UKRAINE LATEST: The U.S. is ramping up the pressure to end the war in Ukraine, with various top officials playing good cop, bad cop and laying out a plan for peace.

The proposal: In Paris talks yesterday, the U.S. presented a proposal that would basically institute a ceasefire to freeze the conflict along the current front lines, keeping Russia in charge of all the Ukrainian territory it has invaded, Bloomberg’s Alberto Nardelli, Alex Wickham and Daryna Krasnolutska scooped. The broad framework of the plan would also lift some sanctions on Russia and remove the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO — key Moscow demands — while providing security guarantees to Ukraine and stopping Russia’s attacks.

Next steps: This proposal is not final, and France said talks with the U.S., the U.K. and Germany will continue next week in London. European officials hope the plan — which Bloomberg notes would include Europe refusing to recognize the occupied regions as Russian — will prod Ukraine toward an agreement and put the ball in Russia’s court to accept a ceasefire.

Stark warning: Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments early today that the U.S. will soon “move on” from trying to end the war if progress isn’t made left the continent unsettled, as the details remain unclear, WaPo’s Adam Taylor, Robyn Dixon and Ellen Francis note. If Washington abandons peace talks — or stops Ukraine military aid or Russia sanctions — Russia would likely benefit on the battlefield. One U.S. official said that “in the coming days the administration wants to see if there can be an agreement on the framework or those bigger policy decisions are going to have to be made,” CNN reports.

But but but: In Rome, VP JD Vance struck a more positive tone, saying that the situation was starting to shift even in just the past day. “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he said.

In the Oval: Asked just now whether he was being played by Russia, President Donald Trump said, “Nobody’s playing me. I’m trying to help.” But his comments indicated that he may be hewing closer to Rubio’s warning than Vance’s optimism: “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’” Trump said, “and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.” (The president also reiterated his call for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates and attacked Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) as “fake.”)

The new Jared Kushner: “Trump’s ‘lone ranger’: How Steve Witkoff became the defacto point man on America’s foreign policy challenges,” by CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Alayna Treene and Alex Marquardt

THE RESHAPING OF GOVERNMENT: Schedule F is back. OPM is due to announce today that it will proceed with a rule to remove civil service protections from roughly 50,000 federal workers, making them easier to fire at the president’s whim, Axios’ Alex Isenstadt scooped. This critical step to bend the federal bureaucracy toward Trump’s agenda, which he briefly tried to do at the end of his first term, would turn about 2 percent of nonpartisan career federal workers into “at will” employees. Meanwhile, as DOGE continues to crack down on immigration across the government, two senior embeds have been moved from the Social Security Administration to the Justice Department, NYT’s Glenn Thrush reports.

But but but: Gary Shapley is out as acting IRS commissioner, NYT’s Jonathan Swan, Andrew Duehren, Alan Rappeport and Maggie Haberman scooped. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got the OK from Trump to undo his selection after complaining that Elon Musk had gone around Bessent to get the Hunter Biden whistleblower installed atop the tax agency. Now, Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender is in line to be the new acting leader.

Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at [email protected].

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1. WAR REPORT: A new round of U.S. strikes at a fuel port in Yemen has killed 74 people and injured at least 171, the Houthi-run health ministry said, per Reuters. If confirmed, that would be the highest death toll yet in the Trump administration’s campaign against the Houthi rebels. It was not immediately clear whether civilians were among them. The U.S. said it was seeking to choke off a revenue source for the Houthis.

2. IRAN LATEST: Ahead of tomorrow’s next round of U.S.-Iran talks, Axios’ Barak Ravid reports that Witkoff met with Israeli officials unannounced in Paris today. Ron Dermer and David Barnea were hoping to sway the U.S. position, amid Israeli concerns that the U.S. could end up striking a deal with Iran that they find too soft.

3. HARVARD JARRED: In the administration’s latest effort to squeeze Harvard, the Education Department demanded that the university share information on foreign donations it has received going back to 2014, WSJ’s Douglas Belkin scooped. Harvard says it has filed the required reports on this for decades, but the Education Department alleged (without providing evidence) that the school’s submissions were “incomplete and inaccurate” for years.

4. SEE NO EVIL: “Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More,” by ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis: “[M]any of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them. The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth.”

5. THE FLIP SIDE OF MASS LAYOFFS: “FDA hiring contractors to replace fired staff who supported safety inspections,” by AP’s Matthew Perrone: “The departed staffers include people who booked complex international trips to remote Indian pharmaceutical plants, lab scientists who tested food samples for contamination, and communication specialists who alerted the public to urgent safety recalls. The potential disruptions to FDA’s already strained inspection force are so great that agency leaders recently expedited plans to hire outside contractors to replace some fired workers, starting with those who arranged foreign travel. … [HHS] did not answer questions about whether contractors would be cheaper or more efficient.”

More ramifications: Firings of lab scientists at the CDC have effectively shut down the U.S.’ ability to fully track outbreaks of hepatitis and antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, WaPo’s Lena Sun reports.

6. RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: “House Republicans eye date for fight over food assistance program,” by POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill: “House Republicans are eyeing May 8 for the Agriculture Committee to advance its portion of the megabill to enact President Donald Trump’s vast domestic agenda … Republicans are trying to resolve the massive gap between the House’s instruction for the committee to accomplish $230 billion in spending cuts as compared with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s $1 billion minimum goal … The meeting will also kick off a major public fight over the future of [SNAP].”

7. TRADING PLACES: In Trump’s talks with Japanese negotiators, he laid out “three pillars” of demands: pony up for keeping U.S. troops in the country, buy more U.S. cars and shrink the trade deficit, The Asahi Shimbun reports. … Meanwhile, Indonesia is weighing a plan to buy huge amounts of U.S. arms and fighter jets as part of an effort to mollify Trump on trade, Bloomberg’s Chandra Asmara reports.

Dance of the superpowers: In the wake of the escalating U.S.-China trade war, China has ended purchases of American liquefied natural gas, NYT’s Keith Bradsher reports from Beijing. And as China increasingly blocks rare earth minerals from going to the U.S., the impact won’t just be on national security: WaPo’s Katrina Northrop and Lyric Li report that medical supply chains for some cancer treatments, MRIs and other health tools might be disrupted by shortages. The change could also accelerate the drive to develop more rare earths mining in the U.S., AP’s Josh Funk reports from Omaha, Nebraska.

Mark your calendars: As the U.K. hopes to strike a deal with Washington on tariffs, among other priorities, Trump casually indicated that he may have a state visit to the U.K. in September. And our London Playbook colleague Andrew McDonald confirms that planning is indeed underway for the president to visit that month. He’s likely to meet the king at Windsor Castle.

8. WHAT MARCO RUBIO IS UP TO: “The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights,” by NPR’s Graham Smith: “The Trump administration is substantially scaling back the State Department’s annual reports on international human rights to remove longstanding critiques of abuses such as harsh prison conditions, government corruption and restrictions on participation in the political process … [They] will no longer call governments out for such things as denying freedom of movement and peaceful assembly. They won’t condemn retaining political prisoners without due process or restrictions on ‘free and fair elections.’”

9. KNOWING DOROTHY SHEA: “Career diplomat becomes the face of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda at the UN,” by AP’s Farnoush Amiri: “The highest-ranking U.S. representative now at the United Nations told Congress two years ago that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was ‘unprovoked’ and ‘unjustified’ … In February, it was the same career diplomat, Dorothy Shea, who voiced the Trump administration’s extraordinary decision to split with European allies and refuse to back a U.N. resolution blaming Russia … Shea’s interim role has unexpectedly made her a face of the stunning U.S. transition on the world stage … She has spent the last 30-plus years serving as a diplomat under both Republican and Democratic presidents.”

A message from PhRMA:

Insurers own PBMs, pharmacies – even doctors’ offices. It’s time to protect patients and rein in the middlemen.

Mike Huckabee placed a note of prayer from Donald Trump in the Western Wall.

Sophie, a local cat, made it onto the White House grounds.

PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — “DC Isn’t Becoming a State. But It Could Become Maryland,” by POLITICO’s Michael Schaffer: “Washingtonians may be aghast at the thought of reconnecting with their northern neighbor, but some think it’s preferable to appeasing Trump.”

TRANSITIONS — Former Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) will be a senior adviser at Lazard, WSJ’s Lauren Thomas scooped. … Scott Cullinane is now a director of U.S. government relations at the ONE Campaign. He previously was director of government relations at Razom for Ukraine. …

… Enrique Roig is now director of policy and strategic initiatives at the Seattle International Foundation. He most recently was deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere and Africa in the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. … Matt Pagano is joining Victory Enterprises as VP of political development. He previously was a senior political strategist at TLC Political.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Madeline Nykaza, director of government affairs at Hemlock Semiconductor, and Drew Colliatie, director of government affairs at Siemens USA, welcomed Pearl Alice Colliatie on Tuesday. Pic

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