Morning Report — Trump to sell disruptive governance in speech

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

In today’s issue:

Trump’s tariffs spark retaliation ahead of his big speech
T minus 10 days to the shutdown deadline
Ukraine deal isn’t dead, Trump says
Measles spreads in Texas

President Trump will tell Americans in a prime-time speech tonight that his dizzying moves early in his second term should give them confidence about constructing what he calls the nation’s new “golden age.”

Trump’s remarks are aimed at helping jumpstart his congressional agenda while defending broad cuts to federal agencies, an escalating battle over trade and his foreign policy pivot toward Russia.

The Hill: Here are five things to watch.

The presidential update to a joint session of Congress — the fifth such speech by Trump and set to start at 9:10 p.m. ET — is preceded today by trade wars he launched.

Trump, whose job approval hovers below 50 percent, today levied 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada (and another 10 percent applied to Chinese goods). Beijing retaliated Tuesday with tariffs on U.S. food and farm goods and a lawsuit challenging the new U.S. tariffs filed with the World Trade Organization. China said it would impose additional tariffs of up to 15 percent on some U.S. goods from March 10 and restrict exports to 15 U.S. companies. China in February, after Trump’s first round of tariffs, also retaliated against certain U.S. energy imports.

U.S. financial markets took a swan dive Monday after Trump affirmed that the levies on three trading partners, which he postponed for a month, were poised to take effect.

▪ The Hill: New round of tariffs set amid uncertainties.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced immediate 25 percent tariffs on more than $20 billion of U.S. imports. Tariffs on an additional $86 billion worth of products will take effect in 21 days. Mexico previously said it had trade “contingency” plans at the ready. President Claudia Sheinbaum is expected to announce Mexico’s response this morning at a news conference in Mexico City.

Many economists and corporate executives have predicted that Trump’s tariff policies will prove costly by raising prices for U.S. consumers and slowing U.S. growth.

The president tonight plans to tell his audience that he’s effectively closed the U.S. southern border and downsized the federal bureaucracy while wielding executive orders to try to erase his predecessor’s left-leaning policies. Trump will argue, as he did during his inaugural address, that he’s a peacemaker and unifier.

▪ The Hill: How to watch Trump's address.

▪ The Hill: Vice President Vance heads to the U.S. southern border on Wednesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard.

Vance, interviewed Monday on Fox News, said Trump is “going to talk a lot about his successes” and “is going to poke a little fun” during his remarks tonight.

Americans tell pollsters in recent weeks that Trump has not focused enough on high consumer prices. The president plans to describe what his administration has done and continues to do to "fix the economic mess created by the Biden administration and end inflation for all Americans," officials told Fox News Digital. Trump is expected to champion a White House tally of more than $1.7 trillion in investments made since Jan. 20 to bring manufacturing back to the United States, including increases in energy production and AI investments.

CBS News: A Taiwanese semiconductor chip company invited by Trump to the Roosevelt Room Monday pledged to bring $100 billion in manufacturing investment to the United States.

Trump may also nod at GOP tensions in the House and Senate over enacting an ambitious budget by this summer. Republicans’ shared goal is to anchor the president’s agenda long-term while also keeping the government’s lights on after next week. It’s proving to be difficult. Shutdowns, experienced in the past, are deeply unpopular with most Americans and Republicans say they want to avoid that prospect.

SMART TAKE with NewsNation’s BLAKE BURMAN:

Yesterday I highlighted how the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow estimate was predicting growth in the first quarter to be negative. Well, how low will it go? The new projection just dropped even further, from minus 1.5 percent to minus 2.8 percent.

This is just a model, and it changes frequently, but it also comes as President Trump presses ahead on tariffs before tonight’s address to Congress.

We will keep tracking how the president and Republican lawmakers talk about prices and the economy. It was a winning issue that helped Republicans take control of Washington, but now it could soon become a liability.

Watch tonight in the Democratic rebuttal to see how Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) frames the arguments around the economy and the cost of living.

Burman hosts “The Hill” weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:

▪ Trump offered new details about his plan to create a strategic crypto reserve, prompting the cryptocurrency market to rally following a few sluggish weeks.

▪ Are home values about to fall? It all depends on location.

▪ Citigroup Inc. almost shifted about $6 billion to a customer's account by accident due to a copy and paste error.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press | Julia Demaree Nikhinson

SHUTDOWN COUNTDOWN: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing a political minefield as he seeks a way to avoid a government shutdown in just 10 days, with both Republicans and Democrats complicating the path to keep the government open, write The Hill’s Mychael Schnell and Emily Brooks.

Democrats, whose support will be necessary to keep the lights on, are seeking to use the deadline to push back on the Trump administration’s reshaping of government — and alleged that Republicans have “walked away from the negotiating table.” The talks have been complicated by Trump’s actions in regard to congressionally appropriated funds, foreign aid suspension and the firing of scores of federal workers.

Republicans, meanwhile, are putting pressure on the Speaker from multiple sides, with moderates slamming the idea of yet another stopgap and hard-line conservatives pressuring Johnson to incorporate some of the cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“Government funding is always bipartisan. You have to have partners on both sides of the aisle to do it,” Johnson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend. “And we need our Democrat colleagues to come to the table and be reasonable about that.”

▪ Politico: Democrats are serious about a shutdown. “At some point you’ve got to have a goddamn backbone,” said one Democratic lawmaker.

▪ NBC News: Who does Medicaid cover? How Congress's proposed budget cuts could be felt.

▪ The Hill: The Senate on Monday confirmed Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education. Senators voted 51-45 along party lines to confirm Trump’s nominee to lead a federal agency he has been vocal about wanting to shut down.

RUSSIA: Republican lawmakers are finding themselves caught in the political maelstrom caused by Trump's pivot on Russia, writes The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. GOP senators say Trump needs space to make a peace deal, but they are worried about unraveling NATO alliances and Russia gaining global strength as a result.

“The deterioration of that meeting was highly unfortunate given the stakes involved. There is no doubt that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] was the aggressor in Ukraine and launched a brutal, unprovoked attack,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a leading Republican voice on national security issues. “I do hope we can come up with a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, but we can’t forget who started this war.”

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at 10 a.m. The Senate will convene at 10 a.m.
The president will address a joint session of Congress at 9:10 p.m. ET.
Vice President Vance will attend the president’s speech, as will the Cabinet.
First lady Melania Trump will attend the president’s televised address.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press | Julio Cortez

MEASLES: In the first test of the Trump administration’s health outbreak response, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been sending mixed messages about rapidly spreading measles outbreaks in Texas.

A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy initially downplayed the outbreak during a Cabinet meeting with Trump last week, saying it was “not unusual” and falsely claimed that many people hospitalized were there “mainly for quarantine.” In an op-ed published Sunday by Fox News, Kennedy inched slightly closer to calling for people to get the vaccine but still stopped short. He emphasized that the decision to get vaccinated was a “personal one,” urging parents to talk with their doctors “to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine.”

But public health experts aren’t ready to celebrate.

“There’s been incremental movement from the sort of downplaying to [Kennedy’s Fox News op-ed], but it still feels to some degree half-hearted in terms of really using the megaphone, the platform of our nation’s public health agencies to speak very clearly about what individuals should do to protect themselves and their families,” said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor and vaccine researcher at the Yale School of Public Health.

▪ Politico: The top HHS spokesperson abruptly quit after clashing with Kennedy and his close aides over their management of the agency amid the growing measles outbreak.

▪ Vox: Can you still get measles even if you’ve been vaccinated?

Democratic election officials are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s wide-reaching slashing of the federal bureaucracy, The Hill’s Julia Mueller reports, which is impacting the cybersecurity agency responsible for protecting the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reportedly paused its election security work and placed employees who worked in its election security division on leave last month. Democratic officials and election experts say those efforts could put national security at risk and compromise the safety and security of U.S. elections.

▪ The Hill: Trump on Monday dismissed GOP town hall backlash as a result of “paid troublemakers.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) responded on social media: “We don’t need paid protesters, bro.”

▪ NBC News: The head of the FBI's New York field office was forced out of the bureau on Monday, a month after he urged his employees to "dig in" after the Trump administration removed senior FBI leaders and requested the names of all agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.

ELSEWHERE

UKRAINE: Trump on Monday paused all future deliveries of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine as he continued to criticize Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the heels of a confrontational meeting with Zelensky late last week. After the meeting, Trump called off peace talks and an agreement for the U.S. to invest in Ukraine’s critical mineral supply went unsigned.

While Trump insisted Monday that the Ukraine mineral deal is not dead, The Associated Press reported Zelensky said the end of the war was “still very, very far away.”

“I just think he should be more appreciative, because this country has stuck with them through thick and thin,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We’ve given them much more than Europe, and Europe should have given more than us because as you know that’s right there.”

European leaders, meanwhile, are rushing to present proposals for the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine as they rally around Zelensky and try to hatch a peace plan that includes Kyiv. Britain said on Monday that several proposals had been made, after France floated a plan for a one-month pause leading to peace talks.

▪ BBC: What a pause in U.S. military aid will mean for Ukraine.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Ukraine actions caused serious damage to an alliance at the heart of the post-World War II order: NATO.

▪ NPR: Seeing Washington change course on Ukraine, Taiwan ponders its own fate.

GAZA CEASEFIRE: The second stage of Gaza’s ceasefire was always in doubt; after repeated accusations by Israel and Hamas that the other side was in violation of the fragile truce, phase two appears almost entirely out of reach. Concern is mounting that war will return to the ravaged Gaza Strip, deepening the suffering of Palestinians and threatening the lives of the remaining hostages.

Israel, backed by the U.S., said there is a new deal, and it has halted all humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas accepts the new version. But Egypt and Qatar, the two Arab mediators, have accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law by “using food as a weapon of war.”

▪ Reuters: Arab leaders are meeting in Cairo today to present a plan for Gaza that would sideline Hamas and create interim bodies run by Arab, Muslim and Western states, contrasting Trump.

▪ Time magazine: With the Gaza ceasefire in limbo, Israel tries to impose an alternative plan on Hamas.

OPINION

■ Trump takes the dumbest tariff plunge, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.

■ Separating show and substance as Trump addresses Congress, by Chris Stirewalt, political editor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

And finally… ⚜️🥳 “Laissez les bons temps rouler!”

Mardi Gras comes to a close tonight, and soon, those celebrating in New Orleans and beyond will exclaim “Let the good times roll” for the last time this Carnival season.

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, encourages revelers to celebrate before Lent, when people will forfeit habits for 40 days in a lead-up to Easter.

In New Orleans, that means parades, parties, plenty of Mardi Gras beads and king cake. The modern New Orleans-style king cakes are shaped like rings and covered in purple, yellow and green sugar. Small charms, usually plastic baby figurines that represent Jesus, are hidden somewhere in the cake and the person who finds the charm is rewarded with good luck — and assigned to bring another king cake to the next party.

Stay Engaged

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