People who know the First Daughter—who are by now familiar with her cycle of silence and closed-door entreaties to her father—were baffled as to how she botched her messaging in such a major way. “She had a free pass on this one in particular, for two reasons,” one adviser told me. “For one, her dad was obviously going to change the policy anyway, because it was so unsustainable. But more importantly, Melania had already said something, so she was covered. All she had to do was say exactly what Melania said. The template was there, and the direction was so obvious. She could have easily said to her father, ‘Look, I’m going to just say what Melania said,’ or she could have said something without telling her dad, and if he got angry, she could have said, ‘I was just following Melania’s lead,’ and it would have been fine.”

For people familiar with the father-daughter dynamic, the president’s decision to mention her concerns suggested they had coordinated their messaging. “Once she brought it up, he probably said, ‘O.K., why don’t I just handle it?,’ or took it upon himself,” one person said. Trump was probably trying to protect her, this person added, but ended up undermining her. It also suggests how she has become boxed in by her father—largely powerless to change White House policy, and pilloried when she tries to make her good intentions known. “It’s now so clearly at the point where she is overly gaming every move out, and that leads to paralysis,” this person said. “What we saw last week was just total paralysis. She does know what’s right, but she’s scared to even do that.”

Part of this fear has to do with the barrage of criticism the First Daughter has received over the last year and a half. As one person close to her told me recently, the attitude she has adopted is one of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. “She knows she’ll get criticized if she says nothing,” this person explained. “And if she does say something, she’ll get criticized for not going far enough or saying more. So she is sort of like, ‘What’s the point?’”

By Sunday, Ivanka was ready to try to turn the page. She posted a video of herself from April, from a summit in Peru where she helped launch an initiative that provides Latin American women with access to capital and jobs. “Poverty, violence, instability and lack of economic opportunity in parts of Latin America are underlying issues leading to the current immigration crisis, and have been for decades,” she captioned the video, ignoring the White House policies that have made the border crisis worse. On Monday, she attended an event at the White House on computer-science education for students, and on Tuesday, she attended a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions meeting about re-authorizing and modernizing a bill that puts federal money toward closing the skills gap. About these two issues, she tweeted or re-tweeted nine times.

“This is what she knows how to do when things get bad,” one adviser told me. “She knows she needs to look for a win, no matter how small, to change the narrative.” Though several advisers and friends noted that this time, it is going to be harder. “This one ain’t bouncing off so quickly,” one former close associate told me Tuesday night. “This one is going to stick.”

In some ways, Ivanka and Jared are more toxic than ever, having sailed past the point at which they might quit the Trump administration in good conscience and return to their lives in New York. But in other ways, the Trump-Kushners are more comfortable than ever in Washington. While Ivanka can no longer claim to hold any influence over her father, her powerlessness has also freed her of the media’s expectations. The couple’s enemies list has winnowed with the exits of Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, among others. While they face a litany of chilling political and legal threats—a declining stock market, the forthcoming Trump-Putin summit, a likely 2018 midterm loss in the House, and the ever-looming specter of Robert Mueller—Ivanka and Jared seem to have found a groove. Kushner, for example, has had some legislative success with his prison-reform agenda. As the president marks the six-month anniversary of the Republican tax cut on Friday, Ivanka is likely to share in the celebration, having lobbied lawmakers to include a childcare tax credit. People familiar with their thinking tell me they now plan to stay in Washington, at least for the time being, despite speculation last year that they might take their children back to Manhattan in the fall.