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SYMBOLIC BUT STRIKING — The International Criminal Court today issued an arrest warrant for Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN for committing a war crime by spiriting Ukrainian children out of the country. More from Reuters

DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK — DONALD TRUMP could be criminally indicted any day now, a historic first that could upend American politics.

But for now, at least, the former president looks ascendant in his bid to become the future president: Teflon Don has yet to be caught by any would-be GOP rivals and is slowly reintegrating himself into portions of the American political firmament.

The latest shot in the arm for Trump’s campaign is the news that YouTube will finally let him back onto the platform today, as Axios’ Sara Fischer reported this morning. Trump has been suspended from the site — one of the most influential platforms for American digital life — since shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection. YouTube, saying Trump’s account had incited violence, at that time blocked him from posting new videos, buying ads or having comments on his videos.

Now, Trump’s access to his account will be restored, though certain videos that YouTube took down won’t go back up. “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” YouTube’s LESLIE MILLER told Axios.

YouTube follows Meta and Twitter in allowing the president back on the world’s biggest social media platforms, though he’s stuck to Truth Social for now.

While these tech roadblocks to Trump fall, the trends in recent polling are clear: Trump is rising in the presidential primary field, and Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS is slipping, NYT’s Nate Cohn outlines. He pinpoints a few key factors for the change: Trump has stepped up his attacks on DeSantis, while the governor hasn’t defended himself much or formally jumped into the race. And the honeymoon period after the midterms — in which DeSantis romped and Trump-backed candidates struggled — seems to have ended.

The shift “may wind up not mattering much in itself, but it could say something important about the challenges facing the DeSantis campaign,” Cohn writes.

At the same time, DeSantis’ Ukraine stance has occasioned more blowback from the GOP establishment and chattering classes than he’s received recently. It remains to be seen how DeSantis’ skepticism will play with the electorate. But he’s opened himself up to charges of flip-flopping from Trump, as NBC’s Henry Gomez, Phil McCausland and Jonathan Allen write in a look at DeSantis’ typically hawkish record in Congress.

“DeSantis is taking positions that are similar to Trump’s but which hurt his ability to build a non-Trump coalition in the primary,” notes NYT’s Maggie Haberman, “and he also gets criticized for them in a way Trump doesn’t.”

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

TOP-ED — “Ron DeSantis’ Staff Got a Reporter Fired for Doing His Job,” by Jack Shafer, on Axios’ firing of Tampa correspondent BEN MONTGOMERY: “It’s only natural for source-reporter relations to sometimes grow tense if the goal is to find news. The real worry is when sources and reporters get too cozy and the tough questions stop coming. When that happens, the news turns to mush.”

THE ECONOMY

LAW & ORDER: SVB — Regulators and policymakers are now looking back through their actions (or lack thereof) in recent years, wondering if they should have done more to prevent the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, WaPo’s Tony Romm and Jonathan O’Connell report. From the Fed to the Hill to the state of California, “officials possessed vast power to probe SVB before it failed — yet they all seemed to miss key opportunities to prevent the meltdown,” as warning signs mounted for months. And even as several internal reviews begin, the Fed in particular is facing calls for an independent investigation of what went wrong.

In fact, going back a year, Fed officials in San Francisco were flagging problems with SVB and sending warnings to the bank, Bloomberg’s Hannah Levitt, Sridhar Natarajan and Saleha Mohsin scooped. But “[t]he relatively late discovery of so many flaws raises questions about whether the Fed was diligent in stepping up oversight as the firm was ballooning in size.”

And today, President JOE BIDEN issued a call for new congressional action to slap harsher penalties on executives whose banks fail due to mismanagement. He wants Congress to give the FDIC expanded powers to take back compensation from such execs, bar them from the industry and levy fines.

Meanwhile, SVB Financial, the bank’s parent company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. More from NBC

Political fallout: Biden’s 2020 campaign and the DNC will give back tens of thousands of dollars they got in donations from SVB execs, USA Today’s Ella Lee and Erin Mansfield scooped.

THE BIG FEAR — The past week’s banking woes have increased the likelihood of a recession, WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath and Rachel Wolfe report, as a softening economy typically needs some kind of shock to tip it into recession. “While economists pore over numbers, moments like this often come down to intangible human emotions. The main goal of policy makers this past week was to stop the panic.”

STATE OF THE UNIONS — “Nearly 80,000 federal employees joined unions in a year, White House says,” by WaPo’s Lauren Kaori Gurley

JUDICIARY SQUARE

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER — HUNTER BIDEN stepped up his more aggressive posture today by countersuing JOHN PAUL MAC ISAAC, the laptop repair shop owner at the center of the story of the president’s son’s laptop, WaPo’s Matt Viser reports. Biden’s team alleges “six counts of invasion of privacy, including conspiracy to obtain and distribute the data” from his computer, in a 42-page filing in district court in Delaware. Mac Isaac has accused Biden of defamation, saying he didn’t do anything wrong because the laptop was left in his store. “The countersuit is in part an attempt by Hunter Biden and his lawyers to reframe the story, focusing it on a private citizen whose privacy was allegedly invaded,” Viser writes.

VALLEY TALK

BREAKING — “Justice Dept. Investigating TikTok’s Owner Over Possible Spying on Journalists,” by NYT’s Glenn Thrush and Sapna Maheshwari: “The inquiry appears to be tied to an admission by the app’s owner, ByteDance, that employees had inappropriately obtained Americans’ data. The company said it had fired the workers involved.”

TIKTOK ON THE CLOCK — “Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill Build an Anti-China Alliance,” by WSJ’s Georgia Wells: “A group of Silicon Valley executives, including investor PETER THIEL, and Washington lawmakers are quietly mobilizing against China’s involvement in the U.S. tech industry ahead of TikTok Chief [Executive] SHOU ZI CHEW’s Capitol Hill testimony next week. They plan to meet for a private dinner on Wednesday … Spearheading the effort to create the bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks is JACOB HELBERG, a former Google policy adviser who is the newest member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission … The group is calling itself the Hill & Valley Forum.”

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

TRIAL UPDATE — “Prosecution Completes Testimony in Proud Boys Jan. 6 Sedition Trial,” by NYT’s Alan Feuer and Zach Montague: “The defense, which intends to start its case on Monday, expects to present a fairly long list of witnesses, including several of the defendants.”

MORE POLITICS

SEEKING JUSTICE — As Republicans try to convince West Virginia Gov. JIM JUSTICE to challenge Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.), the governor met with NRSC Chair STEVE DAINES (R-Mont.) yesterday in Washington, per National Journal’s Kirk Bado.

DEMOCRACY WATCH — “How the backbone of American elections is being upended,” by Zach Montellaro: “The board of the Electronic Registration Information Center — or ERIC — is meeting on Friday, as the remaining members of the organization try to chart the organization’s path following the high-profile departures of Florida, West Virginia and Missouri earlier this month. Some officials fear more states are eyeing the door.”

AD WARS — American Action Network is going up with a $1.5 million ad buy touting House Republicans’ big energy bill, H.R. 1, Katherine Tully-McManus and Ally Mutnick report in Congress Minutes. Airing during March Madness games on broadcast, cable and digital, as well as in a dozen local markets for swing-seat Dems, “[t]he buy is a sign that Republicans see the energy package as a winning campaign issue.”

CONGRESS

LITMUS TEST — “McCarthy pressured by firearms group to cancel fundraiser for ‘anti-gun’ Republican,” by the Washington Examiner’s Kaelan Deese: “A Second Amendment advocacy group [the American Firearms Association] is calling on House Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY (R-CA) to cancel his financial support of Rep. BRIAN FITZPATRICK (R-PA), arguing the Republican leader shouldn’t funnel money to lawmakers who have backed ‘anti-gun’ legislation.”

OVERSIGHT FILES — House Oversight Chair JAMES COMER (R-Ky.) has asked ROB WALKER, a business associate of Biden family members, for an interview, per The Daily Caller’s James Lynch.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

TRAGEDY AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER — The number of migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022 skyrocketed 58% to more than 890, WSJ’s Santiago Pérez and Alicia Caldwell report from Eagle Pass, Texas. That in part reflects higher numbers of migrants colliding with fewer opportunities to enter the country legally. As a result, “[m]any migrants have turned to human smugglers and WhatsApp messages to help them navigate more lightly patrolled — and treacherous — sections of the border.”

PRESSURE AT THE NORTHERN BORDER — “Border crossings from Canada into New York, Vermont and N.H. are up tenfold. Local cops want help,” by NBC’s Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez

UNFORCED ERROR — The Generalized System of Preferences expired in December 2020, and Congress has yet to renew the program, which gives more than 100 developing countries the ability to sell tons of goods to Americans without tariffs. Now, lacking that incentive, some manufacturers abroad are moving their operations back to China, WSJ’s Jason Douglas reports from Singapore. “For the U.S. economy as a whole, the lapse isn’t significant … [But it] risks denting investment in countries that show promise as alternatives for manufacturing outside China’s vast factory floor.”

NEW FROM USAID — “U.S. pledges more than $171 million in aid for Venezuelans,” by Reuters’ Humeyra Pamuk

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

INTERESTING TREND — As Republican-led states have broadly imposed new restrictions on schools around race, gender, sexuality and books, there have been strikingly few lawsuits challenging the new laws, WaPo’s Hannah Natanson reports. “The paucity and slow pace of legal challenges reflects the broad power states have to shape curriculums, experts say, and the lack of favorable precedent in a relatively unexplored territory of law.”

POLICY CORNER

THE TAXMAN COMETH — “Small Businesses Face Big Tax Bills From Research-Deduction Change,” by WSJ’s Richard Rubin: “For large companies, such as Northrop Grumman Corp. and Moderna Inc., the change is a cash-flow challenge, one that gets easier after several years even if Congress doesn’t act. It is a much bigger hurdle for small and medium-size firms that can’t tap reserves or borrow easily.”

PLAYBOOKERS

OUT AND ABOUT — Avisa Partners hosted a Women’s History Month reception yesterday at its office in Georgetown with the Association for Women in Cryptocurrency, with a roundtable discussion on cryptocurrency moderated by Axios publisher Nick Johnston. SPOTTED: Amanda Wick, Kristin Smith, Lizzy Fallon, Katie Chase, Sandra Ro and Nilmini Rubin.

— Former Colombian VP and Ambassador to the U.S. Francisco Santos hosted cocktails and conversations on emerging risks in Latin America at Global Situation Room last night. SPOTTED: Cameron Hume and John Simon, Venezuelan Ambassador Carlos Vecchio, Takashi Sadakane, Brett Bruen, Anita Siegfriedt and Mira Cohen.

WHITE HOUSE DEPARTURE LOUNGE — Rory Brosius is leaving her role as executive director of Joining Forces, first lady Jill Biden’s military family support program, per NBC’s Mike Memoli. Sheila Casey will replace her.

MEDIA MOVES — Carrie Budoff Brown is moving up to be SVP for politics at NBC News. She previously has been SVP of “Meet the Press.” … Sylvia Poggioli is retiring from NPR after 41 years.

Send Playbookers tips to [email protected] or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Setota Hailemariam and Bethany Irvine.

Correction: Yesterday’s Playbook PM included an incorrect list of guests at a U.S.-Ireland Partnership for Growth reception.