PREVENT DEFENSE — The U.S. has already spent more than $2 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Dealing with a pandemic after it hits is extremely costly, both in resources and human lives. Instead, to squash the next pandemic before it even starts, scientists say we should be focusing more money and attention on the unsuspecting source of most emerging diseases: animals.
Up to three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, or come from human-to-animal contact, according to the CDC. A virus might jump from wild game to humans at a livestock market. It could also come from a bat fleeing its home that was destroyed by logging. Or even a pet iguana in Kansas.
Beatrice Jin | POLITICO
And as human civilization expands more into animal habitats, the potential for a pandemic is becoming more pressing. In this illustrated piece, I explore what societies can do to reduce the likelihood of the next pandemic — and where lawmakers could help.
Greater diversity among health care professionals can improve patient care, leading to better health outcomes. That's why UnitedHealth Group is investing in a 21st century health workforce that ensures all communities have access to high-quality care. Learn more.
But he'll have to contend with a major obstacle: Americans who hate seeing these kinds of projects anywhere near their backyards. Power companies' efforts to build long-range transmission lines have failed repeatedly in recent decades, mired in legal and political fights from Maine to Arkansas, because of opposition from states and communities along the projects' paths, Eric Wolff writes.
Another challenge is supplying the tens of billions of dollars that such a massive transmission build-out would require.
New transmission lines would play a key role in carrying wind and solar power across the country to replace electricity from coal and natural gas. That makes them crucial to achieving Biden's goal of eliminating the power sector's net greenhouse gas pollution by 2035.
Additional lines would also allow different regions to share power in times of crisis, including extreme weather driven by climate change, and could lower electric rates by reducing congestion on the grid. The extra capacity on the grid could also enable a massive switch to electricity-powered cars and home heating.
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Talking to the Experts
TIME FOR SOME GAME THEORY — Sen. Joe Manchin holds immense sway over Biden's agenda, and he hasn't been shy about it.
The West Virginia senator, widely regarded as the swing vote in the Democrats' 50-seat Senate majority, played hardball on the president's $1.9 trillion Covid relief package. Now theDemocrats' most right-leaning senator is looking for changes inBiden's plan to pay for infrastructure. Hesaid this week that "this whole thing here has to change."
Maybe Manchin does have enough leverage to make Biden bend on the corporate tax rate. Or maybe Biden's concessions will come in a different form. Think back to what Republicans called the "Cornhusker Kickback." Senate Dems needed every one of their60 votes to pass the Affordable Care Act without a Republican filibuster. Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson was the last to commit.
Then-Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman didn't like the bill's required expansion of Medicaid, saying it would destroy the state's budget. SoNelson talked with then-Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, who adjusted the bill language so that Nebraska's share would be covered by the federal government forever, while other states were forced to pay for part of the expansion costs.
So how should Manchin maximize his advantage in 2021?Nightly's Myah Ward asked actual game theorists to assess his situation— and Biden's.Here are their lightly edited responses.
"Assume U.S. politicians want to maximize their chance for reelection. Then they support policies that their voters favor and oppose policies that their voters dislike — or find ways to compensate their voters for such policies.
"Biden's voters are nationally drawn, while Manchin's are local, and Biden has little expectation of winning the Electoral College in West Virginia. Hence, the policies that satisfy Biden's coalition and that satisfy Manchin's probably barely overlap.
"For Manchin to support Biden's infrastructure package it must provide sufficient benefits for Manchin's constituents to offset the parts his voters see as undesirable (e.g., social programs, high-speed rail).
"As both Manchin and Biden are up for reelection in 2024, neither has muchtime to overcome lost voter support. Biden must concede enough to Manchin to get his support while not giving so much as to alienate his own backers. Whether the elements in the bill that Biden's backers must have overlap with the bill that Manchin's voters can accept probably depends on unrelated concessions that Biden can make to benefit Manchin's voters." — Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, professor of politics at New York University
"Sen. Manchin has already started stating his demands very publicly, most notably disagreeing with the corporate tax rate increase from 21 percent to 28 percent and signaling that 25 percent would be ideal.
"This does not mean, however, that President Biden needs to meet all of Sen. Manchin's demands as the timing of the legislative process works to the president's advantage. Once the legislation is up for a vote, Sen. Manchin's threats to effectively veto a bill that does not completely please him may be irrelevant. He will need to choose between voting yes and being blamed for the bill's failure.
"It is hard to believe that when forced to decide, Sen. Manchin will vote no on an otherwise popular bill due to a 3-percentage points difference in corporate tax rate if other provisions of the bill are popular among his constituency. Hence, Joe Biden's best bet is not to scale down the size of the bill by lowering the bill's corporate tax rate to meet Manchin's demands, but instead include provisions that visibly benefit Manchin's state of West Virginia." — Wioletta Dziuda, professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
"The secret of this situation is that either Manchin or McConnell (not to mention Blunt and other GOP Senators in terms of crossing the aisle) can help carry the bill over the line in the Senate. Biden's best approach, if feasible, is to find something that lets all of them claim some victory. Something that clearly benefits only one of these pivotal actors may drag Biden into a different bargaining dynamic and slow/kill the process. The secret is to make the counterparties worry about whether the others will agree to it and leave the obstructor with nothing." — John W. Patty, professor of political science and quantitative theory and metrics at Emory University
— Key figure in Gaetz probe likely cooperating with feds: The legal peril Rep. Matt Gaetz is facing appeared to increase sharply today after a court hearing indicated that one of Gaetz's close friends, former Seminole County, Fla., tax collector Joel Greenberg, is likely cooperating with federal prosecutors.
— Expert: Lack of oxygen killed George Floyd, not drugs:George Floyd died of a lack of oxygen from being pinned to the pavement with a knee on his neck, a medical expert testified at former Officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial today , emphatically rejecting the defense theory that Floyd's drug use and underlying health problems were what killed him.
— 'Run, Ron, Run':Sen. Ron Johnson, who was first elected in the 2010 Republican wave and won a closely contested reelection in 2016, has not said whether he will seek a third term and has emphasized multiple times in recent months that he plans to take his time making the decision. But Trump gave him his backing in a statement released through his leadership PAC, Save America PAC.
AAAAAND THEY'RE GONE — 15 million doses. Gone. All because a plant accidentally mixed ingredients. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporter Sarah Owermohle looks at how such a big mistake happened.
Nightly asks you: As people begin to plan travel for the spring and summer, tell us what podcasts we should listen to when we finally hit the road? Use the form to give us your answer, and we'll use select responses in Friday's edition.
A week of violence that has left 55 officers injured intensified Wednesday night as rival masked gangs traded salvos of bottles, bricks and fireworks across the main "peace line" fortifications that separate British unionists and Irish nationalists in west Belfast. On the unionist side, youths torched a public bus and drove a hijacked car into one of the wall's locked gates.
Nobody has been killed, although video footage showed one rioter rolling in flames after walking into the shatter zone of a petrol bomb. In such skirmishes, the number of protesters injured isn't officially documented, because rioters often avoid hospitals for fear of arrest.
These are the most severe clashes since 2013, when Belfast City Council narrowly voted to reduce the amount of time the British flag is flown. That move stirred months of illegal unionist demonstrations and street battles in which 157 police officers were wounded.
STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: It actually is infrastructure week ... and it will be for a while. What is the administration's plan to get its top legislative priority through Congress? Add Transition Playbook to your daily reads for details you won't find anywhere else about the state of play of the administration's top priorities and biggest challenges. Track the people, policies and power centers of the Biden administration. Subscribe today.
Nightly Number
21
The number of pages in the lawsuit Florida filed today to force the Biden administration to scrap regulations that are blocking the cruise industry from resuming operations.
Parting Words
ON VAX PASSPORTS, DESANTIS HAS A POINT — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set up the nation's first vaccine passport face-off this month when he put out an executive order that bans state and local government from issuing proof-of-vaccination documents, and prohibits governments, businesses and public venues from demanding proof of Covid-19 vaccination from individuals.
DeSantis knows a good wedge issue when he sees it, and his order helped accelerate the latest national political argument about Covid-19. Some observers see the "passport" argument as a new way for conservatives to express skepticism about the whole pandemic response — a skepticism that has horrified liberals who think someone like DeSantis isn't taking the pandemic as seriously as their heroes in the public health world.
Like random pat-downs on subway systems, metal detectors at Major League Baseball games, and most of what TSA does at the airport, the vaccine passport is an idea with obvious public appeal that gets a lot foggier when you start to weigh the potential benefits against the very clear costs.
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