Good Wednesday morning. I'm Anna Palmer. And welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing,

sponsored by the Better Medicare Alliance. And I'm Jake Sherman. Bundle Up Out There if you're on the

East Coast. The Capitol Weather Gang is reporting that a bomb cyclone, yes, a bomb cyclone,

will blast the East Coast before a polar vortex creates a tremendous cold leak this week. What a great

welcome to 2018. Today marks the beginning of the January budget negotiations. The Big Four,

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer meet with Mark Short and Mick Mulvaney

at 3 p.m. in Ryan's office today. We wrote yesterday that the general consensus is Democrats have an

advantage going into the negotiations. To put it lightly, this elicited a few emails from top-level

Republican sources on the Hill who clearly think otherwise. Here's the case Republicans make

about why they are well positioned. They argue that Democrats are focused on finding a way to tie a fix for DACA to the

budget negotiations, which is a non-starter for Republicans who want to include some sort of

border security tied to any immigration legislation. The GOP says they're willing to give Democrats

tens of billions of dollars in additional domestic spending,

part of a cap seal.

And they are skeptical Democrats will let that all fall apart over DACA.

Breaking overnight, the AP is reporting that North Korea has opened a key cross-border

communications channel with South Korea.

The first time in almost two years, the countries

are exploring the possibility of sitting down and talking after months of escalation.

President Donald Trump was busy on Twitter last night. He questioned why the U.S. pays

hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians. He also tweeted that he has a

much bigger and more powerful nuclear button than

...