| | | | | |  | | By Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade and Tara Palmeri | | | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | Happy Monday, Playbookers. The two big events in D.C. this week, at least that we can forecast with any confidence, happen Wednesday. The House Republican Conference will vote to remove LIZ CHENEY as conference chair. That same day JOE BIDEN and KAMALA HARRIS will have their first Oval Office meeting with the top four congressional leaders — NANCY PELOSI, KEVIN MCCARTHY, CHUCK SCHUMER, MITCH MCCONNELL — to talk infrastructure and spending. In the meantime, here's a rundown of Monday superlatives to kick off the week … Best tweet of the weekend, by a long shot — @TheSimpsons: "Probability that @GStephanopoulos and @NateSilver538 have a 50/50 chance of being correct? 100%." — Posted Sunday night, when Stephanopoulos and Silver "guest starred" on the latest episode. Check out Stephanopoulos on set reporting LISA SIMPSON'S campaign for president, with her picture and the caption: "NOT 80-YEAR-OLD WHITE MAN RUNS FOR PRESIDENT." Most surprising revelation about a Biden Cabinet member: "XAVIER BECERRA spent decades urging congressional leaders to support liberalized legal immigration. But he's sounding a different note as Health secretary, responsible for caring for upwards of 21,000 migrant children. "Becerra has argued for maintaining the historically low Trump-era cap on refugee admissions to the U.S., according to two people with knowledge of the matter, for fear of stretching the already-thin resources of his department's refugee office." Read Adam Cancryn's piece here Most anti-climactic news development over the weekend: McCarthy officially endorsed ELISE STEFANIK for Cheney's leadership post. Trumpiest lede/most holy s--- story: WaPo's Emma Brown, Aaron Davis, Jon Swaine and Josh Dawsey with an Addison, Texas, dateline: "Key elements of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President DONALD TRUMP took shape in an airplane hangar here two years earlier, promoted by a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream. … "The enduring myth that the 2020 election was rigged was not one claim by one person. It was many claims stacked one atop the other, repeated by a phalanx of Trump allies. This is the previously unreported origin story of a core set of those claims, ideas that were advanced not by renowned experts or by insiders who had knowledge of flawed voting systems but by [RUSSELL] RAMSLAND and fellow conservative activists as they pushed a fledgling company, Allied Security Operations Group, into a quixotic attempt to find evidence of widespread fraud where none existed." Best '90s sitcom reference: Burgess Everett hangs with CHUCK GRASSLEY in Ossian, Iowa, and delivers a gem: "Chuck Grassley still gets up at 4 a.m. every day and often goes for a two-mile run. The 87-year-old does push-ups, too. "'You want me to do 35 for you?' he responded when asked about his regimen as he waited for a burger at Bambino's, a haunt in this town of about 800 people. "The challenge sounds like something out of the classic 'Seinfeld' episode where the elderly Mandelbaum family taunts JERRY to prove his physical prowess. But Grassley's longevity is no joke. It could be the ticket to an eighth term in the Senate — and change the midterm landscape." Read the whole story, it's a fun ride Most flashback-to-2020-Dem-primary-losers story: A deep dive from Clare Malone in N.Y. Mag on ANDREW YANG-as-MIKE BLOOMBERG without the money, and worries among progressives that the city's business elites are using him to recapture the throne post-DE BLASIO. Key passage: "Many of the city's most well-connected, savviest strategists have bet on Yang, and in less than two months, eight years after rejecting the legacy of Bloomberg for someone defiantly to his left, New York may very well elect an heir to the billionaire ex-mayor's worldview. Yang is a couple of generations younger, with business ideas that are more tech inflected than Wall Street honed, but his vision for the city is fundamentally Bloombergian—not only appealing to the same privileged, progressive-to-a-point audience but shaped by some of its very same architects." Most alarming domestic story: "No restart yet for pipeline shut by cyberattack, gasoline prices climb," by Ben Lefebvre Best analysis of an important international story: "U.S. and Iran Want to Restore the Nuclear Deal. They Disagree Deeply on What That Means," by NYT's Steven Erlanger and David Sanger: "[A]s negotiators engage again in Vienna, where a new round of talks began on Friday, the Biden administration finds itself at a crucial decision point. Restoring the 2015 accord, with all its flaws, seems doable, interviews with European, Iranian and American officials suggest. But getting what Secretary of State ANTONY J. BLINKEN has called a 'longer and stronger' accord — one that stops Iran from amassing nuclear material for generations, halts its missile tests and ends support of terrorist groups — looks as far away as ever." Best/worst "Yes, our former president issued an official statement with this quote" from the weekend: "So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky." Thanks for reading Playbook, the No. 1 all-time best politics newsletter ever. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri. BIDEN'S MONDAY — The president will receive the President's Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. At 10:30 a.m., Biden will meet with NATO's eastern flank allies, who will be meeting in a virtual summit of the Bucharest Nine, from the Roosevelt Room. Biden will deliver remarks on the economy in the East Room at 1:15 p.m with VP KAMALA HARRIS in attendance. — Harris will have lunch with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD in the Ward Room at noon. — Press secretary JEN PSAKI will brief at noon. THE SENATE will meet at 3 p.m. to take up ANDREA PALM'S nomination as deputy HHS secretary, with a vote to invoke cloture at 5:30 p.m. THE HOUSE is out. Capitol Police IG MICHAEL BOLTON will testify about Jan. 6 before the Administration Committee at 3 p.m. THE WEEK AHEAD — Biden will meet virtually with a bipartisan group of governors about Covid-19 vaccination programs Tuesday. On Wednesday, Biden and Harris will meet with the four congressional leaders. On Thursday, Biden will meet with Sens. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-W.Va.), JOHN BARRASSO (R-Wyo.), ROY BLUNT (R-Mo.), MIKE CRAPO (R-Idaho), PAT TOOMEY (R-Pa.) and ROGER WICKER (R-Miss.) to discuss infrastructure. | | | | SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | | 
PHOTO OF THE DAY: A Palestinian man runs from tear gas in front of the Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem on Monday amid clashes between protesters and Israeli police. | Mahmoud Illean/AP Photo | BREAKING OVERNIGHT: "153 Palestinians in hospital after Jerusalem holy site clash," AP/Jerusalem: "Israeli police firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets clashed with Palestinian stone-throwers at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site on Monday, the latest in a series of confrontations that is pushing the contested city to the brink of eruption." THE WHITE HOUSE THIS WEEK IN BIPARTISANSHIP — Whether Biden really wants an infrastructure deal with Republicans — or whether he wants to look like he wants a deal with them — is the D.C. guessing game du jour. (The truth, as is often the case, probably lies somewhere in between, and the White House is acting accordingly.) The latest installment comes via Natasha Korecki, Laura Barrón-López and Christopher Cadelago: "'It's not phony': Biden hungry for a jobs deal with Republicans": "The Biden White House this week will make its most concerted push yet to find a middle ground with Republicans on the president's massive infrastructure proposal And as it does, the president's position on a potential compromise has come into sharper focus, according to interviews with more than a dozen White House officials, senior Democrats, and interest groups working with the White House. "Those officials say the White House is cognizant that any bipartisan proposal would likely involve only so-called 'hard' infrastructure, things like roads, bridges and tunnels. They are also drawing few red lines — at least openly — heading into the latest round of negotiations. … [T]he remaining priorities … — from funding for home health care to expanded childhood education, family tax credits and increased taxes on those earning more than $400,000 — would likely be pushed through a separate budget reconciliation bill with only Democratic support." DEPT. OF TEA LEAF READING — Is McConnell edging higher on infrastructure spending? He said Sunday in an interview with Kentucky Educational Television that "the proper price tag for what most of us think of as infrastructure is about six to eight hundred billion dollars." McConnell has previously pegged Republicans' line at $600 billion, while Capito's proposal came in at $568 billion. The interview STAFFING UP — "Biden Administration to Name Thea Lee to Top Labor Department Post," WSJ: "Ms. Lee, who most recently served as president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that often critiques free trade policies, is slated to become the deputy undersecretary for international labor affairs. … Ms. Lee is a close friend of U.S. Trade Representative KATHERINE TAI … Ms. Lee spent 20 years at the AFL-CIO." BIDEN'S SUNDAY READING — "2 Catholic bishops at odds over Biden receiving Communion," AP: "Archbishop SALVATORE CORDILEONE of San Francisco … recently has made clear his view that [pro-abortion rights] political figures — whose ranks include President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — should not receive Communion because of their stance on the issue. The archbishop issued a pastoral letter on the topic May 1 and reinforced the message in an hourlong interview Friday with the Catholic television network EWTN. … "[Bishop ROBERT MCELROY of San Diego] … in a statement published Wednesday by the Jesuit magazine America, assailed the campaign to exclude Biden and other like-minded Catholic officials from Communion. 'It will bring tremendously destructive consequences,' McElroy wrote. … The polarized viewpoints of the two prelates illustrate how divisive this issue could be if, as expected, it comes before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at its national assembly starting June 16." POLITICS ROUNDUP THE (NEW) ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS STARTING — "Why Democrats stopped stressing over big spending," by David Siders: "By altering the Democratic Party's calculation about big government, Biden is acknowledging demographic and ideological sea changes in the American electorate. The youngest generation of voters, Gen Z, weren't even alive when RONALD REAGAN trounced [WALTER] MONDALE. Nor were all but the oldest of millennials. Meanwhile, the composition of the Democratic electorate has grown increasingly liberal over the past 20 years, while Republicans acclimated to the GOP's own brand of free spending during the Trump era. "Today, a majority of Americans — 55 percent — say government should do more to solve problems and help people,according to an NBC News poll last month. That's a reversal from the 1990s, when support for more government intervention registered in the 30s and low 40s." SOMETHIN' SHAKIN' ON K STREET IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME — "As Scrutiny of Cryptocurrency Grows, the Industry Turns to K Street," NYT: "Ripple [Labs] has hired two lobbying firms in the past three months. It has retained a consulting firm staffed with former aides to both HILLARY CLINTON and former President Donald J. Trump to help it develop strategy in Washington. And to defend itself against the S.E.C., it hired MARY JO WHITE, a former chairwoman of the commission during the Obama administration. … "Lobbying disclosure records show that at least 65 contracts as of early 2021 addressed industry matters such as digital currency, cryptocurrency or blockchain, up from about 20 in 2019. Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying include Ripple, Coinbase — the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States — and trade groups like the Blockchain Association. … [C]laims of conflicts of interest are already starting to emerge." NEW YORK MAYOR'S RACE THE LATEST VOLLEY — "'No Doubt in My Mind': Scott Stringer's Accuser Details Harassment Claims," by NYT's Katie Glueck: "In an interview at her Manhattan apartment last week, [JEAN] KIM described three instances during the campaign of unwanted touching in taxis, and she said Mr. Stringer had kissed her and groped her at a bar without her consent, an account she also shared with Gothamist. "'He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, "You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life," "You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,"' Ms. Kim said. 'There was no doubt in my mind that he was powerful and he could make or break me.'" — Check out this cool POLITICO interactive breaking down the top candidates' fundraising. PANDEMIC BEYOND OUR BORDERS — "'Where is the plan?': Biden pressed on global vaccine strategy," WaPo: "[A] vow to 'restore U.S. leadership globally' detailed in 11 pages of that nascent [pandemic] plan … remains the subject of intense debate within the administration and of growing concern overseas, with officials still wrestling over how to fill in the many blanks in Biden's plan as cities in India run out of space to cremate their dead. … "[I]nside the Biden administration, there is confusion over which agency is leading the effort to craft the country's global vaccination strategy, which has led to a fragmented rather than strategic approach. While JEFF ZIENTS, the covid-19 coordinator at the White House, has been the person in charge of setting and executing the domestic fight against the virus, five administration officials say there are too many players addressing the worldwide challenge, with not enough direction." ATTN. JEFF ZIENTS: "Free beer offer results in more vaccinations than all Erie County first-dose clinics last week," Buffalo News | | | | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TODAY: Power is shifting in Washington and in communities across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. The Recast is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | IN MEMORIAM — "Pete du Pont, transformational governor who brought credit card industry to Delaware, dies at 86," Delaware News Journal: "He entered office as governor when the state was in crisis. In eight years, he led efforts to limit excess spending, dramatically cut income taxes and created a slew of government agencies. He also implemented school desegregation, and his administration courted major banks to relocate to Delaware through tax cuts and deregulation, ultimately remodeling the state's image from anti-business to corporate tax haven. "Du Pont established himself as a moderate Republican as Delaware's U.S. representative, advocating for the environment and campaign spending reform. Post governorship, which included a lackluster run for the presidency, du Pont's politics moved farther right, once described as a mixture of Reagan conservatism and libertarianism. " ICYMI — "She's chasing a Washington dream. He's the Night Mayor," WaPo: "If the Trump years were represented by couples like Jared and Ivanka, who were seen as having tension with their adopted city, and George and Kellyanne Conway, who were seen as having tension with one another, then maybe the Biden years will be defined by the likes of [Symone] Sanders and [Shawn] Townsend. They are young, Black and in love, both working on different fronts to Make Washington Normal Again." BOOK NEWS: John B. Judis, an idiosyncratic liberal who has written a series of prescient books about populist political trends on the right and left, is out tomorrow with "The Politics of Our Time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism." The book combines updated and revised versions of Judis' three most recent titles, all written since 2016. This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand, well, the politics of our time. WSJ: "Melinda Gates Was Meeting With Divorce Lawyers Since 2019 to End Marriage With Bill Gates" SPOTTED: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in seat A1 on a Southwest flight from Austin to D.C. on Sunday. … Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) at Whole Foods on Wisconsin Avenue on Sunday. Pic … CFPB nominee Rohit Chopra walking on 14th Street on Sunday evening. TRANSITIONS — Susan Hennessy is joining the Justice Department as senior counsel for the national security division. … Alex Stoddard will be executive director of the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, as longtime head Bob Bessette retires. Stoddard most recently was director of legislative and intergovernmental affairs for Commerce's International Trade Administration. … Lauren Baer is now managing partner at Arena Academy. She previously was strategic adviser at Hawkfish and founder of More Like America. … … Andy LaVigne is now executive director of the Blue Dog Coalition. He previously was political director for the International Association of Fire Fighters. … Stephen Perkins is now VP of grassroots strategy on the American Conservation Coalition's senior leadership team. He previously worked at Beast Digital. … Seth DuCharme is now a partner in Bracewell LLP's government enforcement and investigations practice in its New York office. He previously was acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York and principal associate deputy A.G. WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Jane Gelbmann, branch chief for fiscal and legal review in HHS' Office of Budget, and Zac Champ, COS for the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, welcomed Elliot Myron Champ on April 27. Pic … Another pic — Adam Kushner, Outlook editor at WaPo, and Maria Simon, managing partner at the Geller Law Group, welcomed Zed Alexander Kushner on Friday. He joins big brothers Jack and Felix. Pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) … Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) … N.Y. Mag's Gabe Debenedetti … Andrew Card of the National Endowment for Democracy … Bloomberg News' Craig Gordon … White House's Howard Ou … former Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) … former Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.) (7-0) … Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Research ... Mel Sembler ... Finch Fulton … Dianna Dunne … American Forest and Paper Association's Fara Sonderling … Douglas Farrar of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace … CNN's Jeremy Herb … Stephen M. Ross … Rick Santorum … Chris Tuttle … POLITICO's Mike Lee, Andrew Desiderio, Courtney Rohrbach, Chris Farmer and Ariel Wittenberg … Angela Raish (1-0-0!) … Shaylyn Hynes … Gary Goldberg of Dentons … Christine McDonough … Clarence Tong … Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy … Hannah Beth Mooney … Brad Bannon … Michael Turk … John Meroney … Maggie Karchmer of Wiley Rein … Rachel Weisel … Abbey Brandon … Adam Janofsky … Terry Holt … Kathleen O'Neill … Corbin Casteel … Andrew Binns … Jocelyn Austin Cholewinski … Chris Policano … David Bethel … Tim Powderly of Apple … Hernan Rozemberg … Instagram's Divya Kunapuli … Dave Kluesner … Grace Rauh … Erik Curren Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com. Playbook couldn't happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
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