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POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. | | | | |  | | By Eli Okun | | 
Though the topline numbers made clear that inflation isn’t biting as hard, there were plenty of details to keep Fed Chair Jerome Powell up at night. | Jess Rapfogel/AP Photo | INFLATION NATION — Today’s data dump of Consumer Price Index numbers for January painted a mixed picture of the country’s fight against inflation: (1) The year-over-year increase in prices cooled slightly (to 6.4%), but (2) core inflation still jumped 0.4% from December. The big picture: Though the topline numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics made clear that inflation isn’t biting as hard as it was last year, it’s still a long way from policymakers’ 2% year-over-year target. And don’t expect this report to bolster the case for slowing interest rate increases: Under the hood, there were plenty of details to keep Fed Chair JEROME POWELL up at night. Housing, food, clothing and gas prices in particular pushed inflation higher, even as costs of airfare, used vehicles and health care dropped. One thing to note: Inflation often rises in January as businesses adjust prices at the start of a new year. How it’s hurting: High food prices have been especially difficult for many seniors, for whom eating out less could threaten social isolation, NYT’s Julie Creswell and Isabella Simonetti report. Older Americans struggling with their health or finances are also at risk to start eating less or less healthfully. And our colleagues Garrett Downs and Meredith Lee Hill ask four working farmers in Congress how they’re seeing the effects of inflation personally. (There’s consensus on the bite of high prices, but not on the solutions.) Where things go from here: “Many economists expect inflation to fall to roughly 4% later this year,” AP’s Christopher Rugaber writes. “But it could plateau at that point so long as hiring and wage gains remain vigorous. The Fed might then feel compelled to keep borrowing rates high well into 2024 or even raise them further this year.” SHE’S RUNNING — NIKKI HALEY officially jumped into the 2024 presidential race today with a launch video that weaves together her biography, her time on the world stage and a refutation of left-wing ideas about American history and race. She occupies a plum position as the first serious challenger to take on DONALD TRUMP in the GOP primary. The former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and South Carolina governor dives into her experience growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants, and mounts a call for a “new generation” of leaders with a forward-looking vision. Haley doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. President JOE BIDEN and the Washington establishment come in for some digs, but not as much as the left’s attempts to “rewrite history” — an indication of the centrality of culture wars in the GOP primary. Haley also highlights one of her toughest moments as governor: the 2015 mass shooting at a Black Charleston church by a white supremacist. “When evil did come,” she says, “we turned away from fear, toward God and the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world.” There’s no mention of Trump. But Haley ends her video with a notable barb at a range of enemies: “You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.” The burst of recent media attention around Haley’s looming campaign has helped propel her into third place in some recent polls, though still well behind Trump and Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS. Now the question is whether this week constitutes her high-water mark — or whether she can credibly mount a challenge for the nomination. If victorious, Haley would make history as the first female and first Asian American president. Trump’s MAGA Inc. quickly dismissed her candidacy with a blistering statement highlighting some of the political contortions Haley’s had to make over the years: “She started out as a Never Trumper before resigning to serve in the Trump admin. She then resigned early to go rake in money on corporate boards … Sure just looks like more of the same, a career politician whose only fulfilled commitment is to herself.” (Haley famously said two years ago that she wouldn’t run if Trump were in the race.) Good time to reread Tim Alberta’s big 2021 profile: “She is as charming as she is cold-blooded, the sort of politician other politicians love to hate.” Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line: eokun@politico.com.
| | | | We’re spilling the tea (and drinking tons of it in our newsroom) in U.K. politics with our latest newsletter, London Playbook PM. Get to know all the movers and shakers in Westminster and never miss a beat of British politics with a free subscription. Don’t miss out, we’ve got some exciting moves coming. Sign up today. | | | | | JUDICIARY SQUARE MILESTONE MARKER — Today, Biden and Senate Democrats reached the landmark of 100 judges confirmed during his presidency, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reports. Puerto Rico’s GINA MÉNDEZ-MIRÓ became the 69th district court judge Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER has gotten through the chamber, alongside 30 circuit court judges and a Supreme Court justice. Comparison watch: Biden is outpacing Trump, who had gotten 85 judges confirmed at this point in his tenure. ALL POLITICS TOP TALKER — “Trump Plans to Bring Back Firing Squads, Group Executions if He Retakes White House,” by Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis: “The former president wants to expand the use of the death penalty, and expand the federal government’s options for carrying out death sentences.” 2024 WATCH — Former Arkansas Gov. ASA HUTCHINSON ramped his Facebook ad spending way up last week to $85,000 — more than every other possible GOP contender put together, per FWIW. DEM MEDDLING RETURNS — In a special election for a Wisconsin state Senate seat, Democrats are rerunning their controversial tactic of trying to elevate the furthest-right Republican in the GOP primary, NYT’s Reid Epstein reports. In this case, both Republican candidates are election deniers — but only one was booted from the state Assembly GOP caucus for her behavior. Dems are hoping they’ll be up against her in the swing district. KNOWING WES MOORE — Time’s Molly Ball profiles the new Maryland governor and Democratic rising star in Easton, where Moore is trying to fuse an acknowledgment of America’s heartbreak with belief in its potential. “By reframing patriotism, Moore hopes to do more than just make a political pitch for himself and his party,” she writes. “It’s an unabashed plea for a new political culture, one in which we can dare to think of government as a shared enterprise and force for good, and politics as an avenue to achieve it.” BATTLE FOR THE SENATE — 2022 seemed to take Florida off the table as a swing state. But in the wake of GOP Sen. RICK SCOTT’s controversial Social Security and Medicare proposals, Democrats “sense vulnerability” in his reelection bid, WaPo’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theo Meyer report. It’s particularly potent because of Florida’s high number of seniors. Former Rep. STEPHANIE MURPHY is one of the names being mentioned on the Dem side. — Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) is running for reelection next year, not for president, he told supporters this week, per the Houston Chronicle’s Jeremy Wallace and Benjamin Wermund. WHAT JAIME HARRISON IS READING — “How an earlier primary could juice Georgia’s economy,” by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein AMERICA AND THE WORLD RED ZEPPELIN — China’s latest tactic in the spy balloon fallout is to direct attention elsewhere and cast the U.S. response as an indicator of its waning power, NYT’s David Pierson reports. “Why else would a great power be spooked by a flimsy inflatable craft, China has argued, if not for a raft of internal problems?” The other three objects: The more recent flying things to be shot down may never be fully recovered and understood, a senior administration official tells CNN’s MJ Lee and Kevin Liptak. A “leading explanation” for these three is that they were just “balloons tied to some commercial work,” NSC spokesman JOHN KIRBY said today, per Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs. Some GOP senators emerged from a briefing this morning saying they supported how the Biden administration had responded to the objects. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE IS TOUTING — Boeing will sell 220 aircraft to Air India, its third-largest sale ever, Biden said today. More from The Washington Times TIKTOK ON THE CLOCK — Even as TikTok keeps working on extensive negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., it’s also balancing potential pressure from China over the final agreement, WSJ’s Liza Lin and Raffaele Huang scooped from Singapore. “The specter of a Beijing veto could perhaps help ByteDance in its negotiations with Washington, but it could also damage the chances of reaching an agreement if it eggs on D.C. policy makers toward a more extreme solution than the third-party silo.”
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | THE WHITE HOUSE JUNK FOLDER — “Why the White House is going to war on ‘junk fees,’” by Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann: “It might be tempting to downplay the White House’s new big theme as little more than cranky, small-bore populism … But if you talk to Biden administration officials, its origins sound more high-minded. They make the case that junk fees are deeply serious business, a kitchen table issue that also happens to fit snugly with their wider ambition to bring American antitrust enforcement back from the grave and make markets more competitive.” CONGRESS THE TALENTED MR. SANTOS — During his campaign, Rep. GEORGE SANTOS (R-N.Y.) told people falsely that he was “halachically Jewish,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. Fittingly, Santos made the comment at a bagel shop/deli in Aventura, Fla., where he was trying to win over pro-Israel donors. POLICY CORNER TOP-ED — FTC Commissioner CHRISTINE WILSON announced in the WSJ that she’ll resign her position in protest of Chair LINA KHAN’s leadership. Citing Khan’s “her disregard for the rule of law and due process and the way senior FTC officials enable her,” the Republican appointee writes that “I refuse to give their endeavor any further hint of legitimacy by remaining.” WHO HAS RAIMONDO’S EAR — WaPo’s Cristiano Lima crunches the numbers from Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO’s first year in office, and finds that Intel CEO PATRICK GELSINGER and Apple CEO TIM COOK each met or talked with her seven or eight times. That was more than any other business executive and most members of Congress. WAR IN UKRAINE HOW CLOSE WE CAME — At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia-connected hackers nearly managed to take down a dozen electric and gas facilities in the U.S., Maggie Miller reports. The U.S. government and other groups stopped the malware. MEDIAWATCH GIVE ’EM HELLER — The legendary NYC crisis comms maven RISA HELLER, who’s helped everyone from ANTHONY WEINER to JEFF ZUCKER to SAM BANKMAN-FRIED’s parents, is the subject of a big profile from N.Y. Mag’s Shawn McCreesh. Schumer, her former boss, goes on the record to praise Heller, who’s even more in demand than ever as powerful people face cancellation or other consequences for bad behavior. POLICY CORNER FUNDING BOOST — The Justice Department today announced $231 million in funding to bolster states’ red flag laws and other gun violence prevention measures, AP’s Lindsay Whitehurst reports. The money comes from the gun reform Congress passed last year. MEGATREND — “18% drop since 2020 in people reporting medical debt,” by AP’s Josh Boak: “White House officials said in a separate draft report that the two-year drop likely stems from their policies. Among the programs they say contributed to less debt was an expansion of the Obama-era healthcare law … There is also evidence that the decline predates the Biden presidency.” PLAYBOOKERS SPOTTED: Eric Lesser saying hello to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein this morning at Cafe du Parc at the Willard hotel. TRANSITIONS — Elissa Dodge and Philippa Levenberg are launching Sable Strategy, a senior-level strategic comms firm. They previously worked at Qorvis Communications, where Dodge was chief client officer and Levenberg was SVP and head of digital. … Brad Stevens is joining Sen. Pete Ricketts’ (R-Neb.) office as state director. He most recently was regional VP at Americans for Prosperity. … Matt Leggett is now a partner at K&L Gates. He previously was chief counsel for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources GOP. … … Isabel Sanchez will be executive director of the Future Forum Caucus. She previously was policy director for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and is a Lucille Roybal-Allard alum. … Danny Kazin is joining MZL Media as a partner. He previously ran American Bridge’s paid media program for the 2022 cycle. … Grace Faerber is now a China analyst at Exovera. She previously was a government affairs associate at the US-China Business Council. BONUS BIRTHDAYS: House Appropriations Committee’s Elizabeth Oien … Carlos Sanchez of Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-N.M.) office. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. 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