| | | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | Presented by the Financial Services Forum | |  A handful of Republican officials were on hand at the courthouse in Manhattan today to show support for Donald Trump. | POOL/AFP via Getty Images | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | | We’re into Day 17 of the criminal hush money trial against DONALD TRUMP. But this morning, perhaps the most notable developments came from outside the courtroom. At various points throughout the trial, a handful of Republican officials have joined the former president at the courthouse to show their support. Today, there was a certified entourage. House Speaker MIKE JOHNSON, North Dakota Gov. DOUG BURGUM, VIVEK RAMASWAMY and Florida GOP Reps. BYRON DONALDS and CORY MILLS — all of whom were clad in Trump’s traditional navy blue suit and red tie combo — showed up to back Trump. Johnson, who is still trying to burnish his MAGA bonafides as he shores up support from the right flank of his conference, slipped outside the courthouse during proceedings to mount his own defense of the former president. “These are politically motivated trials and they are a disgrace. It is election interference,” Johnson told the gathered reporters, alleging that Democrats are keeping Trump off the 2024 campaign trail, our colleague Emily Ngo writes.
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Johnson speaks to reporters outside the courthouse. | Natalie Allison/POLITICO | He also called out prosecutors’ star witness, MICHAEL COHEN, who was back on the stand today, saying that the former Trump attorney is “a man who is clearly on a mission for personal revenge, and who is widely known as a witness who has trouble with the truth.” As for the gag order against Trump, Johnson said the court is “overriding his constitutional right to defend himself in political spheres from his harshest critics.” And he said Congress has a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight on the various Trump trials. Johnson took no questions. More from Natalie Allison Inside the courtroom, Cohen continued delivering testimony tying Trump to the reimbursement payments that Cohen paid to STORMY DANIELS, detailing a 2017 Oval Office meeting with the then-president. Cohen also explained that he lied to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow because at the time, he was still seeking to defend Trump and his lawyer was being paid for by the Trump Organization. “I was staying on Mr. Trump’s message that there was no ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’” Cohen said, adding that he was also part of a “joint defense agreement” with other Trump allies. Follow along with all of the latest updates from the trial with POLITICO’s live blog THE CRACK OF THE WHIP — House Democratic leadership is officially whipping against the Republican legislation compelling the delivery to Israel of defense equipment already approved by Congress — urging a “no” vote and “teeing up a fight over an issue deeply dividing the party,” Nicholas Wu reports. “This is not a serious legislative effort,” Democratic Whip KATHERINE CLARK’s office said in a notice sent to Hill offices today. “It is another partisan stunt by Extreme MAGA Republicans who are determined to hurt President Biden politically.” FASCINATING DYNAMIC — The Nebraska Republican Party is effectively looking to clean house in the state delegation, blessing primary challenges against Sens. PETE RICKETTS and DEB FISCHER and Reps. ADRIAN SMITH and MIKE FLOOD, as voters head to the polls today, AP’s Margery Beck reports from Omaha. “It’s an oddity that lays bare the bitter divide between Trump loyalists who control the Nebraska GOP, as well as several county Republican parties, and the more establishment-type Republicans who were previously at the helm.” LESSONS FROM HISTORY — “Biden once nearly died of an aneurysm. Risky surgery changed his life,” by WaPo’s Michael Kranish: “The story of how Biden survived the aneurysm — as well as a second one and a blood clot — is one of the most revealing if little understood episodes in the life of the 81-year-old president. A review of the events, as described by the president, his family and his associates, in books and other forums, as well as Washington Post interviews with a surgeon who operated on Biden, provides a nearly moment-by-moment account that reveals new details about how close Biden came to incapacitation or death — and how those events shape him to this day. “The near-fatal experience highlights the depth of Biden’s resilience, which had already guided him to political success even after the deaths of his first wife and young daughter. But it also underscores how he initially played down a serious health issue for fear of the political consequences and, as he later acknowledged, sometimes failed to heed the advice of his doctors.” Good Tuesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com.
| | A message from the Financial Services Forum: Local communities can't afford Basel III Endgame. Basel III Endgame's restrictive capital requirements would limit the availability of funds for local governments issuing municipal bonds, making it more challenging and costly for them to finance vital public projects and infrastructure improvements. | | | | | 7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | | 
House Republicans are shutting down earmarks for nonprofits, setting up what is sure to be a showdown with Democrats. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | 1. ANOTHER FUNDING FIGHT ON THE HORIZON: “House G.O.P. Defunds L.G.B.T.Q. Centers by Banning Earmarks for Nonprofits,” by NYT’s Catie Edmondson: “The effect will be to turn off the spigot of federal funds for an array of organizations supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Because each chamber makes its own rules governing earmarks — which allow individual lawmakers to steer federal money to particular projects or programs in their districts and states — senators will still be able to request them for nonprofits. “But House Democrats are livid about the change, which they said would deprive a wide range of deserving organizations from receiving federal funds. Only weeks after Congress concluded a slog to fund the government this year, the dispute is an early indication that the next set of spending battles is already beginning.” 2. FOR YOUR RADAR: House Oversight Committee Democrats are “launching an investigation into Donald Trump’s meeting with oil executives last month at his Mar-a-Lago Club, where the former president asked the executives to steer $1 billion to his 2024 campaign and promised to reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental policies,” WaPo’s Maxine Joselow reports. The letters sent yesterday were helmed by Rep. JAMIE RASKIN (D-Md.), and “asked nine oil executives to provide detailed information on their companies’ participation in the meeting. The Democrats voiced concern that Trump’s request at the dinner may have been a quid pro quo and may have violated campaign finance laws, although experts say his conduct probably did not cross the threshold of being illegal. … “Raskin also asked the executives to provide a copy of any draft executive orders or policy paperwork that their companies have prepared for Trump or his campaign. Politico reported that oil industry lawyers and lobbyists have drawn up executive orders for Trump to sign in a possible second term, including directives aimed at boosting natural gas exports and offshore oil drilling.” Read the original WaPo report … Read the original POLITICO report 3. GREAT SCOTT: “New Challenge for Judge in Trump Georgia Case: His Own Election,” by NYT’s Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim: “In the last few weeks, Judge SCOTT McAFEE of Fulton Superior Court has been on a dizzying tour of the Atlanta area in an effort to hold on to his job — and in so doing, hold on to the Trump case, one that could eventually secure the judge’s place in the annals of history. Since early March, he has, by his own count, attended more than 30 campaign-related events, including three fund-raisers, three candidate forums, seven church services and a parade. “In a recent interview, Judge McAfee, 34, said that campaigning was ‘delaying every aspect’ of his job. And while he enjoys many advantages over his rivals — as an incumbent in a down-ticket election whose work on the Trump case has earned him broad name recognition — he said he has no choice but to give the race his all. Losing the election, after all, would mean turning over the case, a complex racketeering prosecution with 15 defendants, to a new judge.”
| | | | THE GOLD STANDARD OF POLICY REPORTING & INTELLIGENCE: POLITICO has more than 500 journalists delivering unrivaled reporting and illuminating the policy and regulatory landscape for those who need to know what’s next. Throughout the election and the legislative and regulatory pushes that will follow, POLITICO Pro is indispensable to those who need to make informed decisions fast. The Pro platform dives deeper into critical and quickly evolving sectors and industries—finance, defense, technology, healthcare, energy—equipping policymakers and those who shape legislation and regulation with essential news and intelligence from the world’s best politics and policy journalists.
Our newsroom is deeper, more experienced, and better sourced than any other—with teams embedded in the world’s most active legislative and regulatory power centers. From Brussels to Washington, New York to London, Sacramento to Paris, we bring subscribers inside the conversations that determine policy outcomes and the future of industries, providing insight that cannot be found anywhere else. Get the premier news and policy intelligence service, SUBSCRIBE TO POLITICO PRO TODAY. | | | | | 4. WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VEGAS: The polling is paltry for Biden this week after a new round of NYT/Siena surveys was released, but the president’s “biggest problems — his weakness with Hispanic voters and pessimism over his handling of the economy — seem magnified” in Nevada, NYT’s Kellen Browning and Nicholas Nehamas write. “With the state’s economy slow to recover from the pandemic, 61 percent of registered voters in the poll said they trusted Mr. Trump to do a better job handling the economy, compared with 32 percent who trusted Mr. Biden. And Hispanic voters, whose support was crucial to Mr. Biden in 2020, said they preferred Mr. Trump to him by nine points in a head-to-head matchup.” The spin for Biden: “Democrats in the state acknowledge the challenge ahead of them. But they note that Nevada is a notoriously difficult state to survey, with polls in recent cycles underestimating Democratic candidates who went on to win. A Republican presidential candidate has not won Nevada since 2004.” 5. CAMPUS UNREST UPDATE: The Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine protest group announced this morning that it “would peacefully end the encampment in Harvard Yard, bringing an anticlimactic end to Harvard’s most high-profile pro-Palestine protest this year and paving the way for Commencement to proceed as planned,” the Harvard Crimson’s Joyce Kim and Jo Lemann report. 6. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: “Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza,” by AP’s Joseph Krauss: “Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza. Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.” 7. SOUTH OF THE BORDER: “The Other Busing Program: Mexico Is Pushing Migrants Back South,” by NYT’s Simon Romero and Paulina Villegas: “Mexican authorities rarely publicly acknowledge the busing program, making it much less contentious than the efforts by Republican governors to transport migrants to blue states that have become political theater in the United States. Yet the busing program is exposing the chasm between the Mexican government’s rhetoric promoting a humanitarian approach to migration, and the country’s role as a heavy-handed enforcer of U.S. border objectives, leaving many migrant families stranded to fend for themselves.”
| | | | LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Ken Griffin is waiting to see who Donald Trump’s VP is before deciding his support. OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED last night at a book party for Nellie Bowles’ “Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History” ($27) hosted by Liz Lange and David Shapiro on the Upper East Side: Bari Weiss, Bobby Kotick, Lloyd Blankfein, Tim Dillon, Michael Moynihan, Jonathan Rosen, Uri Berliner, Shawn McCreesh, Olivia Nuzzi, Keith Urbahn, Adam Rubenstein, Emma Goldberg, Hope Hicks, Dana Perino, Arianna Huffington, Ben Schreckinger, Alana Newhouse, David Samuels, Graydon Carter, Ariel Levy, Elliot Ackerman, Dana Perino, Michael Moynihan, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Roland Fryer, Risa Heller and Danielle Sassoon. — SPOTTED at a Blockchain Association happy hour on its rooftop yesterday evening: Kristin Smith, Dave Grimaldi, Yebbie Watkins, Lyndon Boozer, Alex Sternhell, Greg Xethalis, Tom Quinn, Bart Stephens, Al Mottur, Allie Page, Lon Goldstein, Colin McClaren and Reem Sadik. MEDIA MOVES — Sam Feist will be the new CEO of C-SPAN. He currently is SVP and Washington bureau chief at CNN. The announcement … Ken Armstrong is joining Bloomberg as a reporter, editor and coach for investigations and longform narrative pieces. He most recently has been a reporter at ProPublica, and has won multiple Pulitzers. … Jonathan Easley is returning to The Hill as a staff writer and author of “The Evening Report” newsletter. He will continue working as a screenwriter, which he originally left The Hill to pursue. The announcement TRANSITION — Sarah Ellen Edwards Bates is now policy adviser to the associate administrator of the Office of Government Contracting & Business Development at the Small Business Administration. She previously was director of agency liaison at the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. WEDDING — McHenry Lee, a director at Narrative Strategies, and Caroline Lupetini, a foreign service officer at State, got married at the Line Hotel in Adams Morgan on April 27. They met at Narrative Strategies in 2019. BONUS BIRTHDAY: David Marchick Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. 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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