| | | | |  | | By Eli Okun | | Presented by |  | | | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | | DEVASTATION IN CALIFORNIA — As wildfires burn in and around Los Angeles, the county fire chief said today that two people have been killed and more than 1,000 buildings have been demolished by the flames — with massive winds still whipping up the blazes, the L.A. Times’ Grace Toohey, Clara Harter, Noah Haggerty, Rong-Gong Lin II and Hannah Fry report. The White House said today that the federal government has surged some resources to assist local firefighters, and officials have been coordinating with Mayor KAREN BASS (who was in Ghana), Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM and others. President JOE BIDEN, who was due to be briefed at a Santa Monica fire station, will depart LA later today, though he’s a few miles from the fires. VP KAMALA HARRIS’ neighborhood was evacuated, but she and second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF weren’t there, her spokesperson said. Republicans have quickly criticized Democratic state leaders, per Camille von Kaenel. See the wreckage in Pacific Palisades, via CBS’ Jonathan Vigliotti
|  President-elect Donald Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court to avoid sentencing this week. | Rebecca Noble/Getty Images | THE TRUMP TRIALS — Before he’s inaugurated as president, DONALD TRUMP is in for one last burst of legal wrangling. AG MERRICK GARLAND is planning to release the final report from special counsel JACK SMITH stemming from the felony criminal election subversion case against Trump, though he will not make public part of the Smith report about the classified documents case for now, Kyle Cheney reports. Smith officially sent his report to Garland last night. That news came via a Justice Department legal filing this morning. Both cases, of course, have by now been dropped or thrown out. DOJ said it would offer a redacted version of the classified documents report to some congressional leaders. But the final decision about making it public will wait until Trump’s co-defendants finish their legal proceedings, which means it’ll likely be up to Justice Department leaders in Trump’s second administration. The coming public release of the election subversion report raises the prospect that evidence of Trump’s alleged criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election could dominate headlines right before he retakes the White House. Trump and his co-defendants in the documents case are looking to block the release of the report, though, as Judge AILEEN CANNON has temporarily granted. Federal prosecutors are seeking a new outcome from an appellate court. Meanwhile, Trump today went to the Supreme Court for one last shot at staving off his sentencing Friday on his criminal hush money conviction in NYC, per WSJ’s Brent Kendall. Though New York Justice JUAN MERCHAN has already spelled out that Trump won’t face jail time, his lawyers asked the Supreme Court to overturn lower-court rulings that he isn’t yet protected by presidential immunity as the president-elect. Trump was found guilty of working to cover up an alleged STORMY DANIELS affair during the 2016 election, though he has never admitted wrongdoing. Up next: Trump lawyers TODD BLANCHE and EMIL BOVE have attacked Smith in legal filings for months — including as recently as this week. What will happen to Smith and his team when Blanche, Bove and others take leading roles at the Justice Department? “There is no precedent” for this situation, NYT’s Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Devlin Barrett report. Though Trump has vowed retribution, “[i]t is less clear whether seasoned former prosecutors like Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove would follow instructions to do so, especially when there has been no evidence produced that Mr. Smith has committed an ethical breach, let alone a prosecutable offense.” WHAT UNDERGIRDS OUR POLITICS — “The Anti-Social Century,” by The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson: “Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965. … The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching — for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality.” Good Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.
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Learn more about how others are building with open source AI. | | | | | 8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | |  Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab is making a bid for governor. | John Hanna, File/AP Photo | 1. 2026 WATCH: Kansas Secretary of State SCOTT SCHWAB today jumped into the gubernatorial race, positioning himself as a “proven conservative” who can flip the red state’s governor’s mansion back into GOP hands, per The Kansas City Star’s Matthew Kelly. With incumbent Democratic Gov. LAURA KELLY term-limited, this will be one of Republicans’ biggest targets next year. Schwab, who oversees the state’s elections, has sometimes earned conservative anger for having rejected false election fraud conspiracy theories, but he fended off a primary challenge in 2022. The gubernatorial field could yet get crowded. Schwab highlighted tax cuts and limiting foreign land ownership in his launch video. 2. TRADE WARS: How will Trump legally impose a major program of new tariffs on other countries? His team is weighing the declaration of a national economic emergency under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which would give him significant powers, CNN’s Kayla Tausche scooped. Incoming officials haven’t yet settled on a plan, and other legal options include leaning on section 338 or section 301 of U.S. trade law. Trump dangled the prospect of IEEPA during his first term, though Mexico negotiated its way out of the threat. If he went for it this time, Trump could face quick legal challenges from business groups. 3. FOX IN THE HENHOUSE: “Trump camp was fed questions for Fox News town hall in advance from person inside network, new book says,” by CNN’s Hadas Gold, drawing from Alex Isenstadt’s forthcoming book, “Revenge” ($30): “[It] would be a serious breach of journalism ethics. … Fox said it plans to investigate … ‘About thirty minutes before the [Iowa January 2024] town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox.’ … ‘with the questions in hand’ ahead of the telecast, the team ‘workshopped answers.’ … “In another portion of the book, Isenstadt reports that Trump seriously considered tapping Fox Business anchor MARIA BARTIROMO as his running mate, before being talked out of it.” A Fox spokesperson told CNN they had no evidence of the town hall mole having happened. N.B.: Last year, Trump wrote on Truth Social that if Harris had been fed questions by ABC, the network’s “license should be TERMINATED.” 4. FILLING THE SWAMP: “A ‘Business-Friendly’ Lawyer’s Rise From Lobbyist to Attorney General Pick,” by NYT’s Eric Lipton and Kate Kelly: As Florida AG, PAM BONDI “and her staff agreed to meet with a steady stream of lawyers whose clients — including Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit college chain, and Herbalife, a nutritional shake company — had been targeted by other states for investigations, a New York Times review of her work found. Then, in her time as a lobbyist, which began in early 2019, Ms. Bondi represented a long roster of corporate clients, including Uber and Amazon. Many of these companies have business with the federal government.” 5. TENUOUS LANDMARK: By one measure, the Affordable Care Act has never been stronger. A record 24 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare this enrollment period, NYT’s Noah Weiland and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report. That’s about twice the number as when Biden took office, fueled by subsidies that Democrats in Washington pushed through. But by another measure, the ACA faces a serious threat: uncertainty about whether Republicans will extend those subsidies as they take power this year. Millions of people could now lose health insurance if Trump and his congressional allies decide they are too costly. 6. CLIMATE FILES: “The surprising climate commitments of Trump’s new ‘energy czar,’” by WaPo’s Dino Grandoni: DOUG BURGUM, “who will oversee how much oil, gas and coal the United States extracts from public lands and waters over the next four years, embraces the bold and controversial idea that we can capture much of the planet-warming pollution from that activity. If the country follows Burgum’s lead, it will embark on a massive climate experiment — one with [North Dakota] at the center of it. … But critics across the political spectrum … have called the technology an untested and unnecessary boondoggle.” 7. FOR YOUR RADAR: The watchdog group Accountable.US has filed a legal complaint accusing HHS Secretary-designate ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. of committing felony voter fraud in the election, Brakkton Booker scooped. The allegation stems from the same questions about whether Kennedy actually lives in New York that led to his presidential campaign getting booted off the state’s ballot. Kennedy maintains that he lives in the state — where he voted — but complaints have argued that he actually lives in California. His lawyers didn’t respond for comment. 8. IMMIGRATION FILES: “The Media Isn’t Ready for Trump’s Mass Deportation Moment,” by The Bulwark’s Adrian Carrasquillo: “In private conversations with The Bulwark, employees within major newsrooms from ABC News to NBC News, Univision, and the Washington Post expressed doubts as to whether the media is ready to meet this moment. One veteran NBC News journalist described concerns that the network’s mass deportation coverage would focus on b-roll of immigrants at the border, when the story will largely unfold in the interior of the country: from meatpacking plants to the cities and communities where they live.”
| | | | A message from Meta:   | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Eric Trager will reportedly be the NSC coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Claudia Sheinbaum has some North America nomenclature ideas of her own. Ashley Moody is the frontrunner for the Florida Senate seat. Martin Heinrich said Mike Lee broke protocol on a Doug Burgum hearing, but Lee shot back. Barbara Lee made it official in Oakland. Jair Bolsonaro was tripped up by passport problems to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration. OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a Polaris National Security reception last night at the Henri with 150 women in national security: Morgan Ortagus, Tulsi Gabbard, Bonnie Glick, Rebeccah Heinrichs, Kim Breier, Kate Hunter, Liz Banicki and Paris Cervantes. TRANSITIONS — Matt Corridoni is now VP of comms at VoteVets. He previously was a national spokesperson on the Harris campaign’s rapid response team. … Kate DeTurk is joining Limestone Strategies. She most recently was press secretary for Mike Rogers’ Michigan Senate campaign, and is a Nikki Haley alum. … Zach Bannon is now press secretary for the House Energy and Commerce Committee under Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). He most recently was press secretary for Eric Hovde’s Wisconsin Senate campaign. … … AJ Manandic is now digital director at the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. She previously was press secretary for Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), and is a Rokk Solutions alum. … Claire Vinocur is now a partner at Greenberg Corporate Intelligence. She previously was a senior adviser for research at the DNC. … Jacob Holck is joining Iowa State Treasurer Roby Smith’s office as an information specialist 3. He previously was press secretary for Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa). BONUS BIRTHDAY: BBC’s Rachel Looker (29) 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 deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
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