the Carbon Removal Alliance. He previously was a senior professional staff member for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is a Joe Manchin, Steny Hoyer, Conor Lamb and Mike Doyle alum.
WEDDINGS — Olivia Umoren, director of public policy and advocacy at USAging, and Nnamdi Ezeuko, sports performance coach at The St. James, got married May 10 on Victoria Island in Lagos, Nigeria. They met at a South African house music (amapiano) concert in D.C. featuring their favorite DJs. Pic … Another pic
— Meghan Murphy (née Maffey), a senior account manager at DCI Group, and Connor Murphy, deputy director of government affairs at Schagrin Associates, got married Saturday at the Decatur House. Pic … SPOTTED: Bill Johnson, Mike Smullen, McKenna Simpson, Alyssa Gulick, Jack Rosemond, Alex Stepahin, Laura Dyer, Sam Hattrup and Connor Crowley.
— Meg Gallagher, a policy adviser for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Marine Corps Major Matt Lake, VP of federal affairs at Havoc AI, got married on Saturday in Napa Valley at St. Helena Catholic Church followed by a reception at Meg's childhood home. The couple met in 2021 while training for the Marine Corps Marathon with the Capitol Hill Running Club and started dating a few years later. Pic … Another pic
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Former first lady Jill Biden … John Kirby … Anderson Cooper … WSJ's Michelle Hackman … Erick Erickson … David Planning of Cornerstone … Evan Medeiros … Defend the Vote's Brian Lemek … Gina Foote of FGS Global … Edelman's Rob Rehg … Avoq's Josette Barrans and Bryce Harlow … Lilia Horder of Monument Advocacy … former Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) (98), Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas) and Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) … Amy McGrath … Michael Fleischer of DDC Public Affairs … Patrick Martin of Cozen O'Connor … Kellee Lanza-Bolen … Nick Troiano ... Justin Clark (5-0) … Manisha Sunil of New Heights Communications … Sophia Sokolowski … POLITICO's Ahmed Routher
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