POLITICO Playbook PM: Trump sends troops to the Middle East Presented by Amazon

President Donald Trump told reporters the deployment of troops to the Middle East was "mostly protective." | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

REP. CHIP ROY (R-Texas) -- a longtime former Hill staffer who served as Sen. Ted Cruz’s chief of staff -- blocked a unanimous consent request to pass the disaster relief bill that cleared the Senate. This is annoying, for sure, since the Senate got a compromise Thursday and cleared it before they left town for the weeklong recess. But it’s not ultimately fatal to the deal.

-- THERE ARE TWO OPTIONS HERE: Someone has to be in town to object to a unanimous consent request, so Democrats can keep trying all week, hoping that all members of Congress leave for the Memorial Day break. OR … They can wait until they Congress comes back into session, when this bill would pass with something like 350 members voting yes. More from Jennifer Scholtes

IRAN UPDATE -- “Officials: U.S. to send 1,500 troops to Middle East,” by AP’s Susannah George and Lolita Baldor: “Officials said members of Congress were notified following a White House meeting Thursday to discuss Pentagon proposals to bolster the U.S. force presence in the Middle East.

“The officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because the troop plans have not yet been formally announced. Earlier this week, officials had said that Pentagon planners had outlined plans that could have sent up to 10,000 military reinforcements to the region.” AP

AS HE LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE en route to Japan, President DONALD TRUMP said he would “take a look at” pardoning accused war criminals, confirming an NYT story saying the pardons could happen “on or around Memorial Day.” “It's very possible that I'll let the trials go on and I'll make my decision after the trial,” Trump said. The backstory

Happy Friday afternoon. PROGRAMMING NOTE -- Playbook PM won’t publish Monday for Memorial Day. The morning newsletter will continue to publish daily, and we’ll be back Tuesday afternoon.

SPOTTED: Pete Buttigieg running on the National Mall this morning.

-- ON THURSDAY, Buttigieg was at Tod Sedgwick’s Georgetown house for a reception and fundraiser ($5,600 for co-hosts, $2,800 for champions, $1,000 for supporters). SPOTTED: John Phillips, Bill Eacho, Tim Broas, Keith Harper, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), Jerry McGowan, Tony Lake, Tim Wirth, Tom McMillen, David McKean, Bob Blake and Jim Moran.

THE COURT BATTLE -- “The ACLU And Planned Parenthood Are Suing Alabama Over The State’s New Abortion Law,” by BuzzFeed’s Zoe Tillman

TRUMP’S HEALTH CARE PLAY -- “Trump Administration Preparing Executive Order on Health-Cost Disclosure,” by WSJ’s Stephanie Armour: “President Trump is expected to release an executive order as early as next week to mandate the disclosure of prices in the health-care industry, according to people familiar with the discussion.

“The order could direct federal agencies to pursue actions to force a host of players in the industry to divulge cost data, the people said. The administration is also looking at using agencies such as the Justice Department to tackle regional monopolies of hospitals and health-insurance plans over concerns they are driving up the cost of care, according to two people familiar with the discussions.” WSJ

-- AND ANOTHER ... “Trump administration rolls back health care protections for transgender patients,” by Dan Diamond: “The health department is rewriting an Obamacare regulation that barred health care discrimination based on sex. The Obama administration had issued a rule asserting that the provisions covered gender identity, but a federal judge blocked those protections in 2016 following a lawsuit from religious groups.

“The new rule says HHS will repeal the Obama-era definition of sex protections in order to make its regulations ‘more consistent’ with other agencies. This week the Department of Housing and Urban Development moved to allow discrimination against homeless transgender people.” POLITICO

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KIM NOT FEELING THE LOVE… “NKorea says talks won’t resume unless U.S. changes position,” by AP’s Kim Tong-Hyung in Seoul: “North Korea said Friday that nuclear negotiations with the United States will never resume unless the Trump administration moves away from what Pyongyang described as unilateral demands for disarmament. …

“It came as President Donald Trump prepares to travel to Japan this weekend for a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in which the North Korean nuclear issue will likely be high on the agenda. In the statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, the North Korean spokesman accused the U.S. of deliberately causing February’s collapse of talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with unilateral and impossible demands.” AP

BEN WERMUND: “Senate Republicans permanently ban earmarks”: “The Senate GOP on Thursday behind closed doors added a permanent ban on earmarked spending to their conference rules, a move that comes as some buzz had built around an eventual return of earmarks.

“Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who pushed for the Senate GOP ban on Thursday, boasted that the move stops a looming ‘earmark binge.’ His office said the 28-12 vote followed a ‘heated’ 45-minute debate.” POLITICO

SWAMPY! -- “Lawyer for Navy SEAL accused of war crimes also works for Trump Organization,” by CNN’s Zachary Cohen: “Trump Organization lawyer Marc Mukasey started working on the case in recent months, according to sources familiar with the situation.” CNN

FOR YOUR RADAR -- BRIAN FALER: “IRS could be forced to release Trump’s taxes in the heat of 2020”: “President Donald Trump’s bet that it’ll take years to resolve a coming court fight over his tax returns could be wrong.

“Federal courts are already ruling quickly against Trump in his other attempts to block Congress. The Supreme Court could also be a dead end if the case doesn’t present new legal issues or divide appellate courts. That means there’s a decent chance the White House could lose the fight and be forced to hand over Trump’s tax records before the election.” POLITICO

THE IMPEACHMENT STEP BACK -- NYT’S PETER BAKER: “Trump Jumps Into Impeachment Fray With Both Feet”: “The last time a president was threatened with impeachment, he made a point of not talking about it. This one cannot stop talking about it. … Some advisers worry that the president is giving oxygen to a fire that otherwise might burn out or at least be left to crackle in the background. Others agree with Mr. Trump that he has been treated so unfairly that he should take on his opponents frontally.” NYT

RIPPLE EFFECT -- “Huawei’s European Customers Are Put on Hold by U.S. Ban,” by NYT’s Amie Tsang and Adam Satariano in London: “European customers will be hit harder than those in the United States or China. Huawei phones are largely unavailable in the United States, and Google’s services have long been blocked in China by the government.

“But they are best sellers in countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain. Those phones, plus robust sales of telecommunications equipment, have made the market covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa into Huawei’s second biggest after China. … Since the administration’s order, one company after another has moved to suspend business with the company, which is the world’s second-largest smartphone maker, after Samsung.” NYT

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- “USDA to shift some inspector tasks to pork plant workers — in everything but name,” by WaPo’s Kimberly Kindy: “[T]he USDA’s efforts [are underway] to make the most dramatic changes to federal meat-inspection policy since Congress passed a 1906 landmark law that seized control of food safety from plant owners and made it the province of federal inspectors. …

“They say federal inspectors will spend less time visually assessing pork and more time ensuring sanitary conditions are maintained throughout the plant. Several food safety lawyers, Democratic members of Congress and a former agriculture official say that the USDA is using sleight-of-hand tactics to get around legal mandates that have been in place for more than a century.” WaPo

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IMMIGRATION FILES -- “Behind Trump's reversal of an explosive plan to move migrants to Florida,” by Anita Kumar and Matt Dixon: “After Florida's governor learned that the Trump administration was planning to relocate illegal border-crossers to his state, he picked up the phone and called his friend, Donald Trump. The president said he didn’t know about the plan — but he killed it anyway.

“‘It’s not something I would approve,’ Trump told the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, according to a person familiar with the call. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’ White House and Department of Homeland Security officials quickly chalked it up to a misunderstanding. A flurry of media reports citing local officials warning that the Trump administration planned to dump migrant families into heavily Democratic areas of Florida were wrong, they insisted. … It’s just the latest example of the chaos and conflict that has defined immigration policy in the Trump administration.” POLITICO

-- “What Happens in a New Mexico Town When U.S. Border Patrol Drops Off Migrants,” by WSJ’s Dan Frosch and Alicia Caldwell in Deming, N.M.: “Deming has been caring for between 300 and 400 migrants at a time, peaking at 700 at one point. They typically stay a few days at the fairgrounds or a vacant World War II-era airplane hangar a quarter-mile away with no heaters or air conditioners. Then they depart by Greyhound bus from town, or by plane from El Paso, 100 miles east, to join family and friends elsewhere in the U.S. while waiting for their first court hearing. …

“Larger cities, like San Diego, nearby Las Cruces, and McAllen, Texas, have had substantial help from charities and aid groups in their scramble to find temporary housing for migrants dropped off by the Border Patrol. But the impact reverberates deeper here, where resources are scant. The day after the first wave of migrants was dropped in town, Deming declared a state of emergency—becoming the second community sheltering migrants to do so, after Yuma, Arizona.” WSJ

2020 WATCH -- “Trump and allies take aim at Biden — and his family — as their top Democratic target,” by WaPo’s Matt Viser and Ashley Parker: “[T]he Trump campaign and its supporters have begun attacking Joe Biden in much the same way they went after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 — casting the former senator and vice president as a lifelong politician who has been part of a broken political system and whose family has been personally enriched by it. …

“Biden and his supporters are also readying an argument of their own: that Trump was supposed to shake up Washington as the consummate dealmaker but has few results to show for it. Biden, they say, is the steady hand with decades-long relationships in both parties.” WaPo

-- MILESTONE, via WSJ’s Joshua Jamerson: “Women Have Most of Top Roles in Campaigns for Leading 2020 Democrats”

-- “Symone Sanders Worked for Bernie in 2016. How’d She End up on Team Biden?” by Glamour’s Mattie Kahn: “In an exclusive interview, the 29-year-old says she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks—she's making choices about her values.” Glamour

TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL -- “Intelligence scholar sues Cambridge academic, U.S. news outlets over reports on Flynn links,” by Josh Gerstein: “The suit, filed for [Svetlana] Lokhova by Charlottesville, Virginia-based attorney Steven Biss, features some unusually colorful language for a federal court pleading. ‘Stefan Halper is a ratf----- and a spy, who embroiled an innocent woman in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 Presidential election and topple the President of the United States of America,’ the 66-page complaint says.” POLITICO

AFTERNOON READ -- WAPO’S AMY GARDNER: “How a large-scale effort to register black voters led to a crackdown in Tennessee”: “By October, the Tennessee Black Voter Project took credit for turning in more than 90,000 voter registration applications — what organizers hoped would be a first step in a broader effort to get more African Americans to be a regular force in elections.

“But the surge of forms that landed in the months before Election Day was chaotic and consuming, according to officials in the state’s two largest counties, which include Memphis and Nashville. Thousands of applications had errors or omissions … The state’s top elections official, a former Republican lawmaker named Mark Goins … proposed a solution that went further than any other state in the nation: imposing civil penalties on groups that employ paid canvassers if they submit incomplete or inaccurate voter registration forms.” WaPo

TV TONIGHT -- Bob Costa sits down with Time’s Molly Ball, CBS’ Nancy Cordes, WaPo’s Toluse Olorunnipa and NYT’s David Sanger at 8 p.m. on PBS’ “Washington Week.”

SPOTTED: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dining at Chloe in Navy Yard on Thursday night. … Ned Price on an American Airlines flight today from DCA to Boston on the way to Martha’s Vineyard.

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