• During the past 6 months, Short served as a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, worked as a CNN commentator and did general government consulting for corporate and investor clients.

Behind the scenes: Pence has been searching for a new chief since Nick Ayers resigned at the end of last year after turning down an offer to be Trump's chief of staff. In the meantime, Pence's deputy chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, has been a caretaker chief.

Go deeper: Republicans launch new group to lobby Congress on USMCA

• The Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become a powerful symbol of the issue that President Trump teed up in his State of the Union address when he said: "[W]e renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country."
• The liberal proposals of Democrats' 2020 candidates, most notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax," give Republicans more ammunition.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tells Fred Barnes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Ocasio-Cortez: "I can pretty safely say this is the first time in my political career that I thought the essence of America was being debated."

Republicans have long demagogued by branding Democrats "socialists." Now, some Democrats are helping by self-identifying.

• The term — rarely defined by those who throw it around — packed more of a punch when the memory of the Cold War was fresh.
• Polling shows younger Americans are souring on capitalism, and don’t find the label "socialist" so scary.
• And an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll last month found 70% of voters want the economic system reformed, with 58% saying it's skewed toward the wealthy.
• So soaking the rich may turn out to be pretty darn popular.

Republicans taking an early victory lap on "socialism" may eventually find it hard to defend not raising taxes on billionaires. And the 2020 Democrats are wary of being branded "socialist":

• Even Warren has said: "I am a capitalist."
• And Sen. Kamala Harris said yesterday in New Hampshire: "I am not a democratic socialist."

Be smart: Republicans are loving the moment but are rightly wary: They know it could change quickly — either because of something Trump says or new facts that emerge from investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller or House Democrats.

Go deeper:

• Trump's lifeline: Democrats' socialism surge
• Trump's 2020 vision: America First vs. socialism
• Exclusive poll: Americans want economic reform in 2020

• If Trump follows through on these tariffs, allies will go crazy, especially the Europeans, but also the Japanese and maybe the Koreans. (Canada and Mexico are largely protected by side letters in their new trade deal with the U.S.)
• U.S. business leaders won't be happy with car tariffs, either, and there will almost certainly be a legal challenge to the notion that automobile imports constitute a national security threat.
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's leader of international trade, John Murphy, tweeted this morning: "Reminder: The auto industry is united in opposition. Nearly all economists too. It's a terrible idea."

Behind the scenes: Most of Trump's senior economic advisers — with the notable exception of Peter Navarro — think imposing car tariffs is a terrible idea. But Trump tells everyone who'll listen that the threat of car tariffs is his best source of leverage in negotiations with foreign leaders.

• Trump says privately he used them against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and he believes that by hanging the threat of car tariffs over the ongoing trade negotiations with the Europeans, the Trump administration will get a better deal.
• Sources familiar with the White House's auto tariffs strategy tell me they plan to keep the contents of the Commerce report a secret, at least for the time being, as is their prerogative under the law. 

The bottom line: A senior Republican Senate aide familiar with the strategy described it this way: "Mostly that they don't want to make it public so that the president can keep it in his back pocket as a threat (no matter what it says about cars and national security)."

Go deeper: Inside Trump's car obsession