Politico. Politico Never Changes.
By 
Who “won” the week? Was it the president whose i) approval rating has firmly slipped into negative territory as people begin to realize just how badly he’s wrecking the economy and ii) had two federal judges order him to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers? Or was it the Democrats who are having an intra-party war over their Senate leadership deciding that a shutdown would be worse than a bad continuing resolution?
President Donald Trump’s week was poised to be bruising. Instead, the president is ending it on a political high after he and congressional Republicans closed ranks and, with an assist from the looming specter of DOGE, cornered Democrats into voting to avert a government shutdown on their terms. Now, it’s Democrats who are fighting each other, distracting Washington, at least temporarily, from Trump’s trade war that has wreaked havoc on the stock market. […] The GOP’s successful shutdown aversion, expected late Friday, comes as a welcome distraction for the administration amid growing concerns over other parts of the president’s agenda. A CNN-SSRS poll released this week found that 55 percent of Americans believe the president’s efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy will do economic harm, while 51 percent said they think Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index also dropped for the third time this month, to the lowest level since 2022, even though it was reported this week that February saw inflation slow more than expected.
Politico is correct that Trump’s ability to wrangle the House GOP underscores that—unlike at the same point in his first term—he dominates the party. Still, it’s nice to know that in the midst of an authoritarian coup, unprecedented levels of presidential corruption, and geopolitical suicide, we can always count on Politico to cover American politics with less depth and seriousness than one finds in an Entertainment Weekly recap of the latest episode of Survivor.
NB: inflation “slow[ing] more than expected” in the period prior to Trump’s tariffs going into effect is not actually great news.
ETA: yes, this post is unfair. If one looks more broadly at Politico’s coverage of the Trump administration, it reports on (and emphasizes) a lot of important stories. For example, Adam Wren’s Playbook summary also tackles the ongoing weaponization of the Department of Justice, among numerous other developments. What I find interesting is that Playbook quotes one of the co-authors of the “distraction” article—and what she says is i) actually important and ii) isn’t in the article: “For years, GOP leaders (John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy) have argued to conservatives that if they row with the team on spending bills, they will win more concessions from Democrats. For the first time, the far right actually listened — and it has totally changed the game on spending negotiations from now on. Now they know that if they work together, they can possibly jam the minority.”
