Donald Trump is promising a “golden age of America” in his second term, and he’s issuing a raft of executive orders to try and make it happen.

The president signed a slew of orders and directives that aim to end birthright citizenship and crack down on illegal crossings at the southern border, increase domestic energy production and transform a federal government he views as both too bloated and too “woke.”

It’s unclear which of Trump’s executive actions will have immediate impact or are merely symbolic. But they’re already facing challenges. The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency drew lawsuits hours before Trump signed the paperwork to create it. Some of his more controversial orders — including the one targeting birthright citizenship — also immediately hit legal challenges. And while Trump pledged in his inaugural address to create an “External Revenue Service” to collect tariffs and revenues from foreign nations, he’ll need congressional approval to create the new agency.

Here’s a look at what Trump signed on Day One — and his executive actions since:

Jan. 6 pardons

Trump pardoned some 1,500 people who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a sweeping grant of clemency that fulfilled a campaign-trail promise and upended years of the Justice Department’s efforts.

Immigration

Trump signed a slew of executive orders on Monday aimed at delivering on his long-promised crackdown on illegal border crossings and immigration more broadly. He also declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying U.S. Armed Forces to the region.

He intends to end birthright citizenship by issuing an executive action that would reinterpret the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to all people born on domestic soil — a move that drew swift legal challenges, including from Democratic attorneys general.

Trump also moved to:

• Resume construction of the border wall
• End so-called catch and release
• Temporarily suspend refugee resettlement from certain countries for at least four months
• Restart the “Remain in Mexico” policy of his first term
• Restrict asylum using 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act
• Designate drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations and invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove them — or, as he put it in his inaugural address, “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil”
• Direct the incoming attorney general to seek capital punishment for the murder of law enforcement and capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants

Energy

Trump wants to “drill, baby, drill.” He’s going to do it by declaring a “national energy emergency” that would give him the power to increase domestic energy production — and undo many of the Biden administration’s clean-energy policies. The White House also announced that the U.S. will withdraw, again, from the Paris Climate Accord.

Among Trump’s other planned moves:

• Issue a memorandum detailing a governmentwide approach to bringing down inflation, according to the Trump team
• End what his team has referred to as an “electric vehicle mandate”
• End leasing to massive wind farms that “degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers”

Federal workforce

Want to work remote? Good luck. Trump signed executive orders last night focused on the federal workforce, including one order instructing all U.S. government departments and agencies to require employees to return to office, ending any remote accommodations. Trump also announced a hiring freeze across the executive branch except in “essential areas.”

The president also removed job protections for tens of thousands of government workers, which the White House said was necessary to rein in what Trump describes as “deep state” bureaucracy.

Among Trump’s other planned moves:

• End “radical and wasteful” diversity training programs, as well as environmental justice programs, equity-related grants and equity initiatives
• Freeze hiring except in essential areas to “end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce,” according to the White House
• Freeze the issuing of new regulations
• Direct agencies to address the “cost of living crisis”
• Restore “freedom of speech” and “preventing government censorship”
• Create the “Department of Government Efficiency” 

Health

Trump said in his speech the White House will instruct the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, as well as other agencies to remove “nonbinary” or “other” options from federal documents, including passports and visas, according to an incoming administration official.

“It will officially be the policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said.

He also signed an executive order removing the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

Among Trump’s other planned moves:

• Reinstate military members who were penalized for not getting vaccinated against Covid-19

Trade

Trump hasn’t enacted new tariffs, yet. Instead, he issued an order on Monday directing federal agencies to investigate and address trade deficits and unfair trade and currency practices.

Among Trump’s other planned moves:

• Impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Feb. 1 (despite pledging to enact these broad tariffs on Day One)
• Establish the “External Revenue Service,” aiming to collect tariffs and other revenues from foreign nations

The rest

• Extend the deadline for TikTok to be divested or banned, a move that has questionable legality
• Suspend U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending a review of whether they align with his agenda
• Rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — he’ll also return Mount Denali in Alaska to the name Mount McKinley, reversing an Obama-era change

© Evan Vucci/AP

Watch: Musk salutes Trump inauguration crowd

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Watch: Biden leaves Washington after Trump's swearing-in ceremony

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Highlights from Trump's inauguration eve rally

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The first time Donald Trump gave an inaugural address, official Washington winced.

It was a scorching and dystopian assessment of what he cast as a country in ruins — this “American carnage,” Trump said. And it was, as George W. Bush reportedly called it, “some weird shit.”

But that’s not how much of Trump’s MAGA base remembers it. Like Trump, they, too, saw a hollowed-out nation in 2017. But what Trump’s supporters mostly recalled in the president-elect — and the repeat performance they are preparing for on Monday — is redemption.

Phillip Stephens, the Republican Party chair in Robeson County, North Carolina, which shifted sharply toward Trump in November, said that what he heard from Trump in 2017 was “a lot of hopeful stuff.” And James Dickey, a former chair of the Texas Republican Party, remembered “feeling positive.”

Fixing “the degradation that we all saw and were living through … that was all part of fulfilling the Make America Great Again promise,” he said.

For the base, Dickey said, it was “refreshing.”

And if Trump’s first inaugural address was lacking in the traditionally conciliatory rhetoric of victory, his loyalists weren’t missing it that year — or expecting him to change course.

“We can talk about unity, but you know, those that are against him just aren’t going to do it,” said Sally Kizer, an organizer of a tea party group in Arizona’s Yuma County. “He’s got so many things he wants to do.”

Trump is leaning on Ross Worthington and Vince Haley, who helped shape his speeches during the campaign, to craft his inaugural address, according to two people familiar with the process and granted anonymity to describe preparations. However other advisers, including immigration hawk Stephen Miller, will have a hand in it. The president-elect told NBC News on Saturday that the theme of the speech would be “unity and strength, and also the word ‘fairness.’”

It’s that last word that may be instructive. Trump said, “Because you have to be treating people fairly. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, everything’s going to be wonderful.’ You know, we went through hell for four years with these people. And so, you know, something has to be done about it.”

As for unity, that’s the kind of rhetoric his advisers suggested he would offer before his first inaugural eight years ago, too. And it’s hard to find anyone, Republican or Democrat, who expects him to follow through.

“Do I think it will on net be negative? Yeah,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan and former executive director of the state’s Republican Party, who was critical of Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election following his defeat that year. “I do think it will be, for Trump, more positive than normal, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Trump speech that I came away from saying, ‘Oh, that was a very hopeful speech.’”

While Trump will likely convey to Republicans “some optimism about the mandate and the opportunity” of a second Trump term, Roe said, “It’s hard to call that positive. It’s like, yeah, let’s go punch these fuckers.”

Which is exactly the kind of rhetoric that animated his supporters in the first place — and that was so breaking with custom in his first inaugural address. In that speech, Trump blistered Washington and a decaying nation of rampant crime, “mothers and children trapped in poverty” and “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones.” It was an aberration for an inaugural address ranking “on a scale of 1 to 10, about an 11,” said Russell Riley, the co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia.

Since then, Trump’s oratorical range has plunged to even lower registers.

At 78 and following two impeachments, one defeat, a raft of criminal cases and two apparent assassination attempts, his rhetoric has grown angrier and more rambling over time. In his campaign rallies last year, he demonized migrants and minority groups in racist and xenophobic diatribes.

“The sense you get from the campaign rhetoric is everything is bad, it’s corrupt, it’s rotten,” Riley said.

He cited Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and George Wallace, who brought their own “coarse contributions to rhetoric. But nothing like what we’ve experienced in the last 10 years or so.”

Much of that is Trump’s contribution. But in some ways, Riley said, “what he was doing was surfing the wave. He discovered that sort of coarsened rhetoric worked, so he took part in it, and he showed you could be successful politically for taking part in it. So these two things, they interact with one another, they build on one another. Presidential rhetoric always participates in the broader trends in the culture.”

There is another trend in the culture, too — our partisanship — reflected in Trump’s polarizing remarks in 2017, and likely again on Monday. He will take office amid contentious Cabinet appointment hearings. On Wednesday, Joe Biden — hardly an eloquent speaker, but not a crass one, either, at ease invoking Seamus Heaney or William Butler Yeats — warned in his grim farewell address of a democracy-threatening “oligarchy” in America.

Trump, said Ken Khachigian, a former Ronald Reagan speechwriter, would be well served to deliver a straightforward and restrained address. But it would be nonsensical, he said, for him to give a speech about this being “a time for warmth and unity, when hardly anybody means it.”

Even if he did deliver such an address, Khachigian said, “24 hours later [Chuck] Schumer’s going to have his stiletto out and try to cut his guts open.”

Political discourse in America, he said, has devolved into “a lot of anger all the time.”

Trump capitalized on that public sentiment in his campaign. And when it comes to anger in his speech-making, he’s on a planet of his own. It’s unclear what policies he will discuss on Monday. But he has promised to deport millions of immigrants starting on “Day One.” He has pledged to dismantle whole swaths of the bureaucracy and called forrevenge on his political enemies, including by prosecuting them.

“His inaugural address might be a reading of arrest warrants,” mused David Blaska, a former Dane County, Wisconsin, supervisor who worked as a speechwriter for former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson and who supported Trump in 2020, but not in 2024.

“Part of the rapture,” Blaska said, “is that the sinners are cast into hell.”

Dasha Burns contributed to this report.

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© Alex Wong/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump will “probably” travel to Southern California next week, he told NBC News, making the likely first trip of his second term to the liberal stronghold still reeling from some of the worst wildfires in its history.

In a wide-ranging phone interview on Saturday with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, Trump said he “was going to go, actually yesterday,” to the Golden State, but decided “it would be better if I went as president.”

The wildfires have been raging in and around Los Angeles since Jan. 7, killing dozens and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate, according to the Associated Press, as they ravaged the country’s second-largest city.

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has been criticized by Trump and Republicans for his handling of the fires — invited Trump to visit California last week. President Joe Biden was in Los Angeles when the fires started earlier this month, and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose primary residence is in Los Angeles, canceled her final foreign trip as vice president due to the fires.

Tensions have flared in recent weeks between Trump and Newsom, and in the interview, Trump said he had not yet spoken to the governor about the fires. Trump also discussed a number of other issues, including his plans to ramp up mass deportations “very early, very quickly,” but said he didn’t want to reveal which cities the operation would begin in because “you’ll see it firsthand.”

Trump said he believes he and his team “made the right decision” to move Monday’s inauguration ceremony into the Capitol due to freezing temperatures, and added that he aims to sign “a record-setting number of documents … right after this [inauguration] speech.”

When discussing TikTok — which said it would “go dark” on Sunday after the Supreme Court ruled the app must be sold to a non-Chinese buyer — the president-elect said a “90-day extension is something that will be most likely done.”

“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he added.

And on the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that Israel agreed to earlier Saturday, Trump pledged to ensure the deal would hold via “good government.” He said he would meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally, “fairly soon.”

© Evan Vucci/AP Photo

President-elect Donald Trump is bringing back a senior White House official who led his first-term push to make it easier to fire civil servants.

James Sherk, who served as a special assistant on domestic policy during Trump’s first term, will return to serve in the White House Domestic Policy Council, Trump announced Saturday. Sherk has worked at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute during the Biden administration.

Sherk was central to the Trump administration’s efforts to make it easier to fire some federal employees using a classification called Schedule F. That effort generated an outcry from civil servants, and the Biden administration moved quickly to reverse course.

But the effort “could — and should — be reissued by another president,” Sherk wrote in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “The President Needs the Power to Fire Bureaucrats.”

The incoming Trump administration has made it clear that it plans to pursue drastic reforms to the federal workforce, and Sherk is poised to be central to those efforts. Trump has vowed to “shatter the deep state” and make it easier to fire “rogue bureaucrats.”

During the Biden administration, Sherk has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with multiple agencies seeking career staffers' emails that mention Trump or President Joe Biden around the time of the 2020 election and the 2021 inauguration, he told POLITICO’s E&E News in 2022.

"While it is of course perfectly fine for federal employees to have their own political views, the extent to which those views differ from the American electorate is of interest," Sherk said at the time.

Reporter Kevin Bogardus contributed. 

© James Sherk/LinkedIn

It's been a dozen years since the Stonewall Democrats, a once-prominent LGBTQ+ rights group, went defunct. But now, on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a new coalition of state-level advocacy groups is reestablishing a national presence to gird against the incoming president and a Republican-controlled Congress.

The group, the National Federation of Stonewall Democrats, comes together at a fraught time for movement, amid recriminations from within the Democratic Party that its focus on transgender rights harmed Democrats in November. Those behind the new organization, whose establishment was shared first with POLITICO, said they plan to press congressional Democrats to oppose what they fear will be an onslaught of bills and executive actions targeting their communities — even though such efforts are likely to have a limited impact given that the party is out of power in both chambers.

“Our job is to continue to push for the Democrats who are elected to make sure that they're speaking up,” said Jeremy Comeau, the federation’s president and a Democratic activist from Massachusetts. “If they just let the Republicans steamroll these issues through the Congress without providing the words of support for the community … we’re doomed.”

The umbrella group, composed of 21 state-level advocacy organizations, is emerging at a time when Democratic resistance to Trump and Republicans’ policies has otherwise been fractured and largely floundering since his November win.

Stonewall Democrats have reason to be on edge in the fight over transgender rights. Trump, who will be sworn in for a second term on Monday, vowed in December at the conservative gathering AmericaFest 2024: “With the stroke of my pen on Day 1, we are going to stop the transgender lunacy.”

He also promised to get “transgender out of the military” and in K-12 public schools and upon his return make it “the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders — male and female” through executive orders.

Trump’s Cabinet picks are an immediate concern for the coalition. His nominee to lead the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, has been critical in the past about gay people serving openly in the military, though he has said more recently that they should.

But Stonewall Democrats are also dealing with fractures within their own party over transgender issues. While Hegseth was fielding senators' questions, across the Capitol, House Republicans passed a bill banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls sports at institutions that receive federal dollars. Two House Democrats, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, voted in support of it.

Organizers are not ruling out intervening in Democratic primaries as a method of “holding candidates accountable” — including sitting Democrats — following in the footsteps of another group, the Christopher Street Project PAC, that has said it will pressure and potentially primary Democrats who take anti-trans votes. Some activists said they feared the party may be backsliding on the issue — with at least two people affiliated with the National Federation of Stonewall Democrats calling out Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) by name.

The six-term Democrat ignited backlash from some in his party over his comments immediately following Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump that suggested the party’s electoral defeats were at least partly to blame on its embrace of transgender issues and Republicans’ success in weaponizing that against them. Republicans, for instance, had hammered Harris with an ad that said: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”

Following the election, Moulton, who has since tempered his comments on the issue and did not support the GOP-led transgender athlete bill, told The New York Times that “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.” He said he didn’t want his own daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

But his initial remarks continue to outrage LGBTQ+ advocates.

“The congressman is absolutely out of his mind if he thinks that that's the reason why we lost the election,” Comeau said, adding that one goal of the group is “ to call out Democrats when they are using our community as a reason for these reasons that we lose elections.”

Refurbishing the Democratic Party's credentials on LGBTQ+ issues, advocates say, will start with influencing the party's core infrastructure. Stonewall Democrats members are meeting with candidates running to be the party’s next chair and are discussing organizing and messaging strategies around potential policy fights across levels of government. They have also established a political action committee with hopes of recruiting and supporting LGBTQ+ candidates in the 2026 midterms.

“This isn't just simply about saying Democrats are right and Republicans are wrong,” said Brian Sims, a former state representative who made history as the first elected gay state legislator in Pennsylvania. “This is about giving the DNC and national Democrats an opportunity and platforms and expertise at the ground level to advocate for equality … but also to understand what the pipeline looks like for challengers to bad members of Congress [and] to support better members of Congress.”

Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

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© LM Otero/AP

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

DNC leadership candidate Michael Blake talks what Dems need to be exciting

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DNC chair candidate says Dems need a leader for 'wartime footing'

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Should Biden have dropped out earlier? DNC candidates for vice chair respond

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Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp leads Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a hypothetical matchup in next year’s Senate race, according to new polling from a conservative group.

The poll, conducted by WPA Intelligence for the Club for Growth and shared with POLITICO, also found Ossoff leading by double digits over several other potential GOP candidates.

In a head-to-head matchup, Kemp led Ossoff 46 to 40 percent, with 14 percent undecided.

By contrast, Ossoff led other Republicans, including Rep. Buddy Carter by 13 points; Rep. Mike Collins by 10 points; insurance commissioner John King by 16 points; Rep. Rich McCormick by 11 points and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by 14 points.

The survey of 500 likely Senate voters was conducted in mid-January and had a margin of error of 4.4 points.

Kemp, the most popular Republican official in the state, has not said whether he will run for Senate in 2026. He has expressed openness to a potential 2028 run for the Republican presidential nomination. Kemp currently serves as chair of the Republican Governors Association.

The 2026 Senate map is notably small and Georgia is one of the GOP’s best pickup opportunities.

Kemp has had a turbulent relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, who harbored resentment toward Kemp and other GOP officials in Georgia for declining to work to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state.

But as Trump found himself in what appeared to be a tightening race against Kamala Harris last summer, he was encouraged by friends and advisers to patch things up with Kemp, after weeks earlier referring to him as a “bad guy” and “average governor.”

Ossoff won election in January 2021 after a tight runoff against GOP Sen. David Perdue, an election that took place in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 election loss and comments the former president made discouraging Republicans from trusting election results in the state. GOP turnout in the runoff election cratered.

Ossoff made his first high-profile run for a suburban Georgia House seat in 2017 in one of the first major special elections after Trump won in 2016. He lost to Republican Karen Handel but her victory was short-lived. She lost to now-Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) in 2018.

Trump won the state in November by just over 2 percentage points, defeating Harris 50.7 percent to 48.5 percent.

The poll found Kemp’s favorability to be 58 percent in the state, while Trump’s was 48 percent, and Ossoff’s 45 percent.

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© Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Democratic National Committee and POLITICO co-host an in-person candidate forum for DNC officer elections in Detroit, Michigan, focused on the Midwest region. The forum will be moderated by POLITICO journalists including Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels, White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns, Politics Bureau Chief and Senior Political Columnist Jonathan Martin, and National Political reporters Elena Schneider and Holly Otterbein.

The forum will begin at 1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, Jan. 16, and feature candidates for Chair, Vice Chair, Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Participation, Secretary, Treasurer, and National Finance Chair.

A nonprofit founded by perennial candidate Stacey Abrams has settled a complaint with the Georgia Ethics Commission and will pay $300,000 to the state for illegally spending millions to bolster Abrams’ gubernatorial bid in 2018.

According to the consent order, which was made public on Wednesday following the ethics commission’s vote to approve it, the New Georgia Project and its fundraising arm, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, failed to disclose roughly $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures that were used mostly to support Abrams during the 2018 primary and general election.

The order details 16 violations of state law, including the group’s failure to register as a political committee, failure to file a number of required disclosure reports, and failure to disclose millions of dollars in political contributions and expenditures. By agreeing to the consent order and by paying the $300,000 penalty, the New Georgia Project admits it broke the law, according to the order.

The consent order also details New Georgia Project’s involvement advocating for a ballot initiative in 2019 that would have expanded public transportation. That violation included more than $600,000 in contributions and $173,000 in expenditures.

David Emadi, executive director of Georgia’s ethics commission, said in a statement that the fine is the largest ever imposed by the commission and may be the largest fine by a state ethics board in a campaign finance case ever.

“While this fine is significant in scale, it is also appropriate given the scope of which state law was violated in this case,” Emadi said. “This represents the largest and most significant instance of an organization illegally influencing our statewide elections in Georgia that we have ever discovered, and I believe this sends a clear message to both the public and potential bad actors moving forward that we will hold you accountable.”

David Fox, who represented New Georgia Project at the hearing, said the agreement was a "reasonable resolution" for something that took place years ago, adding that the group is "eager to move forward."

During the ethics commission’s meeting on Wednesday, Emadi presented social media posts, checks, canvassing and phone banking information as evidence of New Georgia Project’s and the action fund’s work to bolster Abrams in 2018. The presentation also showed routine overlap between the two groups.

The board unanimously approved the consent order.

The agreement brings to a close a yearslong investigation into the group’s activity dating back to 2019 that went to court a number of times. The ethics commission subpoenaed for the group’s bank records and revised its complaint in 2022 after the Georgia Court of Appeals approved access to the statements.

In another case, the New Georgia Project sought to block the ethics board’s probe, but in July 2024 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a district court ruling that had initially halted the investigation.

A 2023 POLITICO investigation found the group's former executive director — Nsé Ufot — owes the organization thousands of dollars in “non-work-related” reimbursements.

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2014 as an offshoot of another nonprofit called Third Sector Development. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock chaired the organization for more than two years, from when it first became an independent 501(c)3 in 2017 to January of 2020.

A spokesperson for Abrams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

© Ben Gray/AP

Faiz Shakir, who led Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, is jumping into the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee — injecting a new candidate into the low-key contest.

Shakir confirmed his candidacy in a text message to POLITICO. The New York Times first reported Shakir’s decision.

Shakir’s late entrance into the race could shake up a contest that has largely focused on party mechanics rather than its ideology. In a letter to DNC members, Shakir said he’s become “frustrated” by the “lack of vision and conviction for what to do to restore a deeply damaged Democratic brand,” prompting his decision to join the race.

“We all seemingly agree — rhetorically at least — that focusing on winning back America’s diverse working class is of utmost priority,” Shakir wrote in his letter to DNC members. “But as I have listened to our candidates, I sense a constrained, status-quo style of thinking. We cannot expect working class audiences to see us any differently if we are not offering anything new or substantive to attract their support.”

But Shakir starts his bid far behind Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin, both of whom have rolled out high-profile endorsements and locked down some of the DNC's 448 members, who will vote for their party’s chair on Feb. 1. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has also carved out a bloc of support among DNC members.

The DNC chair candidates will participate in their second forum on Thursday in Michigan, but Shakir, who entered the race on Wednesday, will not be on the stage. There are two more forums scheduled in January.

In his letter to members, Shakir laid out some of his platform for his bid, including a pledge to turn the DNC into “an organizing army” with its own “powerful media outlet” that will release its own “compelling original content.”

© Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Bannon urges Trump to eradicate 'weaponization' of government

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Bannon: Musk 'doesn't have much power' over Trump

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Steve Bannon taunted his fellow Trump ally Elon Musk on Tuesday, telling POLITICO that the president-elect’s billionaire right-hand-man doesn’t have all that much power.

Bannon, a former chief strategist for Trump and host of the “War Room” podcast, told POLITICO White House bureau chief Dasha Burns that Musk has had some influence over Cabinet picks and policy discussions but that he doesn’t “have the ability to actually make decisions and inform those decisions and drive those decisions.”

As Trump’s big-tent GOP returns to power, Bannon and Musk have served as a prime example of the infighting already underway — and the challenges it will pose to the incoming president. Allies argue that it offers an early reminder of the incoming president’s governing style, a way for Trump to retain his decision making power, while ensuring no one faction gains too much control.

In dismissing Musk’s influence, Bannon pointed to Scott Bessent winning out over Musk’s favorite, Howard Lutnick, for Treasury secretary. He also noted that in the fight over H-1B visas — which are designed to allow companies to bring skilled workers to the U.S. and favored by Musk — the Tesla CEO has already budged by acknowledging that the program needs reform. Bannon said Tuesday they’ll move Musk even closer to the stance of MAGA loyalists — that the program should be done away with entirely.

The comments at "POLITICO Playbook: The First 100 Days" event marked Bannon’s latest provocation against Musk and a warning shot that MAGA loyalists will continue to fight and undercut Trump’s new companion. And even as the former Trump strategist claims that Musk has limited influence, Bannon acknowledged that Musk had backed Trump's campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, "deserves a place at the table" and isn’t going anywhere — noting that there will naturally be clashes amid the broad coalition Trump has built.

“We’re winning this round, and we’re winning this round pretty big,” Bannon said, referring to the H-1B fight. “I think we’ll get Elon there. As soon as I can turn Elon Musk from a techno-feudalist to a populist nationalist, we’ll start making real progress.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Bannon also predicted that Trump’s new White House will look different from the “contentious, in-the-open fighting” from the first administration. He credited incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles for her leadership style, calling her “fantastic” and a “safe pair of hands.”

But there are plenty of challenges ahead for the GOP. Bannon said Trump trusts Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, which he said is important as Republicans try to legislate with a slim trifecta of power. But he said it will be an “intense” period for the party, adding that the discussion over the best reconciliation strategy to forge ahead with Trump’s legislative agenda is the most “important fight” right now — one that will set the tone for the next four years.

“President Trump's very comfortable with both people, and I think that’s very important because this is gonna be like going into combat, right? This is gonna be so — in the moment it’s gonna be so intense and decisions are going to have to be made. You have to trust the judgment of those people,” Bannon said, adding that he has different opinions. “President Trump makes the ultimate decisions.”

Bannon said the early days of Trump’s second administration will be even more intense than the shock and awe from his first term, from quick Cabinet confirmations to a slew of executive actions and legislation. He argued the incoming president and his team are even more prepared, pointing to a deep bench of Trump loyalists and groups like Project 2025 that spent the last several years developing policies.

The shock and awe of 2017, however, has been replaced.

“We refer to it right now as ‘days of thunder,’” Bannon said. “And I think these days of thunder starting next week are going to be incredibly, incredibly intense.”

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Bannon calls Project 2025's influence 'years in the making'

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A coalition of MAGA die-hards, tech bros and blue-collar workers were key to Donald Trump’s November victory.

Now, some of them are already at each other’s throats.

Free traders and protectionists are at odds over Trump’s promise to enact “universal” tariffs. Immigration hard-liners are butting heads with tech companies that support legal immigration. And isolationists are grappling with the president-elect’s apparently increasingly expansionist global agenda.

And days before he takes office some of Trump’s most ardent original supporters have been the most resistant to the bigger tent.

“There’s going to be a fundamental ideological clash between the original MAGA base that supported President Trump from the beginning and the tech overlords who are literally buying influence so that they can try to manipulate and change our foreign policy and our tech policy and our immigration policy,” said Laura Loomer, the controversial conservative activist who said she lost premium features on X due to disagreeing with Elon Musk on immigration policy.

These clashes, including opening shots in recent days from longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon at the president-elect’s new companion Musk, presage the challenges Trump faces in governing his newly big-tent Republican Party.

But some Trump allies argue these divides are a feature — not a bug — of Trump’s governing style. During his first administration, the president-elect was known for running his Cabinet like an executive boardroom: He brought together a cadre of diverse interests, let them duke it out and then, on his own, decided the path forward. That strategy, of encouraging competition among his advisers, allowed Trump to retain the ultimate decision-making authority and prevented any one group from gaining too much power.

“Whenever one of these issues comes up and there’s a fight, like between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, and I’m like, well, whose name is on the ballot? Trump’s,” said Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist who was at one point considered for the president-elect’s press secretary post. “His personal and his political influence is at its apex. And so if there’s a fight or a division going on, and he’s got two people who are legitimately allies of Trump and want to see him do well but they’re fighting or competing for his ear on something, ultimately, his power and influence here is going to settle it, I would imagine, rather quickly. There’s no more powerful person in Washington right now.”

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Beyond the schism between hardcore MAGA loyalists and Musk over H-1B visas — which are designed to allow companies to bring skilled foreign workers to the U.S. but have drawn the ire of some Democrats and Republicans — some Trump loyalists like Loomer and Bannon have also attacked noted venture capitalists and players in the tech world.

“This is only the first of many eruptions and fractures between the MAGA base and the so-called Tech Right as they call themselves — and I say ‘as they call themselves’ because these guys are not right wing — they decided to support Trump after he was almost assassinated, but their voting record and their political giving history shows [otherwise],” Loomer said.

In an interview with POLITICO, Bannon also took aim at tech funders Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, who are said to have Trump’s ear — and even questioned his pick of Ken Howery to be ambassador to Greenland due to his ties to Thiel.

“I hope our efforts in Greenland are not associated with that,” Bannon said.

Trump observers say the spat reflects a long-standing truth in Trump world — being in his inner circle is always a moving target. The president-elect has long had a reputation for making policy decisions based on the last person he talked to about an issue.

“Steve Bannon has been in his ear for a long time, something of a base whisperer, yet now we see Elon coming into prominence,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump administration appointee. But “at the end of the day, it is [Trump’s] decision — whether it’s H-1B visas, whether it’s critical foreign policy — and he has no problem asserting himself and leaving others out in the cold. The king whisperer can easily find himself on the other side of the moat.”

Trump’s first administration was chock full of groups that were at odds with each other: establishment Republicans and MAGA outsiders; policy pragmatists and ideologues; hawks and isolationists; institutionalists and loyalists; and family and non-family. Those splits allowed Trump to frame himself as the ultimate consensus-builder and dealmaker, including with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the renegotiation of NAFTA.

And he appears to be taking the same approach ahead of his second term. Already, Trump quickly tamped down any would-be opposition to Mike Johnson’s speakership, and he has expressed his preference for one “big, beautiful bill” on reconciliation.

Because so many diverse interests came together to elect Trump, even including some Democrats and independents, Trump allies argue that it’s inevitable he’ll make a decision that at least some of his supporters disagree with. Last week, he roiled isolationists when he wouldn’t rule out using military force to annex Greenland and regain control over the Panama Canal, seemingly expanding the “America First” agenda of his first term to a more expansionist vision.

Anti-abortion groups have been frustrated by his pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary. And more traditional conservatives haven’t been happy with his choice of strongly pro-union Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) as Labor secretary.

A former Trump official, granted anonymity to assess a fraught moment for the movement, also argued that this is the most unified the country has been around the president-elect since he first entered office.

The Laura Loomers and Steve Bannons of the world “feel like they built Trump, they made Trump Trump, and they want to leverage it like a purity test,” the person said. “That doesn't work with a coalition this big.”

© Julia Nikhinson/AP

Wisconsin state party chair Ben Wikler scooped up a key endorsement as he seeks to head the Democratic National Committee.

Stacey Abrams, the two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia and a leading voice in the party’s push to combat what it sees as growing voting suppression efforts, announced Monday that she is backing Wikler for DNC chair.

In a statement to POLITICO, Abrams praised Wikler as “the battle-tested chair the DNC needs right now,” citing his success fighting against “destructive GOP control” in his home state and his ability to build coalitions.

“I have the deepest respect for the other candidates and their commitment to our party and our nation,” Abrams said. “Ben has proven that with year-round voter protection, smart organizing and clear messaging, we can win — especially in states where our rights are being eroded.”

The Abrams endorsement comes days after the party held its first official candidate gathering on Saturday, the first of four ahead of the Feb. 1 DNC elections.

“I am honored to have the endorsement of Stacey Abrams,” Wikler said in a statement to POLITICO, adding that her work in Georgia “has been an inspiration for the year-round organizing, permanent campaign, and voter protection infrastructure that we supercharged to historic wins in Wisconsin. Moreover, I've been lucky to have her as a friend, mentor, and advisor.”

Abrams also threw her support behind Georgia Democrat Rep. Nikema Williams, who is seeking to be Vice Chair for Civic Engagement and Voter Participation. Unlike the race for the chair, that contest features all candidates of color, including Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Reyna Walters-Morgan, the former Director of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection at the DNC and former DNC vice Chair Michael Blake.

“Nikema has steadfastly served the Democratic Party of Georgia,” Abrams said. “She’s a fierce advocate for inclusion and equity, and her deep connection to the grassroots makes her the ideal choice to help steer the DNC forward."

She declined to endorse in other DNC leadership contests, including vice chair, secretary and treasurer.

The race for the DNC’s top job is considered by many party insiders to be a two-person race between Wikler and Ken Martin, who heads the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor.

Both are from upper midwestern states with very little difference between them on how they would reshape the party.

Both men vowed, if elected chair, to implement a year-round organizing strategy for all 50 states and seven U.S. territories and do away with the party’s reliance on the political consultant class, which they argue helped feed the perception that Democrats are largely out of touch with everyday Americans.

“The reality is, our party's got to stand up and fight for working families again and give them a sense that we give a damn about their lives,” Martin said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

For now, the biggest difference among the two front-runners — and the dark horse candidacy of Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who is seen as surging as of late — is in endorsements.

Martin has the backing of nearly two dozen Democratic leaders across nine southern states, including the party chairs of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia, as well as the support from the entire Democratic party delegations in eight states like Oregon and Arkansas.

Wikler in recent days won the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and state Democratic Party chairs Anderson Clayton of North Carolina and Lavora Barnes of Michigan.

The next officially sanctioned DNC candidate forum takes place on Thursday in Detroit, which will be hosted by POLITICO.

© Ben Gray/AP

Candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee have found a common enemy: the D.C. consultant.

In the first DNC-sanctioned forum in the body’s low-profile race for chair on Saturday, DNC candidates channeled their frustration at the “D.C. insiders,” whom New York state Sen. James Skoufis vowed to “kick to the curb.” Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin pledged the “D.C. consultants” will “be gone when I’m there.” And Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler promised he’d go into 2025 “with no commitments to anyone who's been on a campaign payroll before.”

It’s a sign of the times for a party that burned through some $1.5 billion in the final months of the campaign, only to come up short against President-elect Donald Trump. As the party still searches for answers to its devastating losses in 2024, consultants became the punching bag while the DNC candidates largely avoided sparring with one another. They all agreed that the party needed to reground its identity with the working class and commit to a permanent campaign infrastructure across the country. But any light attacks — of which there were a few — came without names attached.

Saturday’s forum was the first of four meetings scheduled in January ahead of a Feb. 1 DNC chair election, the first big decision Democrats will make to redefine their party in the second Trump era.

Here are five takeaways from the virtual forum:

Paging Jaime Harrison

The candidates may have spent much of their 90-minute debate attacking D.C., but nearly all of them committed to moving to the capital if elected. It’s a question that had been percolating for weeks among DNC members, many of whom have been frustrated by the sitting DNC Chair Jaime Harrison’s decision to stay in South Carolina during his tenure.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said “leaders lead from the front, and they have to be present in the center of the circle,” while Skoufis, the only sitting elected official running, said he would step down from the New York state Senate because “the next DNC chair must be fully committed.”

But Wikler, who has a young family in Wisconsin, didn't commit to a move. He said he planned to keep a “congressional schedule” and be in D.C. “on a regular basis,” but “I think there's strength that comes from being in a place where Democrats don't win every election a lot of the time.”

A mostly white, mostly male field of “dudes”

Across the forum’s hovering video-conference boxes on YouTube, it was hard to miss: The eight-member field of candidates are mostly white and mostly male. Aside from former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson and entrepreneur Quintessa Hathaway, the competitors for chair come nowhere close to reflecting the diversity of the larger party.

It’s a fact that irks some Democrats — that the field is not more reflective of the party as a whole.

“When you look at our party, and you look at the elected officials who have actually, like, gotten stuff done and accomplished difficult things in difficult states, none of them are involved in this conversation,” said Democratic campaign veteran Caitlin Legacki, who cautioned her comments were not targeted at the men in the field but a broader observation. “There are no women involved in this conversation. All of our biggest, most high profile pundits are dudes. All of the senators that are writing op-eds about the future of our party are dudes. And then you’ve got these candidates for DNC are dudes.”

She’s back 

Williamson, the bestselling self-help author, is bringing her woo-woo brand of politics to the chair’s race.

Like her 2020 and 2024 bids, she has almost no chance of winning. But at least she makes it interesting. Williamson presented herself as the kind of spiritual healer the party needs, noting that she’s “worked very up close and personal with people whose lives were in trouble, they were sick and they didn't have health care, they lacked opportunities, educational and economic, and they did not feel seen by the political class.”

Williamson brandished her iconoclastic bonafides saying that the DNC failed to push a “robust primary” last year, calling it the biggest mistake that the body made.

“In the name of saving democracy,” she said, “we ourselves suppressed democracy.”

It’s the economy, stupid

Plenty of lip service was paid to what Democrats broadly believe was one of the core reasons for their electoral downfall last year: the party’s economic messaging — or lack thereof.

O’Malley pegged Democrats’ disconnect from Americans’ kitchen tables as the party’s “biggest mistake.” Wikler lamented that “there were millions of Americans who didn’t know that we were fighting for working families.” And Martin decried voters’ perceptions that Republicans, not Democrats, best represent the working class — a concept he said was only reinforced by Democrats’ over-performance with wealthy households and college-educated voters — as a “damning indictment of our party brand.”

But they weren’t offering many concrete solutions to bring those voters back to the fold on Saturday — a sign that while Democrats have diagnosed a major flaw in their messaging, they’ve yet to figure out how to fix it. That’s a major potential problem for the party, with Trump poised to take credit for an economy that began improving under President Joe Biden.

O’Malley called for the next DNC chair to “reassert our dedication” to being a party focused on people’s economic security. Martin said the solution lay in year-round organizing in key communities. And Wikler’s suggestion for a course-correction: “communicate everywhere” from conservative media to nontraditional platforms.

So much for the resistance.

For a party that has spent much of the past decade running explicitly against Trump, the candidates vying to lead the DNC had little to say about the incoming president.

Call it a sign of the times.

Sure, O’Malley closed by saying the next DNC chair needs to “take on Trump and save our Republic.” And Skoufis repeatedly referenced lessons he’s learned from running and winning in a state Senate district Trump easily carried.

But as Democrats recalibrate their resistance to Trump to reflect the changed political landscape between his two terms, it appears the people looking to lead the party’s next chapter are taking note.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report included an incorrect spelling of New York state Sen. James Skoufis' last name.

© Francis Chung/POLITICO

The “victory” part didn’t pan out for the Harris Victory Fund. But the funding part remains alive and well on the bank statements of some Democratic donors.

Two months after Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump, the joint fundraising committee her campaign set up with the Democratic National Committee is still charging monthly recurring donors to the committee. And some donors are not happy.

“It’s silly, out of touch, and needlessly takes advantage of our most loyal supporters,” said a Democratic operative who shared screenshots of their donations. The person was granted anonymity to describe the situation without fear of professional reprisal.

The operative didn’t flinch at a December charge, given the wrap-up expenses associated with any campaign (though the Harris camp entered late November with more than $1.8 million in cash).

But a January charge? The Harris donor said the committee solicited no explicit approval to continue the donations after the election, though it sent emails saying, “Thank you for your generous monthly commitment,” and that the donations will continue “until you contact us.”

The ongoing debits constitute the latest dust-up over the ethics of online fundraising — particularly when it comes to signing up small-dollar donors for recurring credit-card contributions that get set on autopilot.

The 2020 Trump campaign raised gobs of cash in part by making it increasingly difficult for donors to see that they were signing up for monthly automatic donations, including hiding it in pre-checked boxes buried in fine print. Those tactics helped result in more than a half million refunds totalling $64 million for the last two and a half months of 2020 from the Trump campaign, the RNC and joint committees — far outpacing their Democratic counterparts.

The Harris Victory Fund situation is different: No one appears to be disputing that they signed up for monthly withdrawals. But should those contributions continue even after victory has slipped away?

Harris herself told Democrats to “stay in the fight,” a DNC official said. And while a Harris Victory Fund donation page remains active on ActBlue, the fund itself is now defunct and any contributions go directly to the DNC.

“Those HVF donations are going to help Democrats across the country as we rebuild the party,” the official said, adding that donors can cancel anytime.

The fact that the funds are now being redirected, however, raises another ethical quandary: Is that fair to donors who contributed to an entity with Harris’ name on it? The soon-to-be-ex-VP won’t have any access to the money as she evaluates her political future and whether to run for president again, governor of California or stay out of politics.

To many political pros, that is one of many reasons why it should be a best practice to cease drawing on donor bank accounts after Election Day.

A senior digital staffer on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign said all of their recurring donations ended within a few days after his loss. That person said the Harris fund’s decision to continue tapping small-dollar donors was “super shady” and tantamount to “grifting.”

“These people didn’t sign up to be paying bills in January,” the Republican said.

Mike Nellis, head of the Democratic online fundraising firm Authentic, said when his clients’ campaigns end in defeat, “there’s an expectation that they’re going to shut down the recurring donations because there’s no need.”

But Nellis, who was a senior adviser to Harris' 2020 presidential primary campaign, said he was OK with the DNC continuing to pull donations from Harris donors.

“If you’re rolling the committee into something that’s gonna continue to have an impact such as the DNC or another political campaign, I’m more than comfortable continuing the recurring donations so long as it’s transparent to the donor and compliant with ActBlue and the FEC,” he said.

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© Jose Luis Magana/AP

It’s likely that few people started off this week expecting that president-elect Donald Trump’s desire to buy Greenland would be a standout story.

Or that Trump’s insistence on taking back the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico “The Gulf of America.” Or his continued references to Canada as America’s “51st State” while threatening our northern neighbor with a 25 percent tariff.

It may appear that Trump is playing a practical joke on the world by making these proposals. But maybe not.

There’s at least one prominent voice who thinks that maybe there’s a method to his madness, some clear goals and a few bedrock principles guiding them: Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and President Barack Obama’s second U.S. trade representative.

“I think that on one hand, President Trump is the master of an unconventional approach to foreign policy and diplomacy, which sometimes perhaps gets in the way of the fact that underlying what he’s saying there are grains of truth that we should take seriously,” Froman said.

In this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Froman and Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels discuss the state of affairs in the world that Trump is stepping into, how world leaders are watching and reacting to Trump’s every word and what he thinks Trump will do differently than Biden in global hot spots such as Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and yes, Greenland.

© Evan Vucci/AP

WE’RE ALL FRIENDS NOW: Gov. Kathy Hochul is pledging to work with a future Andrew Cuomo administration — if her former boss’ speculated run for mayor proves successful.

“My nature is to work with whoever is sitting in office, whether it's the president of the United States, other governors or mayors,” the governor said when she was asked whether she supports Cuomo’s speculated run for mayor.

“I’ll continue on that path,” she added.

Hochul, who was on Long Island to unveil a proposal to provide free lunches for all K-12 students in the state (more on that below), made the comments on the heels of a new POLITICO report that signals Cuomo is continuing to line up the pieces for his run for mayor.

The Thursday report details how Cuomo is expected to hire Charlie King, a partner at the Manhattan-based consulting and lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs.

Hochul has enjoyed a sunny relationship with Mayor Eric Adams, even as he battles federal corruption charges that could turn into even worse charges. She opted not to oust him — a power she holds — after his September indictment, in exchange for him pushing out scandal-scarred top aides.

“My job as governor of this great state is to work with whomever the voters choose to be the Mayor of the City of New York,” Hochul said, still in response to the Cuomo question. “I've demonstrated that. I've had a better relationship with the mayor of New York than probably any of my predecessors. It has been collaborative, because I recognize one thing — we both represent the same people.”

Cuomo — whose own petty feuds with former Mayor Bill DeBlasio have become the stuff of legend — declined to comment for this story. His team continues to avoid confirming the drips of news about his seemingly embryonic campaign for mayor mean he is actually running.

(Jewish Insider also reported in November that Cuomo’s team is preparing to run, and is setting up an independent expenditure group.)

“This all remains premature, but Andrew Cuomo will always be a Queens boy who loves New York, is deeply concerned about its direction, and will always help any way he can,” Azzopardi told our colleague Nick Reisman in response to the Mercury Public Affairs news. He also insisted that “nothing has changed and neither apparently has the rumor mill in all its glory.”

When asked if she would rank Adams at the ballot box in June, Hochul balked — “I’m not a voter in New York City,” she said, sidestepping the hypothetical.

The governor’s comments, about President-elect Donald Trump, Adams and Cuomo (who Cuomo has insisted are all the same) come as she continues to signal a non-aggression pact with, well, everyone after quickly abandoning a Trump-resistance posture.

If you remember, the day after Election Day, Hochul hosted a Trump-bashing press conference with Attorney General Letitia James, where James said the two are “ready to fight back again.”

But immediately afterward, her stance softened, a prerogative that seems to have been solidified by her “lengthy,” “cordial” and “very productive” phone call with Trump the next day.

Since the pair’s cuddly chat, the governor has pledged to work with — not obstruct — the Trump administration’s efforts, even pledging to be “the first to call up ICE” to deport immigrants who break the law when asked about Trump’s mass deportation plan.

While she plays nice with the three criminally probed men, she still must ward off a challenge from Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who are both doing their best to ramp up speculation they will campaign against her for governor in 2026.

“The change of heart about Cuomo is the latest flip-flop from the foremost flip-flopper in New York politics,” Torres texted Playbook. “Just like Kathy Hochul was for congestion pricing before she was against it before she was for it, Hochul was for Cuomo before she was against him before she was for him.”

Lawler also chimed in: “Governor Hochul’s new ‘Kumbaya Kathy’ act is laughable,” he said. “Commonsense people in both parties know that she doesn’t work with, or listen to, anyone who disagrees with her and her bad ideas. If she did, we wouldn’t be dealing with congestion pricing, sanctuary cities, or cashless bail.” — Jason Beeferman

YOU GET A LUNCH, AND YOU GET A LUNCH ... : New York is set to become the ninth state in the nation that provides free lunches and breakfasts to all K-12 school students, regardless of their income.

“I’m proposing free school meals for every student in New York — giving kids the sustenance they need and putting more money back in parents’ pockets,” the governor said today.

The announcement is the final in a trifecta of affordability proposals Hochul is unveiling ahead of her State of the State.

Hochul has long centered affordability from her perch in Albany, but the recent emphasis on “putting money back in your pockets” comes after Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris revealed losses of Democratic support from working class voters across most demographic groups.

“It's just a statement of our values,” Hochul said. “Helping put more money in the pockets of parents, families in countless ways. This is just one of the other initiatives we’ll be announcing in my State of the State on Tuesday.”

The governor’s new initiative, known as Universal Free School Meals, would eliminate any income requirements, expanding eligibility to nearly 300,000 additional pupils.

The investment into the state’s free student meals program, which Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas and state Sen. Michelle Hinchey had fought to expand over the last two years, means around 2.7 million students will be entitled to free meals.

“Reducing the stigma is so important,” Rojas said. “We've heard about so many children who are teased, families who are embarrassed to do all this work and get that attention, because they just want their kids to learn and not be focused on the challenges they’re facing,” Rojas said.

“These arbitrary cutoffs that we have for things, just because you may not qualify doesn't mean your family is not right on the brink and struggling,” Hinchey said.

The initiative is expected to cost $340 million and would go into effect in the 2025-26 school year, according to the governor’s office. — Jason Beeferman and Madina Touré

TO BE (THERE) OR NOT TO BE: Adams is open to attending Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, but his Albany ally is staying put.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Jen Goodman today confirmed the governor will not attend Trump’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington.

Adams and Hochul are moderate Democrats who have worked well together. But Adams, who is fighting a five-count federal felony indictment, has trod lightly in Trump world.

Unlike the governor, Adams was not a vocal surrogate for President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris when she replaced him at the top of the ticket. Adams also met with incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan and has been critical of how Biden has handled immigration policy. (Hochul has been in virtual alignment with the Biden administration on the issue and has blamed Republicans for a scuttled border security bill last year.)

The inauguration will coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day and prominent New York officials typically unite at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s celebration of the civil rights leader at the National Action Network in Harlem.

Hochul has not disclosed her plans for Jan. 20, but she is also expected to deliver her state budget presentation in Albany the following day. — Nick Reisman

BITTER TAX FIGHT: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is drawing a line in the sand in the heated battle to lift the cap on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, as House Republicans meet Saturday with Trump to argue for an increase.

Schumer wants a full repeal, full stop.

Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nicole Malliotakis, Andrew Garbarino and their colleagues from New Jersey and California view a substantial hike in the current $10,000-per-household cap as a realistic opening bid in the light of the contention to come over renewing the broader tax cuts package.

But Schumer and other Democrats, including Hochul, are staking out total restoration as their position. The senior senator previewed the Dems’ strategy Friday in remarks to the pro-business Long Island Association.

“President-elect Trump and many southern and midwestern Congress members who pushed the unfair SALT cap in their 2017 tax bill are now having second thoughts, and we have to take advantage of that,” he told the business community in a suburban stretch where SALT is a very big deal. “There’s been a lot of chatter this week about various potential increases to Trump’s SALT limits, but remember: If we don’t renew them, then the Trump SALT cap will expire ... and this attack on New York taxpayers ends for good.”

As House Republicans from high-tax states make their SALT case, they’ve also made sure to blame the Democratic leaders of those states, including Hochul, for hefty taxes that make the deduction so crucial in the first place. — Emily Ngo

— GUILTY PLEA: Turkish-American construction executive Erden Arkan pleaded guilty Friday to making straw donations to Mayor Eric Adams' campaign. (POLITICO)

— LESS TERRIBLE TWOS: City parents are starting a campaign to push City Hall to fund free universal child care for 2-year-olds. (Daily News)

— DON’T GIMME SHELTER: The city is shuttering 10 migrant shelters as the rate of arrivals for asylum seekers continues to hit new lows. (New York Post)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here’s an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

RISING FROM HIS GRAVE: Mayor Eric Adams’ State of the City address had a blaring message: I’m not just here — I’m thriving.

“Even dark moments are not burials, they’re plantings,” Adams said. “Allow your planting to happen and you'll see the fruits of your labor. Mommy did it, and that's why I'm mayor.”

The first New York City mayor in modern history to be indicted on criminal charges wants the world to know that the federal corruption indictment, the sinking poll numbers and the flurry of federal raids and mass resignations hasn’t chipped his self-belief one bit — lest there had been any doubt.

“Don't let anyone fool you,” he said. “Don't listen to the noise, don't listen to the rhetoric. New York City, the state of our city is strong.”

“The ultimate measure of a man or woman is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenges and controversy,” he also said, paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr. as he thanked the members of his staff who hadn’t resigned.

He delivered the hourlong message of defiance after a brief 54 minutes of introduction that included a Christian prayer, a Muslim prayer, a Hindu prayer, a Sikh prayer, a Buddhist prayer, a Jewish prayer, the National anthem, God Bless America, the Black national anthem, two promotional videos, a youth drum line performance and some waiting.

The address, like all State of the City speeches, highlighted accomplishments — the City of Yes housing plan, the (partial) year-over-year drop in crime, the expansion of early childhood programs and the slowing of the city’s once unrelenting migrant crisis.

He also put two priorities for the upcoming legislative session in Albany front and center.

• He wants fellow Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul to adopt his version of a bill that would allow chronically homeless individuals suffering from mental illness to be involuntarily removed from the streets. (She is set to announce her own plan on involuntary removals, but has also signaled she will work with him on it.)

• He needs the Legislature to back him in completely eliminating city income taxes for families making up to 150 percent of the federal poverty line. The “Axe the Tax” plan has the backing of Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who praised Adams in a pre-speech video. (Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie signaled Wednesday he might look to end state income taxes for lower-income New Yorkers.)

For the city, the mayor unveiled some key proposals:

• He laid out his extremely ambitious plan to build 100,000 new homes in Manhattan, though the idea so far lacks some much-needed specifics. (We wrote about it this morning in New York Playbook.) 

• He pledged $650 million to combat homelessness, including a facility to serve as a shelter and treatment center for the vulnerable population.

• He is opening schoolyards as community parks on weekends and summers for over 10,000 New Yorkers, and he’s adding more cleaning shifts to city parks.

• He’s expanding free internet for low-income homes in Upper Manhattan and all of the Bronx.

• He’s adding a financial literacy teacher in every school district by 2030.

• He’s clearing student loan debt for city employees and their families.

• He’s allowing rent payments from thousands of low-income New Yorkers to count toward building up their credit score.

And he continued to thank Hochul for their simpatico relationship — even featuring her in his promotional video.
“There were some who said, ‘Step down,’” Adams said. “I said, ‘No, I'm gonna step up. I'm gonna step up. That's what life presents you.’”

ZELLNOR-CODED: Brooklyn state senator and mayoral candidate Zellnor Myrie has been tapped to lead the Senate Codes committee — a well-timed appointment.

As he prepares for the June primary and begins his seventh year in Albany, Myrie will have a key role in shaping criminal justice policy in Albany while he and his challengers attempt to prove their preparedness on the campaign trail.

An October Siena poll found likely New York City voters identified crime as their biggest concern. Adams has already signaled public safety will again be the crux of his mayoral campaign and he’s likely to call out any left-of-center opponents for prior votes he views as soft on crime.

“I'm grateful the leader has entrusted me to chair this committee, particularly at a time where public safety is on the minds of every New Yorker,” Myrie told Playbook. “As someone who is from New York City, who takes our subways and our buses, who talks to neighbors, I can say confidently this is an issue that is prominent in their minds.”

Myrie most recently helmed the Elections Committee, and his new spot leading Codes — which deals with all things criminal justice — has traditionally been viewed as the third most-powerful committee chair in the Senate. Nevertheless, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins — who has a cool relationship with Adams — still wields near absolute power in the chamber, deciding with leadership what bills make it to the floor.

Sen. Jessica Ramos, another mayoral candidate, will remain chair of the Labor Committee. Zohran Mamdani, the other state lawmaker vying to lead City Hall, was not assigned a leadership position in the Assembly.

“We're at a time where people are going to be using public safety as a political conversation, and I think that there needs to be a seriousness and sobriety in how we talk about actual solutions to this problem,” Myrie added, saying the committee will “be squarely focused on having actual solutions to city problems.” — Jason Beeferman

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS ARE IN: Beyond Myrie, the Senate and Assembly announced all the other new committee leadership positions today, and that came with a host of changes, our colleague Bill Mahoney reported earlier in POLITICO Pro.

The Assembly

• Gary Pretlow will replace the retired Helene Weinstein as chair of the Ways and Means Committee.
• Carrie Woerner replaces Pretlow to lead the Racing and Wagering Committee.
• Marianne Buttenschon succeeds Woerner as chair of the Small Business Committee.
• Ron Kim will succeed the retired Daniel O’Donnell as Tourism chair. 
• Rebecca Seawright will take Kim’s place as chair of the Aging Committee. 
• Angelo Santabarbara will succeed Seawright on the People With Disabilities Committee.
• Bobby Carroll will become chair of Libraries and Education Technology, replacing Santabarbara.
• Pamela Hunter is succeeding Jeff Aubry as speaker pro tempore. 
• Clyde Vanel will replace Hunter as chair of the Banks Committee.
• Jonathan Jacobson will replace Vanel on Oversight, Analysis and Investigations.
• Ed Braunstein will become chair of Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, replacing the retired Ken Zebrowski. 
• Pat Burke will take over the Cities Committee, succeeding Braunstein.
• Jo Anne Simon will become Mental Health chair, following the retirement of Aileen Gunther. 
• Karen McMahon will take Simon’s place on Ethics & Guidance.
• Billy Jones will replace the retired Fred Thiele on Local Governments. 
• Steve Stern will succeed the retired Kimberly Jean-Pierre on Veterans Affairs. 
• Alicia Hyndman will become chair of Higher Education, after previous chair Pat Fahy was elected to the Senate.

The Senate

• Jamaal Bailey will take over retired Neil Breslin’s leadership of the Insurance Committee
• Zellnor Myrie will replace Bailey on the Codes Committee 
• Kristen Gonzalez will take over for Myrie on the Elections Committee and remain chair of the Internet and Technology Committee.
• Rachel May will lead the Consumer Protection Committee, which was vacated by Kevin Thomas. 
• Freshman Christopher Ryan will succeed May as chair of Cities II, a recently added committee that deals with cities north of the Bronx.
• Freshman Pat Fahy will chair Disabilities, formerly helmed by John Mannion.
• Freshman Siela Bynoe will lead Libraries, which had been chaired by Iwen Chu.

THE WINNOWING: GOP leaders in the North Country House seat being vacated by Rep. Elise Stefanik will narrow the field of potential candidates by the end of the weekend, state party spokesperson David Laska said.

As Playbook reported this morning, Republican county chairs in the sprawling district met over Zoom with a dozen possible nominees. GOP officials expect to winnow that field of some 12 people to less than 10. Those preferred candidates will then advance to another round of vetting by Republican leaders.

Jockeying to replace Stefanik, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to serve as United Nations ambassador, has been underway for the past two months. A Republican candidate is expected to be heavily favored in a special election — likely to be scheduled for mid-April — given the party’s enrollment advantage in the largely rural seat. — Nick Reisman 

— SALT SLOWDOWN: Members of New York’s GOP delegation, once promising a full repeal of the cap on State and Local Tax Deductions, are now tempering expectations as they signal a full repeal is unlikely. (NY1)

— THE WHEELS ON THE TRAIN GO ROUND AND ROUND … EXCRUCIATINGLY: There’s a mysterious defect on the subway tracks of lettered train lines that’s causing subway wheels to be worn down more quickly than ever. (Daily News)

— TOP NY COURT BUCKS TRUMP: The Court of Appeals denied a request to delay Trump’s sentencing in the “hush money” case. (Times Union)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

'Don't play any politics': Newsom responds to Trump's fire criticism

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