The Playbook Podcast

Polls open in less than an hour in Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces eight rivals — and a very real chance of being shut out of the likely April 4 runoff election. A new poll from Victory Research finds the incumbent trailing both former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County commissioner Brandon Johnson.

Plus in just a few hours, President Joe Biden's student debt relief plan will come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, whose justices will decide in the months following today’s oral arguments whether the $400 billion program is constitutional.

A lot more than debt relief for 40 million Americans is on the line. A broad ruling by the conservative high court might not only put a stake through Biden’s signature promise to young voters; it could cripple his plans to take executive action in other areas and leave federal policymaking more vulnerable to hostile states’ legal challenges.

And the House Select Committee on China holds its first hearing this evening against a backdrop of rising trans-Pacific tensions, heightened by last month’s spy balloon revelations and recent speculation that China might overtly assist Russia with its invasion of Ukraine.

The committee, operating so far with bipartisan cooperation, is supposed to take a look at the range of economic, technological and military concerns posed by China over the next two years.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Ron DeSantis's “The Courage to Be Free” will be released tomorrow, kicking off a media tour that is widely assumed to be the prelude to a formal announcement this spring that he’s running for president. 

The book rollout is taking full advantage of DeSantis’s relationship with the Rupert Murdoch media empire. The book is published by HarperCollins, which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. The first excerpt, “How the Florida blueprint can work for the whole US,” was published in the NY Post. Two authorized leaks from the book, one about his relationship with Trump and, early this morning, one about a private phone call with former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, have been published by foxnews.com.

And DeSantis started his media tour last night by giving his first interview about the book to Mark Levin, on Fox News’s “Life, Liberty & Levin.” The 40-minute conversation was as friendly and fawning as you’d expect. 

After midnight, The New York Times published a review of the book by Jennifer Szalai, who is, to put it mildly, not impressed. 

Taken together the Levin interview and the Szalai review perfectly capture how the right and left are greeting the DeSantis 2024 rollout.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

One year ago today, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine that he thought would quickly topple the government in Kyiv, expose Western powers as feckless and hopelessly divided, and usher in a new, muscular era of Russian world power. 

He was wrong on all counts. But the toll of that decision has been immense.

A year of unspeakable tragedy has left enormous questions about what lies ahead — more on that in a moment — but the history of this conflict is now beginning to be written. Our team has compiled a must-read oral history of the effort, told by those in highest echelons of power, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

Plus, national security reporter Alex Ward recently attended the Munich Security Conference and visited Poland alongside President Biden's trip to the region, and shares the view from the ground.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Did Emily Kohrs just save Donald Trump from prosecution in Georgia?

Kohrs is the 30-year-old woman from the Atlanta area who was between retail jobs last year when she was suddenly tasked with one of the most sensitive jobs in America: forewoman of the special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. 

The Kohrs-led jury listened to secret testimony for eight months last year and issued its findings and recommendations in a mostly secret report last week. The next step in the process is for FANI WILLIS, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., to decide whether she wants to indict anyone, which would require impaneling a new grand jury with the power to issue criminal charges. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

With Congress out on recess and President Joe Biden still abroad, most of today’s marquee political events are happening outside of the beltway …

— IN Iowa, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) begins his “Faith In America” listening tour, dipping his toe in the proverbial water ahead of a possible 2024 campaign. And this morning, Playbook has exclusive excerpts from Scott’s speech. 

“Conservatism is my personal proof there is no ceiling in life. I can go as high as my character, my education, and my perseverance will take me. I bear witness to that,” Scott will say. “So, for those of you on the left, you can call me a prop, you can call me a token, you can call me the N-word, you can question my blackness, you can even call me ‘Uncle Tim.’ Just understand: Your words are no match for my evidence. … The truth of my life disproves your lies.”

— IN Ohio, as former President Donald Trump visits the site of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Tanya Snyder, Alex Guillén and Adam Wren note that he’s handing Biden a political gift: a welcome contrast with his own record on rail safety regulations. 

— IN Georgia, a grand jury probing possible interference in the 2020 presidential election has recommended indictments for more than a dozen people, according to foreperson Emily Kohrs, who did an interview with NBC. That list, she said, “might” include Trump himself. “There are certainly names that you will recognize, yes. There are names also you might not recognize,” she said.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

President Joe Biden is in Europe, reminding everyone that he’s commander in chief — even as Republicans back home are angling to try to take his job.

Today, he’ll huddle with Polish President Andrzej Duda and give a speech at Warsaw Castle ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine later this week. The meeting comes as the media is still buzzing about his surprise visit to Kyiv — a risky endeavor that reportedly infuriated cronies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who may respond as he delivers his annual parliamentary address today in Moscow.

Meanwhile, on the home front, GOP presidential contenders are revving their engines.

— In his Don’t-Call-It-A-Campaign-Yet campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hit up New York, Chicago and Philly yesterday, touting his tough-on-crime agenda and goading liberal cities and prosecutors as “woke” and out of touch. NYT’s Jonathan Weisman and Emma Fitzsimmons have more. NBC’s Natasha Korecki writes that in speaking to “the rank and file of some of the biggest police unions in the country, DeSantis was homing in on a specialized electorate Trump has owned since he first ran for president in 2016.”

Tomorrow, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will head to Iowa, while former President Donald Trump will head to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment two weeks ago that has unleashed toxic chemicals into the surrounding community.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Don Lemon may just be the luckiest man in cable TV. 

The “CNN This Morning” co-anchor set the media and political worlds ablaze yesterday morning with his on-air suggestion that GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley wasn’t “in her prime” at age 51.

“A woman is considered to be in their prime in [their] 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he said.

Yet by day’s end, the vicious backlash to Lemon’s remarks had been stunningly eclipsed by blockbuster revelations about CNN’s chief rival, Fox News Channel, revealed in a new court filing made public in the $1.6 billion lawsuit over Fox’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election results.

The internal communications revealed by Dominion Voting Systems paint a stark and damning picture — a split screen between the false and conspiratorial claims beamed to Fox viewers about rigged Dominion voting machines, and the private, candid opinions of the network’s hosts and executives, who repeatedly admitted to each other that the claims were utter, unsourced garbage.

And Labor Secretary Marty Walsh confirmed he's leaving the post in March to become the next Executive Director of the National Hockey League's Player Association. The question then, who will take over his seat in the Biden administration? West Wing Playbook co-author Eli Stokols shares some names he's heard as potential nominees.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Comets have staying power because they orbit the sun, while shooting stars burn up as they crash through the Earth’s atmosphere.

The early take on Nikki Haley, who made her GOP presidential primary debut yesterday with a speech in Charleston, S.C., is that she’s more likely to shine brightly for a moment and then fall to Earth.

“[H]ers will be a highly conventional campaign,” wrote Rich Lowry after watching her announcement video, and “there will be a number of other candidates with as strong or a stronger case to represent generational change.”

In a pretty brutal editorial this morning, the Wall Street Journal says there is “no clear rationale for her candidacy.”

Over at the Times, they assembled 10 pundits to assess Haley’s candidacy, and the majority opinion was that the two-term governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations shouldn’t be taken very seriously. “Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President,” reads the headline.

We are old enough to remember when pundits in 2015 declared that Donald Trump would never be president, and we can recall nights in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada in late 2019 and early 2020 when the same was said about Joe Biden. 

Haley acknowledged the low expectations set by the nattering nabobs. “I’ve been underestimated before,” she said. She entered politics in 2004 by defeating South Carolina’s longest-serving House member. In 2010, she leapt from the statehouse to the governor’s mansion after defeating a field of seasoned politicians in a GOP primary and overcoming her close association with disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Happening today (offically offically) — “Haley enters the fray, a female candidate against a man known for mocking them,” by Natalie Allison in Charleston, S.C.: “Stepping out ahead of a field of men who spent the better part of two years mulling and flirting with a 2024 run, Nikki Haley marked her entrance into the Republican presidential primary with an announcement video and a formal event on Wednesday.

And tonight, VP Kamala Harris will board Air Force Two for the Munich Security Conference, the annual confab of global political, defense and intelligence leaders. It stands to be the most critical foreign trip of her vice presidency — at least since last year’s trip to Bavaria.  

Plus, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the oldest sitting senator at age 89, announced yesterday that she would retire at the end of her term in 2024. Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton reflect on her career in politics and what's next for her Senate seat.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio. 

“Pence to fight special counsel subpoena on Trump's 2020 election denial,” by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein: Former VP Mike Pence “is set to argue that his former role as president of the Senate — therefore a member of the legislative branch — shields him from certain Justice Department demands.

And the biggest subplot of the slowest-moving story In Washington — the partisan standoff over the federal debt ceiling — has so far centered on whether, absent a deal between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, moderate House Republicans might somehow band together with House Democrats to avoid a catastrophic default.

The speculation has gone far enough to prompt several explainers about how it all might work — whether through a discharge petition or other obscure House procedures that could allow a bipartisan coalition to skirt conservatives’ spending-cut demands.

Plus, it’s consumer price index day in DC, and once again, the economy faces an interesting conundrum. Economics reporter Victoria Guida breaks down what the Fed and the Biden administration are looking for. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.