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ABOUT THE AUTHOR : ELI OKUN

Eli Okun is a Playbook producer and Playbook PM co-author.

Before joining POLITICO in 2017, he worked as a reporter for the New Hampshire
Union Leader, covering local news and the 2016 election. He has also written for
The Texas Tribune, Providence Business News and GlobalPost.

A Maryland native, he graduated from Brown University, where he studied
international relations and was editor-in-chief of The Brown Daily Herald.


PLAYBOOK PM - POLITICO ARCHIVE


 * TUESDAY, 12/24/24


 * MONDAY, 12/23/24


 * FRIDAY, 12/20/24


 * THURSDAY, 12/19/24


 * WEDNESDAY, 12/18/24

 * View the Full Playbook PM Archives »


 * MOST READ


 1. BIDEN VETOES BILL THAT WOULD HAVE CREATED DOZENS OF NEW FEDERAL JUDGE SLOTS


 2. ELON MUSK’S ‘MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS’ ATTITUDE CLASHES WITH WASHINGTON


 3. NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THE MASSIVE HOLE DEMS ARE IN


 4. WARNING SIGNS FOR CONSERVATIVES WHO WANT TO DRAFT TRUMP IN THEIR SPENDING
    WAR


 5. THE SUPREME COURT CASE OVER TRANS YOUTH COULD ALSO DECIMATE WOMEN’S EQUALITY




PLAYBOOK PM: WILL BIDEN GIVE PUTIN A LUMP OF COAL?

By ELI OKUN 

12/24/2024 12:45 PM EST

Presented by


THE CATCH-UP

DEATH KNELL — In the wake of President JOE BIDEN’s federal death penalty
commutations, President-elect DONALD TRUMP today reiterated his pledge to expand
the use of capital punishment for “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”


President Joe Biden is weighing new sanctions on Russian energy. | Brandon
Bell/Getty Images

TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE — Biden may have one last twist of the knife for Russian
President VLADIMIR PUTIN before he leaves office.

The president is considering a significant new round of sanctions taking aim at
the ships and exporters that have kept bringing Russian oil to other countries,
WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Ellen Nakashima reported this morning with new details of
the plans being discussed. The banks that facilitate Russia’s energy sector
could also be targeted for changes.

It’s a risk the Biden administration wasn’t previously willing to take, for fear
of causing gas and oil prices to jump. But Washington’s decision matrix is
different now, as Bloomberg’s Annmarie Hordern, Jenny Leonard, Viktoria
Dendrinou and Alberto Nardelli reported earlier this month: Inflation has eased.
Oil prices have fallen. The election has already happened. And, of course, Trump
is coming.

Though Trump has frequently criticized Biden’s moves to squeeze Russia, sources
tell the Post that new sanctions could actually strengthen Trump’s hand in
forcing Russia to the negotiating table to end the war in Ukraine. It could also
give Kyiv more leverage. Existing sanctions from the U.S. and Europe have
already damaged the Russian economy, triggering high inflation and a potential
recession, but energy sales have helped keep it afloat.

Sanctions are just one potential irritant in the U.S.-Russia relationship. In
the latest news out of Moscow, American EUGENE SPECTOR was sentenced to 13
additional years in prison on an espionage conviction today, WaPo’s David Stern
reports.


A message from Instagram:

Congress can help keep teens safe online today.

By passing federal legislation requiring app store parental consent and age
verification, Congress would put parents in charge of teen app downloads. This
helps parents ensure teens download apps that are safe.

That’s why 3 of 4 parents agree: teens under 16 shouldn’t be able to download
apps without parental consent.

Tell lawmakers: support a national standard requiring app store parental consent
and age verification for teens.

Then there’s the secretive network of weapons dealers connecting Iran to Russia
and funneling arms to the battlefield in Ukraine. U.S. officials and others tell
Bloomberg’s Ben Bartenstein that Iranian oil businessman HOSSEIN SHAMKHANI,
known as “HECTOR,” has emerged as a crucial figure getting weapons across the
Caspian Sea — the kind of links about which the Biden administration has
repeatedly warned in the past few years. His lawyer declined to comment.

Related read: “Trump Will Confront a More Vulnerable but Determined Iran,” by
NYT’s David Sanger: “Iran … is suddenly far more brittle than it was during his
first administration, its leadership more uncertain, its nuclear program more
exposed and vulnerable to attack. That new reality has touched off an internal
debate about how his administration should approach Tehran: with an openness to
negotiations, or with an attack on its nuclear enrichment program — overt or
covert, or perhaps initiated by Israel. Or, as many suggest, a round of
‘coercive diplomacy’ that leaves Tehran to choose either a negotiated
disassembly of its nuclear capability, or a forced one.”

MOVE FAST AND PASS THINGS — Senate Republicans are dreaming of getting their
first, border-focused reconciliation bill to the Senate floor even before
Trump’s inauguration, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. Ideally, they’d like
the Senate Budget Committee to move the resolution within the first weeks of the
new year/new term, getting it signed into law in February. Current plans for the
expected filibuster-proof bill include “around $100 billion for the border, paid
for with energy leases and with a TBD national security component.”

GOOD NEWS — BILL CLINTON was discharged from the hospital. He had the flu.

Good Tuesday afternoon, and thanks for reading Playbook PM. Happy Christmas Eve
(and Hanukkah Eve)! This is our last afternoon edition for the rest of the
holiday season, but Playbook will still be in your inbox every morning. Drop me
a line at eokun@politico.com.


You read POLITICO for trusted reporting. Now follow every twist of the lame duck
session with Inside Congress. We track the committee meetings, hallway
conversations, and leadership signals that show where crucial year-end deals are
heading. Subscribe now.


7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and other fiscal hardliners are hoping Donald Trump
gives them a boost. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

1. DYNAMIC TO WATCH: “Warning signs for conservatives who want to draft Trump in
their spending war,” by Jordain Carney: “[L]ast week’s meltdown over government
funding underscored that Trump doesn’t always share their fiscal restraint. …
For now, fiscal conservatives are banking on Trump being their best hope after
losing battle after battle the last two years. … Some [moderates] are actively
hoping Trump can help them tame their hardliners instead of emboldening them.”

2. SLOW-MOTION CATASTROPHE: A new international report today estimates that at
least 638,000 people in Sudan are suffering from the equivalent of famine, with
several more regions of the country at risk of joining them amid the war, WSJ’s
Gabriele Steinhauser and Mohamed Zakaria report. That’s just the latest horror
as the toll of hunger rises around the world, and aid from wealthy nations isn’t
keeping up, Reuters’ Jaimi Dowdell, Kaylee Kang, Benjamin Lesser and Raymon
Troncoso report. The latest U.N. estimates predict that it won’t be able to help
two-fifths of the people who need aid next year.

Amid the darkening outlook, one big question is whether the Trump administration
will cut U.S. contributions. He wanted to slash aid in his first term, but
Congress didn’t go along with him. Now, some outside allies want to make sure
that if the U.S. ponies up, international organizations get more from other
nations, too: Currently, China, India and Russia provide less than 1 percent of
the aid, while the U.S., Germany and the European Commission pay for the
majority, Reuters notes.


A message from Instagram:



3. WHAT WENT WRONG IN AFGHANISTAN: “Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed
Militias Worse Than the Taliban,” by NYT’s Azam Ahmed in Kunduz: “For years, the
Americans supported militias in the north to fight the Taliban. But the effort
backfired — those groups preyed on the populace with such cruelty that they
turned a one-time stronghold of the United States into a bastion of the
insurgency. People came to see the militias, and by [extension] the Americans,
as a source of torment, not salvation. … That state-sponsored misery was central
to how the United States and its Afghan partners lost the north — and how,
despite two decades and $2 trillion in American money, Afghanistan fell.”

4. BEHIND THE PANAMA CANAL THREAT: Newly named special envoy MAURICIO
CLAVER-CARONE tells WaPo’s Karen DeYoung that concern about Chinese influence in
Latin America motivated Trump’s surprise saber-rattling about retaking the
Panama Canal. “Decades of U.S. commerce financing China’s growth and strategic
footprint in the Americas is over,” he says.

5. KNOWING BRENDAN CARR: “How a Telecom Bureaucrat Learned to Speak Trump,” by
WSJ’s Drew FitzGerald, Amrith Ramkumar and Maggie Severns: “People who have
worked with Carr describe an ambitious risk-taker with a firm grasp of technical
and legal details. His wife, MACHALAGH, a past staffer for former House speaker
KEVIN McCARTHY, also informs his sense of Beltway politics. In recent months,
Carr’s statements have hewed increasingly close to Trump’s, a stance that has
raised eyebrows inside the legally independent FCC.”


POLITICO Pro’s unique analysis combines exclusive transition intelligence and
data visualization to help you understand not just what’s changing, but why it
matters for your organization. Explore how POLITICO Pro will make a difference
for you.

6. FIRST AMENDMENT WATCH: For several years, NewsGuard has provided nonpartisan
ratings of various news outlets’ bias and trustworthiness. But Republicans are
increasingly unhappy with its low ratings for far-right outfits like Newsmax and
OAN — and Carr accuses it of censorship of conservatives, WaPo’s Will Oremus and
Naomi Nix report. NewsGuard and outside experts shoot back that Carr is the one
trying to censor them, and possibly violating the Constitution. It’s
“symptomatic of a broader societal struggle over who gets to arbitrate the
truth. And Carr’s letter potentially heralds a Trump administration prepared to
wield state power to win that battle.”

7. IMMIGRATION FILES: “‘Dreamers’ Make Emergency Plans as Trump Vows to Deport
Millions,” by WSJ’s Jim Carlton: “At-risk students are scrambling to learn their
rights, making plans to go underground if necessary and — just in case —
contacting distant relatives in home countries they barely remember should they
end up being sent there.”

Meanwhile, as blue states strategize to protect immigrants under Trump, our
Sacramento colleague Lindsey Holden obtained a draft of California Gov. GAVIN
NEWSOM’s plans. They suggest an “Immigrant Support Network” with hubs to help
connect undocumented immigrants and their loved ones to specific supports or
legal services.

Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307.
Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack
Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.


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