How JD Vance is carving out his role as VP: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Friday! Best of luck to our Kansas City and Philadelphia readers this Super Bowl weekend. In today’s edition, Henry J. Gomez digs into JD Vance’s expanding portfolio and what it reveals about his White House role. Plus, “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker outlines the hurdles that await Donald Trump’s agenda on Capitol Hill. 

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— Adam Wollner

How Vance is carving out his role as VP

By Henry J. Gomez

Vice President JD Vance’s White House portfolio has come into sharper focus this week, revealing how and where the White House is most confident deploying him at the outset of President Donald Trump’s second term. 

TikTok: The latest development is that Trump has tapped Vance, along with national security adviser Michael Waltz, to oversee a deal to sell and save TikTok, the Chinese social media company facing a ban in the U.S., two people familiar with the arrangement told NBC News. 

Capitol Hill: Vance has also emerged as Trump’s eyes, ears and voice in the Senate, where he served for two years. Leveraging his existing relationships with fellow Republicans in the chamber, he helped swing two key committee votes in the fights over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominees for health and human services secretary and director of national intelligence, respectively.

Ohio: Vance started the week in his native Ohio, where, on the second anniversary of the toxic East Palestine train derailment, he committed the administration to completing cleanup efforts and defended Trump’s call for tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China.

DOGE: And he ended it by calling for the rehiring of a Department of Government Efficiency staffer who resigned after The Wall Street Journal surfaced racist remarks he had made online. (Elon Musk later said he would bring back the staffer.)

Foreign policy: Up next week: the first overseas trip of Vance’s vice presidency, with an itinerary that includes an artificial intelligence summit in Paris and the Munich Security Conference. It will give him an opportunity to build his foreign policy credentials ahead of his own anticipated presidential run in 2028.

Vice presidencies can be complicated to navigate. Dan Quayle is remembered more for his blunders. Al Gore struggled to emerge from Bill Clinton’s shadow. More recently, Kamala Harris received several high-profile but tricky assignments, including immigration and abortion. 

But at least at this early stage, Vance seems to have found his footing. He told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo this week that he sees himself as “an all-around player.” One White House official, asked to grade Vance’s performance so far, gave him an “A.”  

Read more from Henry →

What to know from the Trump presidency today

• A federal judge said he will pause a midnight deadline for the U.S. Agency for International Development to be stripped down to a few hundred workers from a workforce of more than 5,000.
• Trump said he plans to announce “reciprocal trade” with a range of countries next week. 
• He also said he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week in Washington and that he will “probably be talking to” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• And Trump said he intended to fire some of the FBI personnel who worked on Capitol riot cases, asserting without providing evidence that some of them were “corrupt.”
• The Justice Department and lawyers representing FBI agents who investigated Jan. 6 reached an agreement that would prohibit anyone in the federal government from publicly releasing the names of those agents while litigation proceeds.
• Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said she received a letter from Trump informing her that she has been removed from her post “immediately.” But it does not appear that Trump has the power to unilaterally remove an FEC commissioner, even if his or her term has expired.
• Trump announced he will sign an executive order that will end federal support for paper straws, a Biden-era policy that was part of a broader plan to end federal reliance on single-use plastics.

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Trump’s biggest hurdle might be on Capitol Hill

By Kristen Welker

President Donald Trump’s agenda is facing plenty of challenges in the courts, with more than two dozen lawsuits underway. But his biggest hurdle may be on Capitol Hill. 

I was on Capitol Hill this week talking to Republican lawmakers and I can tell you, the concern about passing Trump’s legislative agenda was palpable. Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House, where they can only afford to lose one vote, leaving them with virtually no room for error. 

And Republicans are still debating exactly how they want to advance Trump’s policy priorities. Do they address the border first, and taxes separately? Or do they tie the two together?  

Yesterday, House Republicans huddled at the White House for nearly five hours as they try to figure this out. A source who was in the meeting told me it was productive, and they’re still on the one-bill track favored by Trump. 

As they continue to hammer out the details, Speaker Mike Johnson is aiming to kick-start the process in the House with a committee vote next week. He’s under even more pressure to act now that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released a separate budget resolution that addresses border security, the military and energy provisions — and leaves extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts for another time. Graham also wants a committee vote next week.  

And remember, the government is set to shut down in just over a month, potentially throwing another wrench into the effort to enact Trump’s agenda.  

But the GOP is determined to find a way forward. As one Republican lawmaker told me, “Failure is not an option.”

We’ll unpack Trump’s agenda and more on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” where I’ll speak to national security adviser Michael Waltz and Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner, Bridget Bowman and Faith Wardwell.

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