The Playbook Podcast

Sixteen months after Donald Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president, a prominent election denier in Pennsylvania inched closer to becoming the next governor of Pennsylvania. State Sen. Doug Mastriano — who attended and helped organize for the “Stop the Steal” rally, has called for audits of Keystone State votes and has been subpoenaed by the...

Today is one of the most consequential primary days of the year, with nominating contests in five states — Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania — that will tell us a great deal about the direction of the two parties.  There are three major storylines that continue to dominate the 2022 primary season: Donald Trump's grip on the GOP Progressive challenges to Biden-like Democratic...

Russia has faced a dizzying series of setbacks in its war with Ukraine over the last week: Sweden and Finland are being fast-tracked into NATO membership, which means Russia will soon share an 810-mile border with NATO. More from NYT Ukrainian troops pushed the Russians from the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and are now approaching the Russian border. Latest from Reuters Rus...

When GOP Rep. Liz Cheney decided to risk everything politically and serve on Nancy Pelosi's newly created Jan. 6 investigative panel in the spring of last year, she made something of a vow to herself, according to people close with the Wyoming Republican: She would follow the facts wherever they went, and privately press for the panel to leave no stone unturned to get to the truth of the siege of...

This week was another reminder that while Democrats “control” the Senate, they don’t actually control the Senate. Covid relief was cut from the Ukraine aid bill. A national law to codify abortion protections — should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade — came nowhere close to the 60 votes needed to advance it. And the 50 votes it would take to nuke the filibuster and pass the abortion rights la...

Former President Donald Trump goes 1-for-2 on primary day in Nebraska and West Virginia.  And new reporting from inside the Supreme Court, via Josh Gerstein, Alexander Ward and Ryan, as the nine justices are set to gather Thursday for the first time since POLITICO published the draft opinion overturning Roe: “Justice Samuel Alito's sweeping and blunt draft majority opinion from February overturnin...

PRIMARY DAY: WHAT TO WATCH FOR — West Virginia and Nebraska hold primaries today. Like last week’s contests in Ohio, the action is mostly on the Republican side, and the main drama is about former President DONALD TRUMP. WEST VIRGINIA: Two GOP incumbents, Reps. ALEX MOONEY and DAVID MCKINLEY,  are facing each other in a congressional primary because the state lost a seat after redistricting. NEBRA...

Happy Monday. Get ready for yet another week dominated by the debate over abortion rights, as the impending decision expected to overturn Roe v. Wade sucks up all the oxygen in Washington.  Two major storylines to watch this week, as Democrats gear up to go on offense: 1) Senate tees up abortion vote — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to file cloture today on a bill by Sen. Richard...

Overturning Roe v. Wade would be the culmination of  former president Donald Trump’s bid to remake the judiciary — the very reason that many social conservatives held their noses and voted for him in 2016.  But Trump, “never one to shy away from taking credit for accomplishments, real or imagined, has yet to crow about the majority draft opinion,” our colleagues Meridith McGraw and Jonathan Lemire...

J.D. Vance owes his GOP Senate primary victory in Ohio to two people: Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. Trump’s endorsement put him over the top in a crowded primary, while Thiel’s support — funneled through a super PAC called Protect Ohio Values (aka POV) — enabled Vance to outsource many traditional campaign operations, including polling, advertising, GOTV and, it turns out, opposition research. One...

On her first day back in public since testing positive for the coronavirus last week, VP Kamala Harris spoke to a crowd of abortion rights supporters at the EMILY’s List conference Tuesday evening. Her speech, scheduled long in advance, had to be completely rewritten for obvious reasons. Harris gave a preview of how the administration hopes to frame the debate moving forward — channeling its suppo...

In his own words: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Thus begins Justice Samuel Alito's February draft opinion that would end the cons...

It’s May 2, just over six months until the midterm elections, which are generally a referendum on the president’s performance. President Joe Biden is in rough shape. Let’s look at how it happened, and how he hopes to prevent a wipeout … How they got here: As early as April 2021, John Anzalone — Biden’s top pollster — saw the writing on the wall. In a series of memos over the ensuing months, he tri...

Most of the candidates chasing Ohio’s GOP Senate nomination have pledged allegiance to Donald Trump and beaten a path to Mar-a-Lago. But not state Sen. Matt Dolan. Instead, he’s poured millions of his own fortune into a run as a traditional conservative. Now, “days before the May 3 primary, Dolan appears to be experiencing a late burst of momentum,” Natalie Allison reports. Listen to Playbook Deep...

The enormous gap between the excitement in Washington about the return of the WHCA weekend and the ongoing anxiety of voters hit us hard this week as we watched focus groups of voters conducted by longtime Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. On Tuesday night, Lake talked to a group of “high -information” Democrats scattered around the country over a Zoom call while we watched on mute. This appeared...

The news that Elon Musk is buying Twitter has thrown Washington into a tizzy over one major question: Will Donald Trump return to his old favorite social media platform and start tweeting again? As it turns out, no one is more petrified of this than members of Trump’s own party.   On Monday night, in a series of calls and texts with several top GOP insiders, every single one of them told us that t...

Congress returns from a two-week recess facing the same unresolved issues that have plagued lawmakers for months. Lawmakers left town unable to pass a bipartisan deal to provide the administration with $10 billion in pandemic relief money and there’s still no immediate solution in sight. The White House announced another $800 million tranche of Ukraine aid last week, but says it needs Congress to...

For years now, through controversy after controversy, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has bent over backward to stay in former President Donald Trump's good graces, all to serve one major purpose: He wants to be speaker someday. That hope may have just blown up on the launchpad. On Thursday night, NYT’s Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns delivered an absolute stunner of a scoop: an audio recordin...

Whether it’s pandemic restrictions and schools, or critical race theory and political correctness, when it comes to the culture wars raging across America, the right often dances circles around the left. And because of that, many Democrats — particularly those in vulnerable seats — either avoid engaging on those topics altogether or privately beg their colleagues to avoid overly “woke” rhetoric or...

Tech mogul Peter Thiel gave J.D. Vance's Ohio Senate campaign a fresh infusion of cash, pouring in $3.5 million to Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC backing Vance, our colleague Alex Isenstadt reports, “part of a broader tranche of money that has come in to support the Senate candidate after last week’s [Donald] Trump endorsement.” Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter Raghu Manavalan is...

On Monday, just hours after a federal judge struck down the nationwide public transportation mask mandate, major airlines (and even President Joe Biden’s beloved Amtrak) began telling their passengers they could stop wearing the protective face coverings — sometimes while they had already boarded and taken their assigned seats. The surprise ruling seems to have caught the White House flat-footed o...

Democratic strategists have split in two over how to discuss inflation.  One camp tends to blame the media for focusing too much on the issue at the expense of positive economic news such as low unemployment. This group tends to promote statistics buried beneath the headlines that suggest inflation isn’t that bad. But privately, more and more Democrats see inflation in far more dire terms — and no...

With Ohio’s May 3 Senate GOP primary barely two weeks away and no clear frontrunner, J.D. Vance's rivals are mounting an all-out effort to head off a potential endorsement from former President Donald Trump, per our colleagues Natalie Allison, Meridith McGraw, Alex Isenstadt and Daniel Lippman. Trump seems intent on picking a horse in all the big GOP primaries. But several candidates are bunched t...

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be out covering the key districts and states that will decide the outcome of the midterm elections.  Nevada has one of 2022’s most under-covered Senate races. The incumbent, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, keeps a low profile in Washington and back home, but she’s raised a record amount of money and is spending big on TV ads. Nevada has a famously transient popul...

Here’s something Democrats agree on: High gas prices — and the inflation rate they’re driving up — are a huge political liability. Here’s something Democrats don’t agree on: what to do about it. On Tuesday, as the new 8.5% annualized inflation rate was announced, President Joe Biden was in Iowa, addressing concerns about energy costs and touting his decision to remove restrictions on the sale of E...